Approves a rezoning of 1205-1275 Osage Street from R-MU-20 w Waivers (2008-106) to C-MX-5 in Council District 9.  (LAND USE TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE) Approves a rezoning of 1205-1275 Osage Street from R-MU-20 w Waivers (2008-106) to C-MX-5 in Council District 9.  The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 3-11-14.
Thank you, Madam President. I move the council bill 153 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved. I need a second. Second? Thank you, Councilman Brown. The public hearing for Council Bill 155 is open. May we have the staff report? It's Mr. Watkins. It's me again. And happy to present rezoning application 2013 I 55 of the property located at 1205 to 1275 Osage. This is located in Central Denver, just a few blocks south of Colfax Avenue in Council District nine and right near the well. It's in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, right near the 10th A.H. Station, light rail station. So here is the property highlighted. It is just over two acres, 2.34 acres. There is an existing two storey warehouse building which is currently vacant. The property is also vacant. As you can see in this aerial image. The property is located just across from the llama, Lincoln Park and just 2 to 3 blocks from the 10th panel stage station, street light rail station. Here's a view of the property from 13th Avenue. Looking south along the property frontage park just to the to the east. Here's a view looking towards the southwest from the park. And you can see the light rail in the background and the vacant warehouse building to the left. And here's a view of the property along the building frontage again with the park to the left or to the west. So the applicant is a and j investments represented by Bruce Larson in city architects and others. The owners and representatives are here this evening and available for public comment. The requested to rezone from r m u20 with waivers to CMCs five. So ami 20 is a mixed use zone, and the waiver was just simply waiving the right to build any further away than zero feet. So as a zero or a zero foot build to requirement and the request is to see Annex five or urban center mixed use. Mixed uses with a maximum of five stories. So the most recent use for this property was warehouse in the existing structure. But as I mentioned, the building and land are currently vacant and it seems to be a prime location for infill development, transit oriented development being just 2 to 3 blocks from 10th in all state Osage station and significant amount of development currently underway, including some of the Denver Housing Authority projects that are nearing completion or have been completed. There are also some light industrial uses to the north, an office and multifamily uses to the south. So the public review process at present has included extensive applicant outreach to the registered neighborhood, as well as letters and emails to all applicable neighborhoods or organizations as listed here. Written Notice of receipt of application back in January. Notification Sign is posted on the property prior to the public hearing at Planning Board and they recommended unanimous approval on February 19th. There were public comments provided and support provided by the Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association and the new said Community Development Corporation, and their letters are contained in the staff report and proper written notification prior to Ludie , as well as the legal posting written notification for this public hearing this evening. So look at the review criteria, starting with consistency with adopted plans. Comp Plan 2000 encourages infill development and sustainable development, particularly near centers of activity. I'd like to point out that there's a particular reference here under land use to work with the Denver Public Schools to preserve and incorporate educational facilities as key elements of healthy neighborhoods. Also changing travel behavior, promoting opportunities that bring people together to build connections between each other. Blueprint Denver Conceptually, this is an area of change and mixed use. Feature land use and the recently adopted llama Lincoln Park Neighborhood Plan adopted in 2010, shows this area's transit oriented development and encourages a rich mix of uses including housing, jobs, shopping, parks and other amenities, and with a key goal to provide opportunities for local job training and education. Additionally, in the review criteria, this would result in a uniform application of district regulations and further public health, safety and welfare through implementation of adopted, adopted neighborhood and comprehensive plans. The justifying circumstance would be that there is a rail station and surrounding transit oriented development that are rapidly developing and bringing more people living and working in the area near transit and that the property is vacant. Both the building and the land area and are ripe for infill and redevelopment or adaptive reuse and also would find CBD also finds that this is consistent with neighborhood context, zoned district purpose and intent, and we therefore recommend approval based on finding all review criteria have been met. Thank you, Mr. Watkins. We have four people signed up to speak. Let me call on Josh Comfort. Okay. Good evening, Madam President. Members of Council. My name is Josh Comfort. I reside at 678 Lafayette Street here in the city and county of Denver. I'm an architect, and I'm. Also an owner's. Representative this evening here representing the owner of the property between 1205 and 1275 Osage Street. Just as a quick, quick history, because I think we'll all appreciate this as to where this rezoning is headed. My initial two conversations with the owner of this property where back in 2002, 12 years ago, in which as an architect, we prepared a number of design concepts for the property. We established a vision. And for the future of a substantial residential apartment complex over the entire piece of property. And for a period of time, those plans lay dormant. 2007, five years later, after some things calmed down in other areas of the country, in fact, we reengaged on our design process. Engaged the local. Community, building an architectural firm of VanMeter Williams Pollock to be our architects of record on this. We designed the project and by 2009. We had permitted two phases of residential construction between 12th and 13th on Osage Street. And we also had proceeded with the demolition of the old. Comac paint factory. At the north end of the block, which many of you may remember. The owner of the property actually. Owned the property since the late seventies. He operated the Comac paint factory as a paint factory in the late seventies. So he's been in this neighborhood for a number of different years. 2012. We unfortunately. Lost our tenant. In the warehouse building. We had previously lost our financing on the project with the economic downturn and as a result put the park project back on the market. And in 2013. We fortuitously came across the Denver public. School system in the form of the Emily Griffith Technical College looking for a new home. So we have a marriage which we think. Is quite effective here. Our process, we feel, has been consistent over the past 12 years, unfortunately, that long. In that we have reached out to the. Community on a regular basis. We spent time with Councilwoman Monteiro and her office and her staff. We've worked with the Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association with regularity at their meetings and ad hoc basis. We've also coordinated with new said the economic development arm over on Santa Fe Drive, as well as the Denver Housing Authority as they've developed the Mariposa Housing Complex just to our south. We've attended. A number of meetings. We've also been through now this our second rezoning, if you will, by virtue of changes in zoning within the city and county of Denver. The first rezoning was to the RMU tow, which allowed us to build a residential the second. Now to do this mixed use project. There is a future for this, and that is we. Intend to consummate this lease with Denver public school system and we tend to move forward with securing financing then for the balance of the project. Mr. Comfort, your time is up. Thank you very much. Thank you. Very much. Appreciate your consideration. Thank you. Should we have that built? She said now or just wait until the speakers come? I think it doesn't matter either way. She could just state the proper motion. Okay. The council, in fact, has noticed something. Good for you for paying such close attention that she mentioned the wrong build number. So we'll just ask you to put the bill on the floor again. Thank you, Madam President. I'm going to withdraw my previous motion and move that council bill 155 not 153 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. Second, thank you very much, Councilman, and thank you very much for noticing that. Really appreciate you're watching out for those details. Okay. I will go ahead with the public hearing and I will call up Mr. Jeff Perry. Thank you, Madam President. Members of the Council. My name is Jeff Barrett. I reside at 2035 South Clarkson Street, Denver, Colorado. I'm the executive director of Emily Griffith Technical College, and I'm also here representing Denver Public Schools. Thank you for the consideration of the rezoning. This is a very important project, I think, not just for Denver Public Schools, selfishly speaking for Emily Griffith Technical College and looking for a new home for our Applied Trades Programs, but also for the neighborhood itself, and looking at creating educational opportunities, job training opportunities, as well as community education possibilities and classes that benefit what's going on in the Santa Fe Arts District and all the redevelopment that's happening in that neighborhood as well. I'm currently working on several projects with the and some public private partnerships as well that would strengthen, I think, this location and the types of programs that we offer. And I would also like to say that we're excited about the close access to the 10th and Osage light rail station, which I think enhances the TOD operation and the renovation that's currently going on with that neighborhood. We've hosted Lincoln Park Neighborhood Association repeatedly on our campus. As for their input and some of the design process looked at our classroom schedule, they're very excited about the training opportunities. I'll be offering a scholarship through Emma Griffiths Foundation to benefit people that live and work in that community to attend in the Technical College as well. So I'm here to support this and hope that you support it as well. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Mr. Garrett. And welcome to the Chamber's Bruce Larson. Pardon. But it's just like, how do I do that? Excuse me. Thank you. Madam President. Council members. Thank you. My name is Bruce Larson. I'm with Larson and Chidi Architects of 3191, South Fillmore in Denver. I think I wrote my business address on there, which is 1900 was E Street. I hope that's okay. I want to talk just a bit about the plans, and I'm trying to get the site plan up here. Thank you. I mean, we're very proud to be a part of this project. We looked far and wide to find a building that would that would fit this program. It's about 50,000 square feet of trades programs. And we'll talk about those in a moment. But this is the site plan on your screen. Osage is to the bottom and the light rail is immediately to the upper part or to the west in this case. But this will, you know, this require a full development redevelopment of this site, new parking, landscaping. We are parking, you know, off the main street, which is nice, kind of tucked around behind the building. But they'll be great access up and down the street for for pedestrians and people coming to it from light rail and bus drop offs. These are the two floor plans. It's a 50,000 square foot building, 25,000 square feet on each floor. The first floor is the upper portion of the screen. It contains auto training for auto tech, auto collision, welding. These are obviously some spaces that needed to be on the first floor. And then the second floor contains training areas for mechanical repair of mechanical systems, upholstery, CAD, CAD training and water quality training. These are unique programs and this is just a great fit within this neighborhood. We feel in a great transition. I know that the neighborhood is in transition, and I think this would be a a great amenity. We're going to try and give this this whole building some new life architecturally. And we want to be, you know, wanted to be we want to be proud of it. The make the students proud and the staff and the neighborhood. So this these are some renderings of the completed project. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr.. Larson Scoop. Yes, Chairman Sekou. Bless the action movement. My pleasure to be an advocate for poor, working, poor and homeless people. We are excited about the possibilities of this project and it's moments like this that that makes it worthwhile coming down here and participating for the last three years and meeting such as this. And so committee meetings, because every now and then you get an energy boost and you get some hope and you get some faith. And somewhere along the lines, somebody is doing something that I had no idea that it was doing. And and I get a chance to meet Josh Comfort as perfect name because I'm real comfortable with him and I'm comfortable with his vision of what he's trying to do and also some things that are coming up possibly in the next couple of years that will provide us with an opportunity to actually have some pilot projects, building some economic units that poor people can own as they go to school and retool and get ready to come back up because of unintended consequences of an economy that just went crazy and people lost their jobs, didn't make them bad people, they just got caught up. And so the great thing about coming here is you can't get this what I'm experiencing right now, what I'm feeling looking at television, you got to actually come down here and meet these people and they get a part of this thing before we get started. So I'm encouraging all of our friends and supporters in the movement that we represent to start coming down to the city council meeting, start making the context now for the projects are going to be built in the future so that we can be included in the bottom of the development and begin being a part of the initial conversation so that we can actually say that this is our city and it represents everybody. Thank you very much. Okay. That ends our speakers. Are there questions from Council Councilwoman Robb? Thank you, Madam President. I thought Tim presented a credible case for the zoning, quoting from the plan about schools and neighborhoods. But I do have a couple questions for the gentleman from DPS. Is it Peterson? Barrett. Barrett. Oh, okay. Barrett. Pretty good. Where is this training that you described, the auto shop and some of the water treatment stuff? Where is that currently occurring? Madam President. Yes, go right ahead. This is occurring at 1250. Well, the street where we've resided for 97 years. And then my second question is, it looks like there's going to be a fair amount of investment to retrofit the building, and it looks great. But did I hear them say that DPS is only leasing the property? That's correct. Is that common in DPS property management? I mean, what would happen if that were to sell? It's just I know it's more of a school board question than a city council question. And I'm not as knowledgeable on DPS practice as your question is asking, but we're entering into a long term lease and anticipate it for many, many years at this project. Do you know the length of the lease? 20 years. 20 years? Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Did you have any other questions, Council? No. Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman Munter. Thank you, Madam President. This is for whoever wants to take it. But it was originally zoned RMU 20. And now can you give me the reasoning for wanting to see a mixed five? Buddy. Anybody? I probably should have mentioned that that the rezoning the new zone district would allow for vocational education. So that. Our new 20 does not. Yeah. So this year, mix five allows for vocational or professional services? That's correct. Educational under an educational category. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Monteiro. Councilman Nevitt. Thank you, Madam President. There's a question for Mr. Comfort. I just wanted to hear the rest of the story that got us to today. With respect to the financing and other machinations. Councilman, you're very good at that. I think you've gotten to 2012. So you were going to get a chance to finish. I was on Kensington, Madam President. It's the rest of the story is very brief. Fortunately, the rest of the story is with the lease going into place and the ability to be able to. Utilize the cash flow, etc. from that particular building. It puts our developer in a position to be able to secure financing for the development of his initial phase of residential on the North End. Exactly the way they can enter the property that could happen within a period of about three years is what we're anticipating that that list could begin and we intend to build that out fully at the time. And we would be living with a mixed use block for the next 20 years. As we mentioned in the terms of the lease. The opportunities after that are obviously in the future and we can't speak to. That directly, although we do have contingency plans for a second half second phase, if you will, of residential development on the south half of the block as well. Should that become available for redevelopment in the future? Oh, I see. This answer is actually a couple of questions all at the same time. So I had the same question that Councilwoman Robb had about DPS. I mean, 20 years seems like a long time. It's not really a very long time. So the the owner didn't want to if I understand if I'm reading between the lines, right. The owner didn't want to sell the property permanently to Denver Public Schools. For Emily Griffith, you have potentially future plans for those parcels. You're using a building. That building could come down. You can do more on it. But this is an interim plan to help finance phase one of the the residential, at the same time finding a home for Emily Griffith for the next generation. Yes, that's very well put. And certainly in the development world, keeping options open for the future. As development, as economics may, change is a fundamental tenant. That's where what we're doing is keeping our options open for the future. But we're certainly locked in at this particular program for the next 20 years. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And also, I would expect in 20 years that the technology for cars will be quite different and that we'll be having driverless cars. And so 20 years is plenty of time to. 20 years from now, you'll be able to have the auto repair on the second floor. And yes, because of our jetpacks that we are going to have. Thank you, Councilman Nevett. Councilman Rux. Thank you, Madam President. Councilman Nevitt actually took my question. I wanted to bring up Mr. Comfort to expound upon the in since he got cut off. But I use my time to bring up my current constituent, Jeff Baird, executive director for Emily Griffith. I have a question for you. Yeah. And, you know, most of my and maybe some of my colleagues in the thousands of viewers at home that are watching don't know the plans for Emily Griffith and the multiple sites that you'll will be breaking up into. So two questions. Can you talk about all those sites that she'll be gone all over the city and then to the number of people from this neighborhood who will have access to this this job, these jobs, this job training opportunity. And President, go right ahead. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. In 1947, Emily Griffith had a high of its enrollment ever of 37,000 students in the city. You put your head around that. And we were scattered across multiple locations across the city in storefronts doing retail training, you name it. We were doing training in church basements, etc. We've been occupying our current campus since 1916. We're rapidly approaching our 100 year anniversary, which is very exciting. We've been in the same location. The original building was raised and the oldest part of the structure is 1926, added on a couple of times, 4756 in the Glenarm building as well . We have occupied this space which is not allowed is for capacity building. It's an aging facility. And so we've been looking for a new home. Well, since I've been there and before I arrived four years ago, we are currently moving into 110,000 square feet of our. In answer to your question of our operation to 19th and Lincoln Street, 1860, Lincoln Street, which is now renamed the Emily Griffith campus in honor of her legacy and will house three of our four colleges, as well as Central, Low or central administration and student support. We also will be locating 50,000 square feet to 1205 Osage, which is Applied Trades or college of Trades and industry. And we also have a building that we're renovating, a 209th Street, which will have a video production program and our broadcast studios that we have Channel 22 as part of the PEG funding. Thank you for that. For the city. And we also have an instructional service center in partnership with the far northeast of which we have talked about in with the academy at airport way. So we're building capacity and expanding our outreach. We serve 8000 students, both credit and noncredit, and are looking at ways in which we can build capacity. So that's the rationale behind what we're doing. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. I'm going to close the hearing and ask for comments. Councilwoman Monteiro. Thank you, Madam President. As we stated earlier, the primary purpose for the zoning to CMCs five is to allow for vocational training under the under the education category. The most amazing thing about how far you've come is all of the different things we've talked about. At one point you were talking about a church in the neighborhood, was worried about parking. And so all of those conversations eventually got us to, I think, a better a better use. And I believe that the neighborhood believes that, too. So for many of my colleagues, you've heard me talk about 10th and Osage and you've heard me talk about Denver Housing Authority and Lama Lincoln Park and the Mariposa Program, or that public mixed income housing and that particular housing project is actually on a national list with HUD, which is amazing. And so the the fabric of this neighborhood just continues to to strengthen because right at 10th and Osage and on a nearby within a quarter mile is the llama, Lincoln Park, the swimming pool, the Mariposa program. Colorado High School is nearby. West High School is a little bit further inner city parish and in the Alamo Lincoln Park Recreation Center. So my point is, is that this is right in the middle of this whole vibrant community that's coming together. And the other part is, is that for students that go to Emily Griffin, they decide that they want to jump on the light rail and head over to area campus. It's like 10 minutes away. And so this is an amazing use and I think that it's one of the most compatible that we could have at this site. The neighborhood is completely embracing this particular use because of all the the young, aspiring people that we have within the community, especially at West High School and and Colorado High School. And the idea of just being able to not go very far, to go to Emily Griffin and possibly that will open more doors for other things is just an amazing possibility in my opinion. So I completely, 100% support this application tonight and would encourage my colleagues to do the same. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman Monteiro. Okay. Seeing no other comments, Madam Secretary, roll call. Monteiro I never I rub by Greg's eye. Brown I thought I can eat lemon. Lopez All right. Madam President. Hi. Madam Secretary. Close of voting. Announce the results. Tonight. Ten eyes sounding passes now. Councilwoman Fox. Will you please put Council Bill 199 on the floor? Thank you, Madam President. I know the Council Bill 199 be placed upon final consideration and do pass.