A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 1895 North Quebec Street and 1800 North Oneida Street in South Park Hill. Approves a map amendment to rezone property from CMP-EI, UO-3 to CMP-EI with waivers (campus zoning), located at 1895 N. Quebec Street and 1800 N. Oneida Street (and other associated addresses) in Council District 8. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 5-3-22.
You have a nice. 11 eyes council bill 20 2-0475 has passed. Thank you for the staff reporter and the public or the comment. Councilmember Black, will you please put Council Bill 20 2-0469 on the floor for final passage. Of. That council bill 20 20469 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded. The required public hearing for Council Bill 20 20469 is open. May we please have the staff report? Good evening. Members of Council Jason Morrison, senior city planner with Community Planning and Development, tonight, will be presenting the rezoning application at 1895 North Québec Street and 1800 North Oneida Street for the property more commonly known as Johnson, the former Johnson Wells University campus. The proposed rezoning is in Council District eight, which is Councilman Herndon's district. It's in the South Park Hill neighborhood. In 2021, the approximately 25 acre Johnson Wells University campus was sold to the Urban Land Conservancy, Denver Public Schools and the Denver Housing Authority. The former campus includes 13 buildings and a variety of open space. Demolition is not proposed for any of the existing structures, but rather these buildings will be adaptively reused for a mix of educational, residential and other purposes. The proposed rezoning includes only the East and south parcels of the former campus, which are highlighted here. This is an overall summary of the requests and a snapshot of the waiver the applicant is proposing to maintain the existing CMP district with the addition of a waiver to allow for the food preparation and sales commercial use and the Denver Zoning Code, which will allow local small businesses to use the existing industrial kitchens to produce a range of food items. The key difference here is that the program will no longer be operated by the university and will instead be publicly accessible. The current zoning on the subject site is CPI u03. The Zone District is a campus zone district intended to be applied to institutions and campuses of larger areas and scale where additional flexibility is desired to accommodate master planned campus elements. Additionally, the historic structure use overlay or Euro three applies to the subject site. The overlay allows for some commercial uses, including art studios and bed and breakfast lodging with limitations. The storage structure use overlay may only be established in conjunction with an underlying residential zoned district. Therefore, it is not part of the applicant's rezoning request because the requested zoned district is a mixed use zone district. The existing land use on. The site is a mixed use. It's surrounded by mostly single unit uses in the South Park Hill neighborhood, and this slide shows the existing context surrounding the subject site with the proposed rezoning on the bottom right. The Map Amendment application is before council this evening. All public notice requirements have been met since the staff report was published. We have received no public comments. As you know, there are five review criteria when analyzing the appropriateness of a request. The first criterion is consistency with adopted plans. There are three plans applicable to this rezoning plan 2040 Blueprint Denver as well as the East Area Plan. The rezoning is consistent with several of the strategies in town plan and they are detailed in the staff report. When looking at Blueprint Denver the future neighborhood context is special district. Staff finds that the. Proposed rezoning is appropriate and consistent with a special district neighborhood context plan direction because it will allow for the adaptive reuse of existing buildings and introduce a new community serving an educational use and a campus setting. Blueprint identifies the future place of the areas. Campus staff finds that concurrent with the proposed office uses and affordable housing on the subject site through the all the R process is anticipated that the addition of new employees. Educational uses, incubation spaces and. Community serving food and beverage services that will result from this rezoning will contribute to the community's mix of educational and employment services. The subject property is. Located within the district's growth area. These areas are expected to see 15% of new employment growth and 5% of new housing growth by the year 2040. The proposed rezoning is consistent with the growth strategy that is. Mapped in this area. There was an equity analysis that was conducted on. This particular property, and the subject. Site is in an area with high access to opportunities, specifically for the neighborhood equity index measurement. The area has a more moderate score when it comes to the built environment measure, including a score of zero for access to transit. Staff finds that the proposed rezoning to comply with waivers will introduce the food preparation and sells commercial use. It is anticipated that this will provide much needed access to commercial cooking and baking equipment, business development resources and fresh food for the growing residential population in the South Park Hill neighborhood. By maintaining the EPA base zone district, the applicant is exploring commitments to preserve public access to existing campus open. Space areas. And intends to keep existing campus walkways accessible to the community, thus improving the access to park and transit measurement. The subject's site is in an area that is low vulnerability to involuntary displacement. Concurrent with this rezoning application, through the large development review process, the Denver Housing Authority plans to convert existing student housing units into affordable rental units for seniors and others, which will further strengthen this indicator. The subject site is in an area that is. Below average housing diversity. In fact, the area scores low on all of the indicators listed on this slide. Although the current rezoning application to allow for this particular use doesn't propose residential uses. Multi-Unit, residential is in allowed. Use in existing and proposed based on district. CMP Maintaining this base, the district has allowed for the provision of affordable multi-unit housing on the former campus, and staff finds that this rezoning application will promote a positive impact on the housing diversity metrics in this area. The subject site has a job mix that is dissimilar to the city's overall mix of job types, with a greater emphasis on innovation jobs. Staff finds that the proposed rezoning of this new use will allow local small businesses to use the existing industrial kitchens to produce a range of food items and have access to onsite workforce development and training and. Culinary arts and business. Management, creating a more inclusive range of employment options, thus improving the area's low jobs diversity score. Blueprint also. Contains a high level. Policy language for the redevelopment of institutional sites, healthy foods and active living and custom zoning. The addition of the food preparation and sales commercial use to the Camp Zone district furthers all of these strategies by contributing to a truly mixed use campus that envisions. To be a community. Center rather than inwardly focused. The plan was adopted by Denver City Council in 2020 and contains both general and specific recommendations for the subject site. As mentioned previously, the applicant is not anticipating a major redevelopment of the site. Rather, they are proposing to adaptively reuse buildings while maintaining the campus environment. The proposed rezoning maintains the campus zoning on the site with a waiver that expands access for small businesses and promotes healthy food access. Therefore, it is consistent with the general vision set forth in the East Area plan. Identical to Blueprint Denver mapping and analysis, which I detailed before the subject site is mapped. A special district on the future context. Map and the East Area Plan. And campus on the future places. Map. Staff finds of the. Proposed rezoning is consistent with the future context and future places mapped in the East. Area plan. Seth also finds that the requested rezoning meets the next two criteria. The rezoning will result in uniformity of district regulations and will further the public health, safety and welfare, primarily through its implementation of adopted plans and the re-use of some of the existing structures on the former campus. The application cites the recently adopted East Area Plan and many of the general land use and quality of life recommendations found within Blueprint Denver as a justifying circumstance for this proposed rezoning. This new plan guidance encourages potential revisions to the campus zoned district to better reflect the needs of the community and documents an increasing demand for affordable housing, open space and new community serving uses such as the food preparation and commercial sales use. The updated plan. Guidance for this area and the changing conditions justifies the rezoning to to allow additional uses and reinvestment in the public interest. Lastly, staff finds that the proposed rezoning is consistent with the zone district purpose and intent of the zoning district. And based on the review criteria, staff recommends approval of this particular application. Thank you. Thank you for the staff report, Jason. And we have one individual signed up to speak on this public hearing. Jessie Perez. May I be. Her? You have to stop. Harris Interactive for Black Star Action and Self Defense Positive. Akshay Kumar for Social Change. As far as the. Unity Party of. Colorado, the East Denver Residence Council Front, Frontline Black News and I will be the next mayor of Denver in 2023 and I resigned in disgrace in Christopher Herndon district. So the exact district of this rezoning, I am supporter of this rezoning. And tonight I just had a few questions. After all, now what is the and my level for the units or residence that is going to be placed or converted into residential at this campus? And how many units? After all, we are in a housing crisis. It's not complete. Please ask those questions. I'll greatly appreciate it. This rezoning meets all five of the criteria, which is consistency with the plan's uniformity, with its regulations for the public health, safety, wellness. Justified in circumstances inconsistent with neighborhood consent zone, district purpose in that sense. So I'm in full support of this rezoning for my. You. That concludes our speakers questions from members of Council on Council Bill 22, Dash 469. Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. Jason, could you explain in more detail about the UO three the historic structure overlay? In the staff report it said that. The intent is to encourage preservation, protection, adaptive reuse and enhancement of historic structures. It may only be established in conjunction with an underlying residential zone district. Therefore, it is not part of the applicant's rezoning request. It's not an underlying residential zone district right now. So how did the overlay get to be there and. I guess that's what I need to explain, because removing it makes me think that we're we're not encouraging the preservation, protection and adaptive reuse, although that's the intent. Yeah, correct. So to answer that second piece, this certainly would not preclude the preservation of buildings in the future. But to answer your question, it's it's a very good question. And prior to 2010, we did a little bit of research. This particular site was re zoned our three in the old code, and it seems that every three district was given the zero three overlay. And so that essentially just kind. Of a transition to a campus designation in 2010. Correct. And they won't be automatically. Okay. So this is an artifact of. Correct. Okay. Yeah. And with we've seen this before in other rezoning to. Something in your estimation, does the removal of the or I guess if the overlay doesn't apply without a residential zone district on the line, it's not a not at issue, but I am concerned that that this does not afford any protection to the structures. Is there some other provision that protects these structures? So, you know, again, this wouldn't preclude. Any preservation of buildings down the road. And does it allow demolition or alteration? So it would essentially go through that process. So when when the particular demolition application is or when a building is proposed to be demoed, it would go through that process. And I know that Landmark's staff would obviously look at that in historic Denver has said that they would be willing to work with the current property owners to potentially identify buildings in the future. That might be. For this particular preservation. Thank you. And in fact, historic Denver owns an easement on Treat Hall, correct? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That's all. Madam President. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Ortega. Jason, I have a question for you as well. So the residential on the campus, does it have to be associated with campus operations with. However, they're going to use the buildings that have the kitchens and all of that. Or can it be any type of residential anybody living in those buildings that are not associated with the operations of the campus? Correct. Yeah, like the latter. Okay. Thank you. That was my only question. All right. Thank you. Councilmember Ortega. The public hearing is closed. Comments by members of Council on Council Bill 22, Dash four, six, nine. Councilmember Herndon. Being my president. I think I firmly believe the criteria has been met and I would urge my colleagues to support it. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. I agree they have been met and look forward to supporting this this evening. Councilmember Ortega. Okay. So I don't know. I don't know how many of you have had the opportunity to tour the campus and to see how many kitchens are in the buildings there. But the opportunity that this presents for folks in our community, I know that revision is one of the organizations that is in Councilwoman Torres's district is very much involved in this. They have kept the director who actually ran Judson in Wales to work with the different organizations that are working out of those kitchens and creating opportunities for wealth building and people to become entrepreneurs. And so the kinds of things that can be happening in and for our community I think are very exciting. So and I can imagine some of these folks, you know, being some of the very people that eventually would have concessions out of the airport as well. So I'm pretty excited about what can be with not just the kitchen and opportunities of many of our nonprofits, but with the housing as well. Thank you. Wonderful. Member Ortega. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 22, DASH four, six, nine, please. CdeBaca. I. Hines. I. Can each. I. Herndon. I. Hines. Cashman. Ortega. Sawyer. Torres. I mean, black eye. Clark Flynn. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, closed the voting and announced the results. To advise 12 Eyes Council Bill 20 2-469 has passed. Thank you for the staff report. Councilmember Black, will you please put Council Bill 22, dash 470 on the floor for final passage?