A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 2137 Glenarm Place in Five Points. Approves a map amendment to rezone property from R-3, UO-3 to G-RX-5 (former chapter 59 residential zoning to general urban), located at 2137 Glenarm Place in Council District 9. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 11-23-21.
We have three public hearings tonight for those participating in person when called upon. Please come to the podium on the presentation monitor. On the wall you will see your time counting down for those participating virtually. When called upon, please wait until our meeting. Host promotes you to speaker. When you are promoted, your screen will flash and say Reconnecting to meeting. Please don't leave the meeting. You will be reconnected and will need to turn on your camera. If you have one and your microphone, you will see your time counting down at the bottom of your screen. Once you have finished speaking, you will change back to participant mode and see your screen flash one more time. All speakers should begin their remarks by telling the council their names and cities of residence, and if you feel comfortable doing so, their home addresses. If you've signed up to answer questions only, please state your name and note you are available for questions of council. Speakers will have 3 minutes. There is no yielding of time. If translation is needed, you will be given an additional 3 minutes for your comments to be interpreted will alternate between in-person and virtual for efficiency by calling in-person participants and then alternating to virtual participants. Speakers must stay on the topic of the hearing and must direct their comments to the council members. Please refrain from profane or obscene speech. Direct your comments to council as a whole, and please refrain from individual or personal attacks. Councilmember Clark, will you please put Council Bill 21, Dash 1406 on the floor for final passage? Yes, Council President. I move the Council Bill 1406 to be placed upon final consideration and do pass. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded the required public hearing for Council Bill 21 Dash 14 zero six is open. May we have the staff report and I believe we have Fran Benefield on the Zoom call. And so we'll go ahead and bring Fran up and have her introduce herself. Sorry. Council president is this is this for 2137 Glen Jones. It's 21. It's 2114 zero six. And so I guess. Brad, I'm sorry. It is you. Go ahead, Brad. Friends, the next one? Yeah. All right. It sounds like you can share your. Saying that. Okay. Yes. Okay. Great. Good evening, councilmembers. My name is Brad Johnson. I'm a senior city planner with CPD here today to present to you a rezoning request for 2137 Glenarm place. This is from old code r three with au3 overlay two. grx5. This is in Council District nine in the Five Points neighborhood. Here is the site just sitting between 22nd Street and 21st Street there on the west side of going on just to have a block off of the welland street light rail corridor there. The request here is again for a general urban neighborhood context residential mixed use with the maximum height of five storeys. This allows a mix of uses, but with the grx5 zoning, it stipulates that anything above the ground floor is limited to residential or lodging uses. So like an office use, for example, would not be allowed on the upper floor. This zone district permits development of the town hall townhouse or the shopfront building forms. And with this zone, are this property currently being an old code zoning? The applicant is looking to redevelop the site with a new zoning code applied. The existing zoning, as I mentioned, is are three. That's essentially an old code high density residential zone district. It does have the Euro three or the historic structure use overlay district, which is an overlay district intended to encourage adaptive reuse of landmark structures. There are no landmarks structures on this side, so that you have three is not really applicable to this site, even though it does retain that in its current zoning. The surrounding all story. To the northwest you see the higher intensity zone districts, downtown Arapahoe Square districts there to the northeast and southeast to GMU, three, two directly to the southwest, you have X five, and then you can see another block or group of properties up there to the northeast that is also X five. And that's, of course, the zone district has been requested on the subject site. This is a map of the existing land use. And of course, the site itself is is a surface parking lot right now. And I want to point out to if you guys can see this, I'll speak to it. The property to the Southwest shows in the assessor data as being industrial, when in actuality it's a vacant property and a surface parking lot. And then to the northeast across 22nd Street, this shows as being mixed use. I do believe this to be a pure residential project. I'll show you a picture now of that. So looking at those two sites at the top left is a picture of that kind of traditional road house to the northeast. And then right at the bottom left, that's a photo of that vacant structure. I mentioned this immediately to the southwest. And then in the foreground of that photo is the surface parking lot that sits on that site now. And then you see, of course, other pictures of the site itself and other properties that are surrounding. We followed the required process for an official maximum in terms of posting and notification and hearings that brought us to the city council public hearing. In terms of outreach. We did receive two letters of support from Arnaud's, both from the Clement's Historic District Neighborhood Association and the Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods. Arnaud, I think both of those letters spoke to, you know, a level of excitement about the potential development of what's now a surface parking lot. And we're particularly in support of development of the site, given its location proximate to downtown and right now or around the corner from a couple of different light rail stations. We didn't receive any comments from individuals. So moving to the review criteria is starting with consistency with adaptive plans. These are the plans that are applicable to the site. Starting with comp plan 2040, we did find this rezoning would be consistent with numerous goals and policies of Conte plan 2042, just a handful of which are shown here and more would be detailed in your staff report. To Blueprint Denver starting with neighborhood context. The property is designated as General Urban, which pushes for multi-unit residential with some nonresidential mixed use embedded on regular grid sort of orthogonal blocks, as you see in this photo here. So with the general urban zone district that was being that has been requested, we did find that to be consistent with Blueprint's neighborhood context. Feature place type on the property for Blueprint. Denver is high medium residential, which calls for this kind of medium scale multi-unit uses with some neighborhoods serving nonresidential uses, perhaps mixed in being a supportive blueprint. Denver, in this place type, actually calls for up to eight stories of height. The five zone district certainly is consistent with that within the range of that. But we're only allowed to go up to five stories. Featured street types that are adjacent to the site are both local and designated streets and blueprint. Denver does provide for a variety of options in terms of land use and building forms that would be adjacent to the street type. And therefore, we did find this rezoning to generics five to be consistent with future street type. Growth area strategy is all other areas. The city which calls for collectively properties designated as this round the city to accommodate 10% of new jobs and 20% of new housing units through 2040. And given the fact that this is requested, zone district would allow both housing and nonresidential uses. We did find the request to be consistent with growth area strategy. And then also of course blueprint Denver pushes for properties to be re zoned out of old code form or chapter 59 and into the Denver zoning code, which this rezoning would. And so that's another key element of blueprint differ that this rezoning is consistent with. So moving into area plans start with the downtown area plan. There's several, many, many high level policies in that plan that this rezoning would would be consistent with. I point out a couple of critical ones here that are specific to this area that call for redevelopment of surface parking lots and underutilized properties and with a focus on properties that are within close proximity to the one street light rail transit line. So given that we did find this rezoning would be consistent with the downtown area plan. Well, some of the northeast downtown neighborhoods plan. That plan has a lot of high level sort of qualitative policies like this that you see on the screen now that we find the rezoning to be consistent with in terms of generating pedestrian oriented development, better connectivity and in higher intensity uses in proximity to transit. That Northeast Downtown Neighborhoods Plan also has a land use map in it, and it identifies the subject site as transit oriented development or TOD. So in that regard, it calls for transit oriented developments that push for housing and intensity of of of housing, employment and other mixes of uses in proximity to two transit station and transit line. There's also a height map in this plan, and you'll notice here that the plan, the northeast downtown neighborhood plan, calls for a maximum of five storeys, whereas the blueprint feature place type called for up to eight. So there's a small discrepancy there. And you can kind of see on this on this map that kind of a half block there is providing a transition from the. Higher allowances the plan calls for to the northwest and then this box are providing a five story transition to the more low skill neighborhoods off to the southeast. So given that we did find that your five would be consistent with this area plan. We also found that this rezoning would result in uniform district regulations and would further the public health, safety and welfare of the community, primarily through implementation of adopted plans, but certainly providing an opportunity to fill facilitate redevelopment of of a vacant parking lot in close proximity to a transit station. Justifying circumstances. I mentioned the plans calling for for transition to the new codes. That's relevant for the Chapter 59 circumstance as well as just the land uses and character that the area plans call for. And then, of course, you all know that this is an area that has transformed significantly in recent years as you see development taking place along the one street corridor. In a medium proximity to this site. And then finally, we did also find that this rezoning would result in and would be consistent with neighborhood context, zoned district purpose and intent. And so given that and based on the criteria for review in the Denver zoning code, staff does recommend approval of the application. 2020 1i-00128. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Brad. This evening, we have four individuals signed up to speak and our first two speakers are in chambers and the other two are online. And so first in chambers, Chris Cox here. Yes. Thank you. My name is Chris Fox. Here I am, the division president for Storyville, Denver, where the owner of this property as well as the applicant for the zone map amendment. I'm really here just to answer questions, but Brad did a good job of explaining several of the things that I would have conveyed. So I just want to cover a couple of additional items which may provide context. This property would likely have been rezone to CMCs five back in 2010. There were at that time existing entitlements for a townhome project, and that's the reason why it got grandfathered into the Chapter 59 code. That project failed during the financial crisis of 2820 ten. Never got built. That's why we are where we are today. We had initially sought S.R. eight zoning. We felt that a story project would be most appropriate here. We abandoned that effort based on the inconsistency with the Northeast Neighborhoods Plan showing the five storey height map. And but, you know, through that process, we worked extensively with Clements group, as well as John, as well as Curtis Park Neighbors and others and DDP, and also met over probably two years with several groups. The decision to go for Rex as opposed to an MLS zone district was in large part a reaction to the neighborhood not wanting to see an office project there. So Rex requires residential on the upper storeys, but allows for mixed use on the lower level, which still allows the idea for for Todd and mixed uses to happen there. The adjacent condition is an 18 storey project directly across the island that actually is inconsistent with the height map and the zoning that you just saw because it's 12 and 18 or 12 and 20. This is 18 across the whole site as well as a 50 story parking garage directly across the alley. So building a five storey project basically just blocks the parking garage, which is currently unscreened. It's very much a two year deal location. We have two light rail stops within two or three blocks, either direction, both on Walton and 18th and California. It's also a ten minute walk to pretty much probably several landmarks, including Coors Field, including the Pavilion Mall, 16 strip mall, including Safeway, as well as going down to 17th for restaurants and such. So it's a very walkable location, very good location. It's actually on the corner of the 5280 loop loop. With that. I mean, our goal basically is to facilitate redevelopment of the property. It's currently a vacant parking lot. It does have several safety issues from time to time, depending on the homeless enforcement and the neighborhood is very much in support of it. So I'm happy to answer any additional questions. All right. Thank you. Our next speaker is Mike Hunt. And I have met Mike as in chambers. Let's see if Mike Hunt is online. Okay. It doesn't look like we have Mike with us. We're going to go ahead and move online then Jesse Paris. Yes. Good evening. May I be heard? Yes. Yes. My name is just the sort of person I'm representing for black, small for self defense, positive action, commercial social change was the Union Party of Colorado, the East Denver Residents Council and for a long black nose. And I'll be the next mayor of Denver in 2023. I was initially against this rezoning, but hearing the presentation brought me up to speed on what was happening in regards to this rezoning. I just had a few questions. If there is going to be residential place here, what would be the amount level for the residential housing that's going to be placed here? Has there been a parking study done and has there been a traffic study done? If the occupant occupants using to please answer those questions, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker online is Keith Pryor. I. Keith Pryor, 2418 Champ Street. Very close proximity to the site. This is a TOD site, which is a transit oriented development site. It is walking distance within the downtown area and it will be on the 50 to 80 loo. All our access to amenities and bicycling and walking and traffic mitigations obviously are very much in place. And so a traffic impact study is pretty much not relevant for the site given the access and plethora of not only TOD but also bike and walking access as well as Broadway is the major corridor as in Colfax, all within walking distance is as I am very much in support of this rezoning. He did work with the neighborhoods, both Curtis Park as well as San Rafael and Uptown and also Capitol Hill, United Neighbors. And I believe that the X is the correct way to go. We obviously are in a housing crisis and need to have additional housing units built, especially in this location that allows people to access a 15 minute city and really not have to have a car, which would help with climate change and having people more self resilience than relying on a car to get themselves throughout the city and adding to our congestion and our air pollution. So having this building here obviously would be a great addition as well as solve a lot of other issues that we're currently finding in our city, not only from the homeless situation, but just to the lack of housing that we have in the area. So very much in support and I would encourage council to support this rezoning. As was stated, it does meet all of the criteria for our adopted plans and as the applicant himself stated, this would have gotten resound had it not had an additional site plan already approved that did fail. And so that's why it is in the old code that it does not conform to today's zoning code. And what has gone to the either JEAN-MAX or NCR expired. So this is a great compromise for the development and a great win for the neighborhood and definitely feel like this is the right solution moving forward. So to support this rezoning. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes our speakers questions from members of Council on Council Bill 21, Dash 14 zero six. Councilmember Hines. Thank you. Council President. May I ask the applicant to come forward? I might also have questions for her for CBD as well, but start with the applicant. Hi. Thank you for for coming. Just a little context. I used to live, so this isn't my district. So I wasn't part of the conversations. And certainly I'm sure you've found the right person to do so. I don't have as much context from the you know, from this conversation. So that's part of the reason why I'm asking questions. I used to live two blocks from there, though, so I moved to the uptown neighborhood in May of 2008. I started working in Uptown in April 2007. I lived in Uptown Square for three years, starting in December of 2008, and then I bought in 1950 Logan, the condominium there, the C-Max 12 in October 2011, and then we left there in March of this year. So I'm very familiar with uptown. That's not technically uptown, but it is. Yes. So I'm very, very familiar with this area. You mentioned that that you considered and I mentioned the zoning of my building a c maxwell Raffo Square is even taller, but you mentioned that there was a conversation for potentially eight stories and that was the answer was no. Well, we wanted to do eight stories. We were seeking a CRC. It has to do with the zoning code X. It was our okay. But the challenge was because of the inconsistency with the Northeast Denver concept map, which showed a five story zoning there, which is about ten years older than Blueprint or, you know, older than Blueprint . Denver There was an inconsistency and staff could not 100% support that without saying it was inconsistent with at least one plan that opened up the door for a conversation about adding an affordable housing component. The minimum was, you know, a 10% component. And for us to do condo, which is really what we want to do there, we want to do condo for sale, housing. The economics just didn't work. It didn't make sense to go from 5 to 8 storeys with the addition of a 10% minimum affordable housing component. The economics don't work, and I know that the analysis on the current proposed Iot show says otherwise. I can tell you from the actual real world numbers, it doesn't work. So we were unable to pursue condo at the moment. There's, you know, three very large projects already that just were delivered both. To from a Lexan or. TCR, one from Lenore, and then Greystar is coming out with another 350. So we're not we're not trying to do more rental housing near transit. We're trying to do for sale. And we couldn't make it work and made stories. So you are still considering for sale? Yes. Bless you. We are woefully inadequate with our for sale properties. And in uptown, I mean, you know, my building at 1950, Logan was for sale. You've got the Portofino, we've got 1935 Grant and then you've got a one Lincoln Tower. And those are the for sale, you know, areas. But everything else has been built around them has been a whole lot built. This park is about the only other thing even nearby that's been recent over in Curtis Park. Yeah. And so we're woefully short of for sale, um, dense, uh, construction. So, so thank you for, for considering that. Obviously we're not talking about that tonight and we can't hold you to the fire necessarily, but I'd like to, um, but so it's a five stories, not eight. Um, and that abandoned building that isn't you, that's not, is not. Part of our property, that's part of 2115 GLENARM We had tried to acquire it. It's been challenging. Well. Okay. Um, it is challenging to the neighborhood too. So I'm sorry that we were sorry that that wasn't added to the. It is currently it was being marketed and we're hoping for a redevelopment there by another party. So. Okay. And. I think that's I think that's those are all the questions that I had. I just wanted to. I think that it is a really good carry. Oh, I do have one other question. The 50 to 80 trail also very interested in a 50 to 80 trail. Thank you for whoever testified about a year or two ago. The branding change from the 50 to 80 loop to the 50 to 80 trail. Um, but, uh, I would hope that one. I would hope it becomes a reality and I'm doing my best to make that happen. And then to, I would hope that if you, um, if you move forward with development, obviously pending a vote tonight, I would, I would strongly encourage, you know. Building something that works with the 52 editorial. And I mean, I feel like it will be transformative for our city center. And it, along with Spurs, will help connect, you know, other diverse communities to a you know, with our Shared Streets program will really help us break Denver's dependance on cars and that neighborhood. I didn't have a car at all for four years, so it is very pedestrian friendly and cyclist. I think it could could use some opportunities to become more cyclist friendly, like with a 50 to 80 trail. And we do hope to embrace that, you know, the tiered nature of the site and, you know, really kind of celebrate that, the bicycling aspect, etc.. So it does affect our thoughts on parking on on bike storage as well as bike maintenance and those types of things. Yeah. And to that point about bike storage and maintenance, as you're considering your architectural design, if you can place the bike storage in a place that's not visible to the street, um, I mean, that seems kind of obvious now, but we didn't, you know, we didn't do that at 1950. Logan And some of the other areas didn't do that either. So and thank you. I think you Councilperson. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Hines. Not seeing anyone else in the queue for questions. The public hearing is closed. Comments by members of Council on Council Bill 21, Dash 14 zero six and will go online first to the District Representative. Councilwoman CdeBaca. Do you have any comments this evening? No comments. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Hines. Thank you, council president. I just would say, I know this isn't my district. This is my hood. And I really like the idea of taking something that has been underutilized and and activating it. So thank you for bringing this forward. I will certainly support this tonight. Thank you, Councilmember Hines. And seeing that this does meet the rezoning criteria, I'm happy to support it as well. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 21, Dash 14 zero six, please. CdeBaca. I saw your. Clarke. All right. Flynn. I. Herndon, i. I. Cashman. Ortega. Sandoval. I. Torres. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, close voting and announce results. Ten Eyes. Ten Eyes Counsel build 21 dash 14 zero six has passed. Thank you to folks who spoke at that last hearing and Brad for the presentation. Councilmember Clark, will you please put council Bill 21, Dash 1431 on the floor for final passage?