A bill for an ordinance approving and accepting the East Central Area Plan, which plan shall become a part of the Comprehensive Plan 2040 for the City and County of Denver pursuant to the provisions of Section 12-61 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code. Adopts the East Central Area Plan, as part of the city’s Comprehensive Plan. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 9-15-20.
So the east central area, for those of you who are not familiar or as a reminder are the six neighborhood statistical areas adjacent to Colfax Avenue and between Broadway and Colorado Boulevard. Four of the six neighborhood statistical areas are on Council District ten. And two of the neighborhoods are in Council District nine. And that culminates in about 83% of the population in District ten and 17% in District nine. So the plan is organized around topics and also some areas or the neighborhoods within the east central area. So it includes land use and built form that makes recommendations related to zoning and urban design, economy and housing, which has recommendations related to small businesses, jobs, training and affordable housing mobility, which makes recommendations related to infrastructure. For bicyclists, pedestrians, transit riders and quality of life infrastructure that covers landscaping, green infrastructure, the tree canopy and parks. There's also sections within the plan for each neighborhood statistical area in East Central that gives customized recommendations for the unique attributes of each neighborhood, as well as the Colfax corridor. And finally, an implementation section that outlines a work program for short term and long term implementation of recommendations. The planning process, as well as the plan content itself was prepared through an equity lens, and that includes the three equity concepts that are in Comprehensive Plan 2040 and Blueprint Denver. That's access to opportunity, vulnerability to displacement, jobs and housing diversity. And while the plan has a number of recommendations across those comprehensive topics, I'm going to highlight the six priority recommendations that consistently rose to the top throughout our planning process. The first is to strengthen the local economy by providing training for jobs and local industries, improving access to employment and supporting locally owned independent businesses. And that includes partnerships with East Central hospitals. East Central has a number of hospitals, both within the area, as well as right adjacent to the area along the boundaries. And leveraging this asset of the hospitals to provide more training for residents and affordable housing, particularly for health care employees. Secondly, to preserve the independent culture of Colfax by proactively helping small, independent businesses survive and thrive during and after. Colfax Bus Rapid Transit Construction by providing financial and technical assistance. We have also a number of other recommendations to help small, locally owned businesses throughout the East Central area, especially during this time of COVID. That can help make sure that we are doing what we can to prevent displacement of those businesses. Second, to make housing more affordable and make more options available to a wide range of families and individuals. And this includes providing a more diverse range of housing options in our neighborhoods, as well as using every tool in the toolbox , including zoning, to address the housing shortage by adding more affordable housing, especially affordable housing that's close to convenient public transit. Third to improve services for residents experiencing homelessness and to take steps to prevent more people from losing their homes. And this includes a key emphasis on reducing involuntary displacement by preserving existing affordable housing in the east central area, as well as enhancing social services to residents experiencing homelessness. A key aspect of this is to preserve the existing income restricted housing, which over the plan horizon, more than half are scheduled to go back online as market rate housing and losing the income restriction that have been put in place. So a key aspect of making East Central more affordable is to permanently preserve the existing affordable housing that we're going to lose. Fourth is to make our streets safer and more comfortable for everyone by improving walking, bicycling and public transit infrastructure. This includes building high quality sidewalks and safer crossings along Colfax and the streets immediately adjacent and parallel to Colfax. That includes 13th, 14th, 16th and 17th. Making sure that those streets are much safer to travel along and to cross. The East Central area contains some of our most historic neighborhoods and landmark structures in Denver, and this has been a key priority throughout the process to expand historic preservation by making it easier to reuse existing buildings, creating more historic districts, and ensuring that new buildings, when they are built, are fit in better with our surrounding neighborhoods through contextual design standards. This includes a recommendation to create what's called an adaptive reuse ordinance that helps reduce regulatory barriers for small businesses looking to expand or move into existing buildings, incentivizing preservation of historically significant and and character, providing buildings and adopting new standards for quality design and compatibility with adjacent homes. And then sixth, which is the last priority recommendation, is to reduce our carbon pollution and create more climate resilient neighborhoods by providing more opportunities for people to live and work near transit, adding shade trees and taking a green approach to stormwater management. These this includes directing growth near high quality transit and protecting mature trees and focusing and prioritizing tree planting efforts in strategic areas where the tree canopy is deficient. Each neighborhood section that I mentioned earlier also includes what we call a transformative project, where we visualize how some of these recommendations can come together through physical changes in the environment. And so some of them include the District six police station redevelopment, key intersections such as Park Avenue 11th and Ogden, Colfax and Colorado 17th and Garfield 13th and Vine and a new community garden and neighborhood park in the Converse Park neighborhood. The implementation section categorizes our recommendations into three buckets. One, the regulatory topic public infrastructure and partnerships and programs. And again, this will set up our implementation program that will start once the plan is adopted. So now we'll get into the three review criteria that are used to evaluate approval of area plans. The first is that it is an inclusive committee process. Second, that it's consistent with the vision, goals and strategies of comprehensive plan 2040. And third, that the plan demonstrates a long term view. So first I'll talk about the inclusive community process. As Laura mentioned, this was a three year process which is longer than we usually take for area plans, quite a bit longer. We extended the process by a full year because stakeholders and other community residents asked for additional time to do outreach, asked for additional time to review materials throughout the process. And we we agreed with that and we granted those extensions. The process was robust. Over 3500 participants weighed in at our workshops and online, and we received over 10,000 comments throughout this period. This included six community wide workshops, 14 focus group meetings where we met with topic based experts in priority topics such as affordable housing, small businesses , walking and bicycling, and 11 online survey surveys and activities. All of our community workshops had an online equivalent, so if you couldn't make the workshop, you could always take the same exact activities on on our website. Using online tools, we had 30 steering committee meetings. We met 24 times with Arnaud's and other community groups. We had six office hours sessions where we allowed anyone who wanted to ask any questions or provide additional feedback and more of a one on one environment. The opportunity to do so. And we met with community members out in their neighborhoods to do field surveys of important locations within the east central area. Our outreach included 23 CPD newsletters, three Denver Planning Board meetings that were on television. We fired and put pop up events at 81 locations where printed materials were provided and people were able to answer questions and provide comments. And we had at least eight stories in the local media that included the Denver Post, Denver 79 News and Fox 31. Can me outreach also included language access services, as Laura mentioned. We had Spanish language interpretation, food and child care at every community workshop. We also hired two additional planners just for this project who were completely fluent and bilingual that were made available at the workshops for anyone who needed that assistance. So not only professional interpretation, but bilingual planners that could help people who needed those services do the activities. Multiple staff members from our consultant team, we're also bilingual as well. All of our fliers that we distributed throughout the East Central area, which included libraries, rec center schools, apartment buildings, businesses, all of those fliers were printed both in English and Spanish. All of our electronic communication web materials online activities are compatible with smartphones. They're all ADA accessible and they're all available for auto translation. And in some instances, people mentioned that they had difficulty accessing the plan, document or other materials online. And so by request, we did create print copies and delivered print copies of materials to those individuals that needed that. One of the things that I think our team is proud of that we did in this community outreach process was we set up a demographic tracking system from the very beginning of the process, and we did that not just to be able to report out at the end of the process who we reached. But we looked at that data throughout the process at each milestone, and in order to identify the demographic gaps and who, we were not hearing from any central area. So we would look at the demographic forms that were submitted both in our in-person meetings and online, and we would compare that data to the census demographics of the East Central area. And consistently throughout the process, the most underrepresented group were younger, lower income renters, particularly in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. So with that, we we did targeted outreach to help fill some of those gaps. We we did a number of meetings at apartment buildings, such as the residences that Franklin Park, resident Renaissance, Uptown Lofts. As Laura mentioned, for the first time in our department's history that we're aware of anyway, we partnered with service providers Price in the city, and we did direct outreach to residents in East Central Area who are experiencing homelessness. That that input we received from those residents were, was directly and directly inform our social services recommendations in the plan. We did target outreach of schools and we had a partnership with Councilman Hines office, who used his own resources and his own staff to hold a series of over a dozen additional meetings focused on younger, lower income renters and capital. So the draft plan itself. So after the multiple years of engagement that I just summarized, we put out a draft plan document. And just on the draft plan document, we had over 300 residents weigh in and placed comments within that document for suggestions. So we got over 3000 comments on our different drafts of the plan and we produced three of them. Most of those comments were smaller changes, but we did make over 100 substantive policy changes in response to that participation on the draft plan document. We're also very keen on transparency. We put every single comment that we received online and they're all on our website and we went to the length of responding to every single comment. And those responses are on his web or on our website as well. The Planning Board unanimously approved the central plan at their September 2nd meeting with two clarity and correctness conditions. Seven members of the public spoke in support of the plan, and three spoke in opposition to the plan at the planning board hearing. So with that, we we staff find that the East Central Area plan meets the first criteria that it was developed through an inclusive public process. The second criteria of plan consistency with comprehensive plan 2040. This is in your staff report but the the six vision elements of comprehensive plan 2040 that provide the organizing framework for that plan are included as an organizing principle in the East Central Plan. We expanded on the vision statements in each of these each of these domains, each of these topic areas, and found consistency with numerous goals and strategies where we expanded upon those goals and vision statements and strategies or clarified or customized those vision goals, visions, goals and strategies within each central area. Likewise, Blueprint Denver has an organizing framework of three major topic areas land use and built form, mobility and quality of life infrastructure. The central plan has all three of these topics in the plan and we've expanded upon and are consistent with many of those policies within those three topic areas. There's a number of maps that are in Blueprint Denver The Future Places, which is the land use designations, the growth strategy, the equity concepts, the mobile priority maps. All of these maps were created within the East Central Plan and will update blueprint Denver's Comprehensive Maps upon adoption. So with that, we do find that the plan is the central plan is consistent with both comprehensive plan 2040 and Blueprint Denver. And then the last criteria is that the plan has a long term view. So the essential plan has a 2040 planning horizon and establishes that longer term view to maintain the look and feel of established residential neighborhoods while accommodating growth and strategically directing that growth to centers and corridors that are well-served by high quality transit. The vision will take many years to achieve. It is ambitious and so we do find that the East Central Area Plan has the appropriate long term perspective. So with that, our staff recommendation is that the East Central Plan is recommended for approving, recommended for approval, having met the review criteria. And that concludes my presentation. All right. Thank you very much. We have 32 speakers and we have a one hour time slot scheduled to hear from the public. And so we will go ahead and dove right in. I want to remind speakers that they have 3 minutes each. And if you could maybe limit your comments or if folks have already spoke on a certain portion of the plan, maybe you let that stand in the record and allow that would help us get more speakers into the queue. And so our first speaker that we have is Molly McKinley. Evening Council. My name's Molly McKinlay. I live in the Cheesman Park neighborhood and I serve as the vice chair of the Denver Streets Partnership, a coalition of community organizations advocating for people friendly. Denver The best is ensuring our city is healthy, safe and accessible to everyone, regardless of how they get around. Our support for the adoption of the Central Area Plan. Are pleased to see that many aspects of the area wide mobility recommendations in the East Central Area Plan will support the creation of more people friendly streets consistent with the Comprehensive Plan 2040 and blueprint number. You strongly endorse the mode share and traffic safety goals and focus on creating bold changes to the mobility system by repurposing street space along key corridors, prioritized safe and accessible walking, biking, rolling and transit on unaffected streets in the East Central area, which were implemented earlier this spring in response to the pandemic. The philosophy of if you build it, they will come, finally come to life in all kinds of folks from roller blading, people walking and running. And my favorite, which is then kids learning to ride bikes, take to these newly arranged public spaces. But we've seen on a few streets. Imagine if we expand spaces and opportunities for walking, biking, rolling and transit as outlined throughout the East Central Area Plan. That will be a huge part of how we meet our city wide mode share and traffic safety goals. Oh. Friendly speech. Well, not only from street designs that support walking, biking, rolling and transit, but also land use and development patterns that make these transportation modes accessible and practical ways people reach their daily destinations. Diversity Partnership therefore strongly endorses the recommendations in the plan for increased density along Colfax, other transit corridors allowing density near transit. And that maximizes the number of people who can access the service and use it on a regular basis, which expands the benefit of existing and future transit investments further. Two of the most significant household expenses are housing and transportation. Building affordable housing units near transit ensures people who need it the most have access and can significantly reduce transportation costs or cost burden. Households, which make up 36% of households in the east central area and city that allows people to live close to their daily destinations. Also makes walking and biking a realistic option getting from place to place rather than forcing people to live far away. Driving is the only practical option to get where they need to go. The Denver Streets Partnership urges you to adopt this plan. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next up, we have Jesse Morales. Okay. Hi. Can you hear me? Mm hmm. Go ahead, Jesse. My name is Jesse Morelli, and I am the president of the Seventh Avenue Neighborhood Association. And I'm here tonight to represent the interests and desires of our members and board. I apologize. My presentation leaves something to be desired. That's a little disconcerting. Is this format. I would like to start by saying I would be remiss not to voice the frustration of our Renaud in our neighboring Arnaud's about the east central area plan. And the fact that we're at this point already, despite immense opposition that CPD's been informed of and concern that we've voiced. Well, we're glad to have the opportunity to make our voices heard. We do have serious concerns that the city's adoption of this plan. It's been a predetermined outcome and in the process it's been put in place that Mr. Upton just described. To develop, it was more window dressing than actually gathering neighborhoods, input and support, and that the content of the plan has always been determined and no input from us has really been considered. What I'm here to say specifically is that I have been authorized by a unanimous vote of our members to oppose the adoption of the East Central Area plan for a variety of reasons, but mainly because we believe that the plan represents the city putting into place directions to other city agencies. It would one compromise at best, but in our view most likely threaten public safety in and around our neighborhoods. It also proposes to increase residential density without considering or resolving in advance the impact this increased density would have on our infrastructure, with specific concerns in our group regarding the negative impact on our schools. Finally, we believe the plan prioritizes the interests of developers and other business at the cost of residents and residential property owners. So in addition to those things, we like to say that we also had some serious concerns and real complaints about the process that's been followed. But to understand our opposition, I think that some background in support. Is is warranted. First of all, Sandy was Santa, which is the Seventh Avenue Neighborhood Association, was never notified of this plane. I think we represent a significant part of the area outlined in the plan, but we were never asked to participate in the process. We were never notified of the process and our input was never asked for. Despite never being notified of the planning process or included in any way until we found out about it independently. The Santa Board and all of our members have been actively engaged on these issues, and we've done our best to represent ourselves. Q That's the time we have allotted. Thank you for speaking on this tonight. Next up, we have just Sela Camacho. Okay. He went as much as a door behind a colonial city power in the Medici Domino movie in El Inglés, or a social contract or an interpreter. So you analyze what is personal in his final journals and hat on what other plan? The recent rallies they meant the real plan for many of the unconventional. They will never mother companero Nino a. Cooper Gallagher them. They were one of the many local control amphibian pest control centers. We got us on the air for that eagle as company minister and whereas I see no local star in terms of purchasing as como your. Less information getting in and this final lane and Patel is moving Walker yellow featuring nothing with the other look if he still planned it alive yet Gill said partner this. Dispersal and. This you're sure there will only be a loss plan if that is the last two that Israel cruise contest open in the driver's bracket participant is you look at not the interpret this near your participative Israel cruise maybe hook us Estrella Romney on this in September the columnist had a plan if Cassian your young male reunion you got it on Amiga. Yeah my Paralympic fumble and then the. They look at this map is how do they not have it in this year? You cannot say, look, this whole plan is recommending not putting them there now that Mubarak will still participate in any company that. You could get pregnant or kill you that not the initial plan dishonorably and not proceed en masse for you. That must complete complicate. A person must commit. You'll get more than one participant. Talk to me was no less important. I was there. This is what people are still in this environment. They're being. What I see is the little they are. They're all good. Yes. What are they? Incluyen Abelson, is that his? That's when the person has come. We joke they must participate. Considering make when the what them and the other or you consider considering postpone is what affected the plan through? Yep. As soon as. Your grass has what is picture? Thank you, Miss Camacho. We unfortunately did not have the request for an interpreter tonight. And so asking any of my colleagues on the meeting if they would be willing to. Do a quick summary of Miss Camacho's points for us. Or we'll have to end up and just let it stand. Oh, Councilman CdeBaca. Happy to do a quick overview. Miss, come on. Look at that. She found out about the plan from a parent of her student. She has tried to engage and at multiple junctures has been unable to engage because of a lack of interpretation. She feels very reluctant about or hesitant about this plan because of the fears of displacement. And she hopes that you all will listen to her and people like her and make these meetings more conducive to people like her. If I left anything else, jump in. Miss Camacho, thank you so much for being here tonight. And and I think we we got the interpretation. Thank you, Councilwoman CdeBaca. And we apologize about that. We usually have a heads up regarding the interpretation. So thank you, Ms.. Camacho. Next up, we have Kristen Ferguson. Hi. Thank you. My name's Kristen Ferguson. I live in Congress Park. It's hard to think about how to summarize what you think about a 300 page document and three months or less. But I guess I'll try. I am personally excited about the guidance and the plan in the plan that is being presented. I think it is forward thinking. It's anticipating the growth in our city. It's trying to support some of the city goals to be less car dependent. And that is really the thing that I'm the most excited about. I live at the intersection of 11th and Steele and Steel Street is suggested to be a neighborhood bikeway, which I think would be really great. I'm hoping that by making it that there will be some traffic calming adjustments. I live at an intersection that's a little bit offset and there's a lot of confusion about what happens when people get to that intersection because it's two stop signs, it's only two a stop sign. And so I'm hoping that through this plan that there are opportunities to make our intersection safer. Steele is a cut through because it goes all the way from 17th, all the way down to Cherry Creek. And so I'm excited to continue to be able to walk, ride my bike, push the stroller with my kids and see the city densify in a way that is safe and inclusive for our families. So, yeah, so I, I, I've been happy to see some of the changes or clarifications made as people have expressed concerns. But as a Denver resident, I am excited about some of the vision that's been cast and appreciate the work that many of the people in this hall have been doing to to make it safer and more inclusive. So thank you. Thank you, Miss Ferguson. Up next, we have Mark Spear. Hi, my name is Mark Speer, and I'm an elected volunteer board member of the Seventh Avenue Neighborhood Association, and I've been authorized by our board to speak on Sonny's behalf. I have lived within the boundaries for the past 15 years. The process was woefully inadequate for even the most privileged residents. It was not an inclusive community process in any way. We just heard from Curt Upton that the outreach was targeted to younger, lower income renters and Capitol Hill, not to homeowners, not to older or longer term renters, and not to the other five neighborhoods that the plan covers. For example, Savannah was completely overlooked during the notification process. Individual residents in the Congress Park neighborhood of our R.A. were not notified. Santa was not asked to engage our members, nor was it given any budget to do so. If the plan had not been extended, as was described earlier this evening, Santa would not have even heard of it until after it had passed. That said, time for public review and comment is worthless without a process for incorporating that feedback. Last fall, after Congress Park neighborhood alerted Santa to the plan, Santa did engage CPD during the planning process, and CPD was present for one of the largest meetings in the history of our R.A.. In October of last year, CPD presented a recap, answered questions, heard our concerns, and then promptly disregarded them all. And subsequent plan revisions, with the exception of the correction of what they said at the time, was a typo that had Seventh Avenue labeled as a transit priority Street. Later, CPD mischaracterized that as a, quote, concession to Santa. Their change currently labels the Seventh Avenue Avenue Parkway as a collector street defined as, quote, streets, whose main function is to collect movement from local streets and convey it to arterial streets and, quote, Anyone who knows the Seventh Avenue Parkway knows that this is not an actor. Accurate characterization of what is likely these streets most used for recreation in the entire city. Although Santa is comprised of two pieces of census neighborhoods, the southern, the two southernmost blocks of Congress Park and the two northernmost blocks of country club. Our neighborhood is truly defined by the Seventh Avenue Parkway, not those census designations. The Parkway is such a significant feature that CPD included all of the parkway in each gap, even the section from York to Williams, which lies outside of the cop boundaries. Residents who live near E camp are now being told that they are not affected by the cap and there are misinformed with the implication that their concerns are not relevant. I urge City Council to understand that residents both within and near e copper most definitely affected by the plan, especially when the city discusses increasing density in areas that already have overcrowded schools. Thank you, sir. That's the time we have allotted. Next up, we have Frank Locke, a Tory. I thank you, Madam President. My name is Frank Loconte. I am a resident of City Park West, and within Council District nine, I'm also the steering committee chair for the East Central Area Plan. I'm speaking to you wearing those hats. But as many of you know, I'm also the executive director of the Colfax AV Business Improvement District. As a city council, you've recently adopted the Citywide Comprehensive Plan, and there's nothing in this plan that runs counter to that. For that reason and. More, I encourage you to vote. To adopt the East Central Area plan there. One example is that these plans are conducted because it's a way that we can help identify where there are projects and ideas that intersect and understand those synergies. I'll give two examples. One. There's a recommendation around change of use or adaptive reuse. For instance, many locally owned small businesses are inhibited and in some cases intimidated to even start new businesses on existing properties. If they're going to change the use from, let's say, selling tires to selling tacos, because it will require hundreds of thousands of dollars of improvements. By revising these change of use regulations, it'll make it easier for local small businesses, but it also protect the potentially historic buildings from demolition and thereby prevent the demolished concrete and rebar from going to landfills. Therefore, it's a win for small businesses, for preservation and for sustainability. A triple win. Another example is the District six police station. It's been identified in this. Plan as a transformational site that's ripe for. Infill development, which could provide housing, it can provide community centers, perhaps even outposts for the store program. And retail and small businesses. Might even be able to have space. For themselves or incubator space. That's a quadruple win. And if we layer in there that it will enhance transit success by directing growth to the corridors and also reduce pressure to build within the neighboring communities. That's win number. Five and. Six. These are just a couple of examples from the plan. In the end, the steering committee voted 7 to 2. In. Support. Five of those voting in support came from residents. All of the members of the steering committee are property owners. The community also clearly spoke in support, as evidenced by the thousands of comments and thousands of people that provided 170 substantive recommendation adjustment adjustments, all of which enjoyed at least a majority support and in most cases, overwhelming support. So I encourage you I'll be here all night. If you want to ask clarifying questions, I encourage you to vote to support this plan. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Joel to untied it. Untied? I'm sorry, Joel. I probably misspoke. Okay, it's. Fine. Thank you for your time. I'm Joe Untied, reside at 1915 East 22nd Avenue and have for 35 years. I am very am also the president of City Park West R.A. but tonight I speak to you as a resident. I'm very concerned for our community. And I want to ask everyone. What are we doing? We have all heard the city explanation that this process has been going on for three years. There has been outreach and more than enough. Time for comment. But I'm here to tell you. Long term minority residents have been totally left out of this process. In February, a civil rights violation was suggested by City Park West. The city postponed the comment period and developed an outreach plan with our R.A.. Then COVID hit. They could not complete their efforts. Yet when questioned about this at Denver planning meeting, staff read a list of outreach efforts, including schools, churches, service providers. This outreach was not done in our neighborhood. In fact, we asked. CPD. As advised by a city council person to provide the list. Of outreach and the dates. We received a list of restaurants and local businesses where fliers were dropped off. Few of whom are visited by minority populations. Individual neighborhoods were not involved in the creation of these plans. There was no outreach to black owned businesses, churches, residents to gain their perspective or input. Rather, the planning document was developed by a paid consulting firm who then sought public input. Most individual neighborhood plans were discarded. Our neighborhood has a rich Afro-American history. Families have owned their properties for over 100 years. The words of an 80 year old black woman who is my neighbor said, I remember when no one in the city gave a damn about this neighborhood. Now the land is worth something. There is a politically appointed, quite honestly, very white steering committee with no. Public. Involvement. No way for anyone to get involved who is new. Do not take comments and they take the vote to decide on which public comments are made to the plan. Numerous people, myself included, have made comments that fell on deaf ears. We have an affordable housing and homeless crisis occurring right now in Denver. DPW and City Park West convened a group of nonprofit, affordable housing helpers, the true affordable housing developers. There was an overwhelming consensus that up zoning does not create affordable housing. Quite the contrary, it increases property values and for stories are too cost prohibitive to build affordable housing. We are experiencing a pandemic and civil unrest not seen since the 1960s. Our area in northeast Denver has one of the highest COVID rates in the city. Households might not have computers and have no interest in civics at this horrible time. So I ask you, is this a plan of the people? Is it fair to all? Thank you. Next up, we have Elizabeth Chester. Hi. Good evening. My name is Lisa Chester and I am a Congress Park resident and also the chair of the Park AC Streets Committee. I do on a preponderance of a toddler in the background really into banging pots. So if it's loud, let me know. This is kind of dinnertime, but I just wanted to show my support for the East Central Area plan tonight. I guess there's I didn't have as many comments prepared as everyone else, but there's three main points. I kind of wanted to hit one by talking about the process. And I know there's mixed reviews on this, but from my perspective, I thought that the process was incredibly inclusive. And Kurt and Scott, thank you for responding 100% of the time to any questions showing up to 100% of the time, to all of our meetings, answering any questions. I also wanted to show my support specifically as it relates to the safety and mobility section. I feel like this aligns really well with Vision Zero. And not only did you listen to us, but you actually took a plan that our committee had worked on throughout a year, a public process on our park group. And you took that plan, reviewed it, and incorporated it throughout the plan. So that's really exciting for me to see some of our work that we did at the neighborhood level to be incorporated into an adopted plan. So thank you for that. And I think some of our members on our committee had actually mentioned this, and I think this is just a really telling example. I'm super passionate about making crossings safer. I have a child and a dog and just the simple things in life of be able to cross the street and not be fearful of crossing six, eight , 13th, 14th, which have been mentioned when use the example, try to hold my hand out and walk across Sixth Avenue and make it in time. And you can't. And this plan really starts looking at some of those issues and how to make those simple things safer, which will add so much to our lives. And I think also many of the other sections I'm very supportive of as well, but did just kind of want to speak to the mobility and safety issue this evening, because this plan is as much about for me, but more for my child and future generations to come. So thank you for all of your hard work and thoughtfulness. And again, I'm sorry it's a little out here, but I support the central area. Thank you. No worries. Thank you, Elizabeth. And thanks for the work that you're doing at home. And the youngest participant we've had in there. So lucky mom is a little tricky to attend these things. So thank you guys so much for understanding. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Well, next up, we have Myles Conklin. Yes. Thank you, everyone. I hope you can hear me. So my name is Miles Tanglin and I'm a 20 year resident of Congress Park Live on Clark Street. And I was appointed to the steering committee by Councilman Wayne New District ten, and I participated with the committee for the last three years. I have past committee experience serving on Denver, Wright, Parks and Rec, Dr. COG as well as I continue to serve on the Colfax Connect Task Force. The steering committee began in July 2017, and during that subsequent and during that and subsequent meetings, I continually asked about our community engagement plan, how we would reach out, what we would term success, and how we would measure it. I also made CPD aware that a lot of the are in those week bi monthly, so organizing would take some time. There was never any response to those comments or questions. It was only until CPD rolled out the completed community engagement plan in early 2019 that was to be completed and adopted ten or 11 months later. This timeline did not allow for organized meetings as draft plans were released later that summer. The plan timeline was extended in small additions, which also did not help with effective community organization. There are some other topics that basically this plan did not look into or information was not released to the committee or the public. The committee had requested BRT traffic studies to understand the impacts of BRT on this corridor as well as the neighborhoods and adjacent arterials. This would be needed to understand how design, parking and incentivize high density locations would be impacting each other. Also, Colfax Connex was expecting the BRT alternate station locations they had discussed to be brought up to the public. This planning process decided not to touch on those topics. And so again, Colfax connects with their cities, was hoping to get direction from this plan. We also had requested parking studies and it was only at the last meeting of the planning or the steering committee that CPD said, we will release the parking studies. We were hoping to understand how all of this fit together. There were some protected bikeways being proposed on 14th Avenue and then there would be traffic diverted on either arterials as BRT is implemented. So we were concerned about that. There was also questions about Sun Shadows studies and we were basically told. We give you an example and we basically satisfy that. But actually there was extensive study and these buildings existed, but they were never presented to the public. So a few of my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Miles. Next up, I believe we have Dimitri. So Bronski. Drew wrote to me. I'll let you correct me, Dimitri. We're going to go ahead and get you promoted into the panelists. All right. Hi. My name features Eva. Rodney and I live in Council District ten. And the North Capitol Hill neighborhood. I'm speaking to you tonight as a resident of Denver for close to 15 years. And I'm also a delegate of the TNR now, which is officially endorsed. The plan and a board member are going to be Denver, which also supports the plan. However, I'm speaking on my own behalf. I'm here to urge you to vote to support the East Essential Area Plan. I have followed a plan for over three years by going to the numerous public workshops, open steering committee meetings, Councilman Heinz's sessions and meetings that I've helped organize via my role as a delegate of the DNR. No more. The plan doesn't go far enough to meet our housing needs and transportation environmental goals. I believe that it does move the needle in the right direction by allowing more density along transit corridors, closer to offices and commercial centers. We allow people to live more sustainably, reduce reliance on carbon spewing and street space hogging automobiles, make the city more fiscally sustainable, and provide for more housing where housing is greatly needed. COVID 19 is of great concern today. This plans goal is to make the east central area one of the most walkable places in the city by 2040. Meeting and exceeding the goals of Blueprint Denver and Comprehensive Plan 2040. One point of concern is that the most affluent communities such as the Congress Park neighborhood were essentially able to make themselves exempt from any change and keep the majority of their neighborhoods largely unchanged. This creates undue redevelopment pressure on the rest of the city, especially the communities most affected by gentrification. We can't allow the one percenters of Denver to bend neighborhood planning initiative to their wells at the expense of everyone else. While this plan overall is still redeemable and should be passed with future tweaks to make it more fair. Thank you for your time and please vote in support of the Central Area Plan. Thank you. In queue. Up next, we have Mary Harrington. Hi. My name is Mary Coddington, and I'm here today on behalf of the Neighborhood Development Collaborative, a group of 17 affordable housing providers and service providers that coordinate efforts to address the entire spectrum of housing needs across our community. The Neighborhood Development, the Neighborhood Development Collaborative supports the East Central Area Plan and encourages City Council to approve it. We support the plan for the following reasons. Community input on this plan was compared with the demographics of the plan area and planners targeted further outreach to get a more representative voice, including those of renters and people experiencing homelessness. This type of engagement is crucial to break away from patterns that entrench inequities, including planning only for those who are already economically secure. Building on this style of engagement, one of the plan recommendations is to empower underrepresented residents to be more involved in collaborative in city government. This recommendation specifically calls out the need to eliminate structural racism in the planning process and increase the involvement of Black, Brown and Indigenous residents. As we work to improve inclusivity, City Council at times may need to push back on voices that have traditionally held power in the city. Community feedback indicated that the East Central area currently benefits young professionals and to a lesser extent, families. But far fewer people indicated the area was supportive for senior or low income residents. The plan remedies that through multiple recommendations that address housing affordability in ways that are responsive to neighborhood contexts. Some of these include the allowance of accessory dwelling units, offering resources to support rehab for small multi-unit properties in exchange for affordability commitments and leveraging heightened incentives as a way to encourage the development of more affordable housing at transit stops. That last piece is an important tool to increase overall housing stock, as well as encourage the development of more affordable housing options in places with access to employment centers. This is key for neighborhood stability. More than one third of east central area residents are housing cost burdened, and the only way to get out of that housing cost burden is to have access to higher paying jobs. Additional recommendations that address this issue include the preservation of local businesses and connecting residents to job training. The plan includes several other recommendations to stabilize existing residents at risk of involuntary displacement, including exploring options for residents to age and place, options to increase home ownership and alternative tenure. Options such as housing, land trusts. There's an overwhelming need for more affordable housing options in the city. And. The equity focused recommendations in this plan offer important tools to meet that challenge. Again, the Neighborhood Development Collaborative urges City Council to adopt the East Central Area Plan. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next up, we have Pam Packer. Hi. My name is Pam Parker, and I'm a resident of Congress Park. I live at the corner. Of Ninth and Steele. And although I don't agree with all aspects. Of the plan, one piece of the plan that I'm really happy about is the potential designation of Steele and potentially Ninth Avenue being designated as high comfort bikeways. I think this is. A move in the right direction for the livability of our neighborhood. In our community. And I. Just feel like, as. Another person. Mentioned earlier. How steel seems to be a corridor for a lot of traffic. And we do feel like creating this high comfort bike way will encourage more people to ride their bikes and be safe on the roads when they're doing so. So I do. Support that aspect of the plan and. I look forward to the final vote at the end of. This of this hearing. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Pam. Next up, we have Emily Clarke. And we're going to go ahead. And you might have to unmute yourself, Emily. Okay. All right. Thank you. My name is Emily Clarke. I live in Denver in Council District nine and in the South City Park neighborhood. I'm speaking to you tonight as a resident of South City Park in Denver and not as a representative of any other affiliation that I have. I urge you to vote in support of the East Central Area Plan. I have followed this plan fairly well because I'm involved in my R.A. and have attended many meetings over the past couple of years. The central plan is in the urban core. And there have been. There are many benefits to the increased density that the plan proposes. The proposed height increase is appropriate and intermittently along Colfax is the best place for it. I think this plan provides a good balance of housing options, including low income, without losing the heart of our current neighborhoods. The plan continues to thoughtfully make our neighborhoods even more walkable and bikeable, which is what many of us living in this area seek. Lastly, I'd just like to thank the city for everything it's done over the last few years to inform all levels of community and solicit feedback about this important plan. Thank you. Thank you. Up next, we have Jesse Paris. You might need to unmute yourself, Jesse. Hello. Hi. Go ahead, Jesse. Um. Want to know what this. I'm. I'm needed for guests. I'm glad to see that you are supporting various forms of housing. That people can actually afford. So I'm definitely in favor of that. So yeah, that's the only thing I want to say that I'm in favor of on this. But like I said, I'm either for or against this. I'm just glad to see that the city has taken the initiative to detail what affordable housing looks like, because that term was going around a lot and we know firsthand that the city is not affordable anymore and the house in the city is not affordable anymore. So see that in this East Central Area plan, after three years of surveys and research, the city has finally admitted that. Affordable housing needs to be a priority and it really should be attainable housing because this is not affordable, but it's a start. So that's all I have to say. Well, so I'm leaning for against this. Thank you for allowing me to speak tonight. All right. Thank you, Jesse. Next up, we have Shawn Mandel. Hi. My name is Shawn Mandel, and I'm sorry my video isn't working, but I'm speaking on behalf of the Bluebird Business Improvement District. I would like to recommend that City Council approved the plan. The Bluebird Business Improvement District sent a letter on September 28th in support of the plan. We specifically like that the main street zoning and the changes to the Mainstreet zoning will allow smaller lots to be redeveloped, will allow a little more flexibility for the type of new development that we can do along Colfax. And I think that it goes a long way to support economic development along the corridor. So again, we recommend support of the plan. All right. Thank you. Brad SIEGEL is up next. Good evening, Denver City Council. My name is Brad Segal. I reside on the 1200 block of Detroit Street in the Congress Park neighborhood. I'm wearing three hats tonight. The first hat is I am president of Progressive Urban Management Associates, the lead consulting firm that's been assisting the city help develop the plan. Our firm has managed 13 subcontractors for this project, all experts in their field, and 12 of the 13 firms are based in Denver. Many of the consultants like myself live in the neighborhoods that are affected by these plans. Number two, hat is I am a Denver native and a 29 year homeowner in Congress Park. My wife and I have raised two boys here. They attended schools, including Teller, Moray and East, all located within the plan area. And my third hat is I'm a small business owner. I employ seven persons located at Colfax and Marion in the North Capitol Hill neighborhood. I'll just make two quick comments that haven't been mentioned. One is I do want to highlight that the East Central Area Plan is the first neighborhood plan in Denver to offer strong recommendations for encouraging affordable housing and ways to protect and preserve small community serving businesses. The economy section of the plan, which really focuses on preventing displacement, is a strong precedent for the rest of the city. And the second comment I'll make is that COVID 19 and the pandemic create urgency to approve and start implementing the plan. Many of its recommendations could assist in economic recovery and also improve the quality of life in all of these neighborhoods. Thank you for your consideration. I'll remain available throughout your deliberations tonight. I can provide any additional information. All right. Thank you, Brad. Next up, we have Kevin MATTHEWS. Hi. My name is Kevin MATTHEWS. I'm a Congress Park resident. I live at ten, 10th and Madison. I've been following the plan for the last three years. Overall, the plan is okay, but I wish there were some things that were stronger. I recognize that plans like these are compromises, but we're often compromising on things that we can no longer afford to compromise on. So my biggest concern is the what kind of world my son is going to inherit and the growing climate crisis. We have to cut carbon emissions in half this decade, and you do it again the following decade and again after that. The current recommendations in this plan. So Denver's own mobility goals are to call for a 30% of commuters walking, biking or taking transit by 2030 and 50% by 2050. I don't think these goals are strong enough for Denver. Overall, the east central area goal is 50% of commuters using noncore options by 2040. Considering our close adjacency to downtown, I wish these were a little bit stronger, closer to 70 to 80%. But I do agree with a couple together Congress Park residents who spoken up tonight appreciating the some of the traffic calming and and the neighborhood bikeways. The other thing I wanted to mention is that. You know, I think one of the real missed opportunities. When you. Look at carbon emissions capital of the Capitol Hill neighborhood has the the second lowest emissions per household in Denver. And we're going to need neighborhoods that look a lot more like it. One of the things I see in Congress Park right now is, you know, the only development that's really going on is kind of the pop top where you have your old bungalows that are having that are basically doubling in size as a single family home. Some of them are 3000, 3500 square feet. And as soon as you do that, that's $1,000,000 home. And that is a really that's a large missed opportunity from both a climate standpoint and an affordability standpoint. I have friends now who rents who would love to to buy a home in Commerce Park but can't afford it. One of my friends is a vice president of I.T. at a bank. He's not. He's a person of means. I had some young neighbors of mine who just went down the neighborhood and bought a house in Cole because it was it was more affordable. And so when we talk about Denver's growth, which we're going to see a lot of in the next couple decades, we got to figure out where it's going to go. Are we only going to point at the invert it out or the rich neighborhoods are going to do their share? So I hope you adopt this. Thanks. Thank you. All right. We've got 12 speakers left and about 15 minutes left of our one hour courtesy public hearing. And so just wanted to remind folks if comments have already been made. If you could limit your comment so we can hopefully get through all the speakers who have signed up tonight. And so next up, we've got Anna DeWitt. I everyone. I'm on a two. I'm a Denver teacher and I live in D10. I'm also a dues paying member of the Santa seventh Avenue Parkway, Orono and the CPA in Congress Park. I know these are nos. Do not speak for me, nor did I was. I asked to vote. On. This matter for my R.A.. I'm here because I support the E cap and I encourage council to do the same. I followed the essential area plan very closely, and I've attended several public meetings as a Denver teacher and a mother of a toddler. I was impressed by the effort to include more bike paths in central Denver. I want my students and my daughter to be able to travel safely to and from school. I was also impressed that though Congress Park has been given the designation of historical significance. Under the plan, it would still be easier for homeowners to build an 82 or a granny flat. I want more diversity for Central Denver, and adding cheaper and more affordable housing options is a great way to start allowing more Denver, more neighbors and our neighborhood. Now as an active union member involved in the teaching community, I try to look at these. Plans with the eyes of how this affect my fellow. Teachers and my students, especially those most marginalized. I remember quite vividly that a man shouted out at a public meeting that our schools cannot contain our students. So let's talk about that. I wish I could show you charts, but bear with me when I start talking numbers. Overall, the city of Denver and the schools of Denver are experiencing segregation. 75% of central Denver's elementary students are white. And of course, they are. 75% of central Denver residents are white. If we want our schools to equalize or in other words, integrate 55.5% of the Denver population, we'd have to relocate to different neighborhoods. Don't we want to send our children to schools that are diverse? The East and the east sorry east central area plan could help integrate our neighborhoods and therefore our schools because it allow for more affordable housing options. Also, almost every single school in central Denver has a projected 5% decrease in enrollments, and that was before COVID. Central Denver needs more families with children living here. And yes, though class sizes are too large, that does not have to do with enrollment. It has to do with how DPS allocates money to their schools. At a time when DPS is experiencing massive budget cuts, more students in our schools equal more funding to our schools. And it happened just as that. I urge you all to vote in favor. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Ellen Adelson. And you make up, you might have to meet yourself. Good evening. I'm Ellen Adelson. I'm a resident of Denver and I'm representing historic Denver. Historic Denver supports that central area plan, which includes many of Denver's oldest neighborhoods and a rich collection of historic buildings and places. The plan reflects the. Value the community gives to historic. Buildings and places and the importance of preserving them, which is essential to a vibrant, inclusive and authentic Denver. Prior priority priorities to preserve and reuse significant buildings. Encourage preservation within neighborhoods and along corridors. Adopt adaptive reuse ordinance and support. Small local businesses are all consistent with historic Denver's values. Historic Denver appreciates that the Discover Denver data has been used to document the rich collection of historic structures throughout the planned area. The land use and built form tool. Use of both historic and existing buildings. The transportation recommendations must protect the historic parkways that are an essential part of the area and provide much needed green space and encourage neighborhood gathering and informal recreation. Of course, no plan is successful without thoughtful, coordinated and consistent implementation. Historic Denver stands ready to assist in developing criteria. To establish eligibility. For incentives such as a housing unit bonus. Again, historic. Denver is pleased to support the East. Central Area Plan and its thoughtful. Preservation and. Building review strategies. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have Travis Liquor. Thank you so much. My name is Travis Leiker and I'm president of the board of directors for Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods Shrine, as it's affectionately known, as is Denver's largest and oldest registered neighborhood organization that has a footprint in both District nine and District ten for city council. And we're here tonight, and I'm authorized to speak on behalf of our organization to express our support for the East Central Area Plan. And we say just a number, a few reasons for our support. First, community engagement is paramount to successfully planning neighborhoods for future generations. And after nearly 10,000 online comments, 54 community meetings and myriad focus groups, we feel that the city plan planners have done an adequate job, if not more than an adequate job, of engaging the community. Secondly, preserving historic architectural assets is essential to maintaining neighborhood character, and we're thrilled to see that this plan incorporates exciting and new, innovative uses for many of our city's oldest treasured structures. Third, bringing Denver ites together at the local level makes our community stronger. The plan is comprehensive and provides a framework by which creating new neighborhood gathering spots will be central to the future of the city and for this neighborhood. In 2019, China reaffirmed its commitment to environmental sustainability. We are thrilled to see that trees, climate appropriate landscaping and preserving Denver's tree canopy will be a part of this future plan. And then join and join partners like the Denver Streets Partnership in a shared mission to ensure safe streets for everyone, no matter their zip code, their financial means, or how they get from one point to the next. And so we're pleased to see streets like 23rd Avenue, Gaylord, Mont View and Colorado Boulevard and as well as Sherman Street as part of this greater neighborhood planning effort. And then access to affordable housing is also chief among our priorities to an end, certainly to achieving economic self-sufficiency. And so we're hopeful that integrating mission, missing middle sorry, housing, as well as other residential areas, coupled with discouraging demolitions and encouraging affordability, will promote greater access to homeownership. And then finally, a diverse, thriving workforce is bolstered through locally owned businesses and collaborative work culture and is at the heart of Denver's evolving economy. So recruiting new small to midsize businesses provides opportunities for workforce development and economic opportunity. And we agree that diversity of housing and jobs captures our shared vision for neighborhoods with equitable access to quality employment options, as well as housing choices that accommodate households of different ages, sizes and incomes. Thank you again for your time. And Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods, Denver's largest R.A. expressed expresses support. For the East Central Area plan. Thank you. Next up, we have Jonathan Capelli. Well everyone. My name is Jonathan Capelli and. I'm speaking today on. Behalf of All in Denver, which is a nonprofit advocacy. Organization with over 300 members. That believes in working together to create a more equitable city. For all where everyone prospers. And as such, we strongly support the E cap, one of the six pillars of Blueprint Denver. Which we also supported. Was equity. This plan is one of the first plans to come out after Blueprint. Denver manifest this pillar by incorporating equity throughout and therefore it's in line with something that we've already adopted as a city after four. Years of deliberation. And the input of thousands. The disparate impacts of COVID exposes even starker terms. The ongoing. Need with equity into the very fabric of our planning, documents and policy. Taking action on. These principles. Can't wait and in fact reflect the priorities of the community also generated. In addition. To we condemn Denver. By more than 10,000 comments then form decaf over the course of the. Last three years. When it comes to mobility. The auto dependent infrastructure disconnected pedestrian. And bicycle infrastructure of Colfax. Belies the residential neighborhood of the blocks immediately north and south of corridor. This plan seeks to remedy that by laying the groundwork for bus, rapid transit and other improvements that will result in a corridor that's less noisy, less polluted, more friendly to families, bicyclists and those from mobility impaired. Earlier touted the fact that equity is an important part of this plan. One way that that shows up in the plan is in how it ensures the absorption of growth and distribution of housing is not just concentrated in low income communities where gentrification is already happening. To be an inclusive neighborhood, it means providing inclusive housing opportunities for all. Anything else amounts to an exclusive community, which is antithetical to the stated goals of the city. Gentle density. A key transit hubs with high incentives for affordable housing. The sensible way to make sure that this part of the corridor is pulling its weight and helping bolster our woefully low supply of affordable housing. It's not a carte blanche for developers. It lays the foundation for an incentive based approach to shaping development in a way that helps the community. Gentrification is happening and growth is a part of it and is in some ways inevitable. But a plan like this that shapes the growth in a way that increases affordability while growing is the best and perhaps the only approach. There's also an environmental argument to this. We know from recent incentives or initiative the city to improve sustainability that nearly 50% of carbon emissions in the city come from building emissions alone. The smoke, shroud and ash punctuated nature over the last few months illustrate this time for Denver to start pulling its weight on this to proactively reduce emissions of global warming, which in turn leads to an. Air fire prone environment. Building sensibly, dense, efficient buildings where appropriate helps to combat air pollution from energy cost savings and transportation based emissions from folks who would otherwise have to commute from far away to work in and. Support our economy. For this and other reasons, we. Support the plan. That's the time that we have. Next up, we have Alison Torbett. Hi. I'm going to cut my comments very short. About 99% of them were just covered by the man from all in Denver. Another 20% were covered by the teacher from Congress Park. I just think. When I first bought. My house in my old house in 1997 at 14th and Downing, I was really worried. They were saying that, you know, the prices were going to burst and I was going to be able to keep the value of it. It cost $95,000 for a 1200 square foot duplex. We need to have more $95,000 houses. People need to be able to come up with a down payment by that house to live in that house and also work as a teacher or work, you know, have a roommate, something. That house has quintupled in 20 years. It sold last year for $450,000, more or less. It's ridiculous. The prices are going like that. We need to have more density. We need to have more options. We need to not just have housing for very, very poor people or housing for very, very rich people. Those of us who are making, you know, a civilized living need to be able to afford a house. I literally can't afford to downsize my house cost more. But. Thanks very much. Please support this program. Thank you, Alison. Next up, we have Stephen Chester. Hello. Members of the council. My name is Steven Chester. I'm a resident of Congress Park. Like Alyson, I'll keep my comments very short. I know we're up against the time, but I'm just here to voice my full support for the essential neighborhood plan. I want to talk about two things really quickly, the process. I think the process is incredibly inclusive and equitable. There's a real difference between electoral process and an equal process. And some of the comments you heard earlier about certain folks that felt like their voice wasn't heard or not enough money was given to their neighborhood organization to do extra outreach. That's equality. I think this process was truly equitable in the sense that extra resources and time were given to. Those are often left out of the planning process, like renters and in younger folks that often don't even know what planning is or how to get engaged. And I just want to applaud CPD at Scott and for especially for all the work that they've done to to make sure that people like me walk into the neighborhood and I'm walking my dog asking people, you know, about this neighborhood plan. And I'm shocked the amount of people that said, Oh, yeah, I heard about that and I really support it, but unfortunately I don't see those those faces here today. So I just wanted to kind of be the voice of a lot of the folks in my neighborhood that really support this plan and are really excited about it . And then lastly, I think some of the mobility recommendations as we talked to earlier, are really spot on. And with a small child being able to safely walk and bike in my own neighborhood is really paramount to why I chose to live in the neighborhood that I like, that I know I can. I'm lucky enough to choose a neighborhood to live in, and I want to make sure that other residents of Denver have the same opportunity to live in a safe place and not be worry about a a Carmona McDonald's or trying to cross a busy street that cuts through our neighborhood. So with that, again, I urge your full support of the plan. Thank you, Steven. We have Mark Marshall up next. Thank you. Yes. My name is Mark. Marshall, the vice president of real estate at Urban Land Conservancy. We support the east. Area. East central area plan. We are located at the corner of 16th and down in specific areas of the plan that we support are bolstering the health care and wellness sector as a foundation for economic growth. We will work with partners like hospitals, DPS, non-profits and housing developers. To address the issues around workforce housing. And training needs. We also recognize that. Stable housing is a pretty tremendous predictor of successful. Health outcomes. As well as educational. Outcomes. Second area we support is preserving affordable housing and stabilize. And residents at risk of displacement. Some of the programs that are in place that are existing. In our in the city I think can be better. Marketed. These include rental assistance, utility assistance, property tax abatements. We also like to support extending covenants for income restricted properties. The third area we support is creating new housing near transit and and amenities along the corridor. We'd like to see density increased along the Cold Facts corridor in exchange for affordability. And community benefiting spaces. The fourth area we support of the plan is expanding the diversity. Of housing types and. Affordability in all the neighborhoods. Throughout. The planned area. We'd like to see more 80 youths present here addressing this missing. Middle housing. Increase in the types of duplex, triplex and four place practices, as well as townhomes that are compatible with the neighborhood and affordable as well. We support increasing the access to supportive housing and social services for vulnerable communities and residents. We encourage the repurposing of and redevelopment of. Motels. Along core along Colfax for permanent supportive or transitional. Housing and developing more. Permanent. Supportive housing. Wraps in services such as health care, child care and workforce housing. As a property owner, we're seeing and landlord and you'll see we are seeing the effects of COVID with many residents on the street. And we really support the services. That will get these get the residents housed and the. Services that they need. Thank you once. Again, Marc Marshall with Urban Land Conservancy. And we support the East Central Area Plan. Thank you, Mark. Next up, we have the ball dagger. Yes. Hello, Council. Good evening. My name is Anibal Bordiga. I've been a resident, an architect in the area for over 15 years. I'd keep this pretty quick. I go to the highlights. These areas are these neighborhoods that are studied in the plan are fantastic, in large part to their age. At the same time, they've been successful for for all these decades because they've been flexible. These neighborhoods have historic homes next to mansions. We have mature trees and infrastructure that's aging, but at the same time is part of the charm that everybody loves. But by being flexible, it's been these neighborhoods have been able to accommodate future growth. For decades. This plan builds on that history and provides new ideas and concepts that will help the neighborhoods grow into the future. One of those interesting points in the plan is the use of transfer development rights. There's a graphic in the plan that shows unused zoning or unused development rate on certain properties and supports the fact that just because it's zoned, it won't and doesn't necessarily mean that it will get built to that maximum zoning density that doesn't need to be a lost concept or that zoning doesn't need to go to waste necessarily in the use of transfer development. Right. That would allow contentious issues like Times Diner to be resolved without coming to council for a resolution. It would allow longtime property owners to remain in place and not have to contemplate demolition. Another good concept that's in this plan is the adaptive reuse concepts, which will just allow many of the historic or just older buildings that people value to remain in place and be modernized without exceedingly overly burdensome request of bringing everything up to today's standards. In closing, I urge you to support this and wanted to just point out that these neighborhoods have grown into fabulous neighborhoods over decades despite all sorts of external forces. This plan provides the guidance and flexibility to support future change in these neighborhoods, and it will build on the historic success. Thank you. Thank you, Andy. Next up, we've got two speakers left. Rob Connaughton. I probably mispronounced it, Rob, but you can correct me. And you might need to unmute yourself, Rob. Can you hear me now? Mm hmm. Go ahead. Thank you. I'm a resident of Congress Park, the 800 block of Steel Street. I've participated in the process. The process over the last probably couple of years. I didn't get it at the very start. But I want to encourage the adoption of the plan by the council. I'm very supportive of particularly the the mobility component of the plan, trying to reduce the reliance on vehicles and expand such things as bikeways. There's a bikeway proposed along steel that would pass in front of my house and I think that's fantastic, as well as Detroit and Ninth, I believe I am generally supportive of higher densities along Colfax because of the BRT, the Bus Rapid Transit Project. Absent that, I don't think I would be, I think increases in density over current density levels. And this is a reminder, this is still a very dense neighborhood, even though parts of it are single family. They really need to be tied to transit. And Denver does not have very good transit, at least that that that is high quality and is accessible to multiple neighborhoods. For me, it's a seven block walk to Colfax just to get to the BRT when that eventually comes online. And Cherry Creek doesn't really have any good transit access. So these are issues that that if we're going to increase density, it needs to be tied to high quality transit. And I think that this plan is very good in that it does not automatically or recommend up zoning of single family portions of the district, which are fairly small in comparison to the entire district covered by the plan. These are old 100 year old single family neighborhoods that are as they are right now. They're already relatively dense, certainly compared to what you'd find in Castle Pines or places like that. And we need to remember that these are already pretty green neighborhoods. Because they not auto. Dependent. So I wanted to just compliment the city and the planners who've worked on this for recognizing and and recognizing the diversity within the neighborhood and also keeping an eye out toward sort of preserving these older neighborhoods. So thank you very much. Thank you. Our last speaker is michelle reichmuth. Hi. My name is Michelle. Reichmuth and I live in Council District nine and the South City Park neighborhood and I was born in this neighborhood, so City Park at Mercy Hospital and I've lived in the neighborhood for 22 of my 53 years on the planet. I have two boys and they're both students at East High Denver Public School boys. And my father and grandparents have lived in the East Central planning area. I bring up these personal elements because I feel that I've always been engaged in my community. I love community stuff and I feel confident that the East Central plan is going to improve these neighborhoods. I feel that there was a lot of heart put into this and I'm proud of how the process went. I followed the East Central Area plan fairly well because I was on the East Central Plan Steering Committee for roughly the last three years, and I was I've been involved with the South or the City Park Neighborhood Advisory Committee. There's been a lot of topics that have been covered today that I agree with the importance of increasing density and low income housing, as well as improving mobility, all in the spirit of improving climates and lives, life's experience . And so what I'm going to focus on is just the one thing that I want to see a. This thing I want to say about the plot. The plan is that I'm impressed with the plan for many reasons, but the main reason for me was the overall process. I've worked in environmental consulting and now I'm a civil servant at EPA and I feel like the process is so important for pulling in people's opinions. And this process was organized, well-thought out, educational, detailed and visionary. And most important to me is it allowed thousands of people to become involved and provide input. Was it perfect? No, and nothing ever is. But I can stand here and say that I was impressed and and my expectations were extremely exceeded. I'm proud of my city's inclusiveness and tenacity and technology and resources. For example, they used a program online that collected concerns and big ideas from anyone, and they tie it to the location on a map so there can be informed decisions made on what's going on throughout the area. Anyway, please support the East Central Plan. That's the time. Thank you. Well, that concludes our speakers. And thank you all for for staying with us. We're going to go ahead and move to questions of city council. And first up, we have Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Madam President. I have a few questions on the East Central Area plan, of course, and NPI in general. So for for the planning, anyone who's got the answer, how many homes are in the cap area. And I'd love if, you know, owner owned as opposed to rentals. Kurt. Yeah. So I think there is about 50,000 residents in in the East Central area. I think that translates to this off the top of my head. I can I can double check these, but about 30 to 40000 housing units. A big majority of those are renter households. And I'll Scott, if you have that that number accessible. I can get it in just 2 seconds. But 32,000 households in Central and I don't have. Did you say 32,000? Scott Yes, 32,000. Thank you. What I'm wondering, while Scott's looking that up, did you do a mass mailing to every address in the district in the study area? We did not know. We decided that our outreach resources were better used on more targeted fly ring pop up events and those kind of other activities rather than a mailer. Okay. Can you talk about the diversity or lack of it, of the steering committee? So that's been a challenge in really many of our planning processes. And E Central is no different. When those committee members were appointed by the council members, the previous two council members, I think they tried in earnest to appoint a diverse committee. So there are a number of different points of view on the committee. There's people who represent small businesses such as the business improvement districts are and those are represented. There were development interests represented on the steering committee and then from different walks of life. You know, we have we had social services workers who are that that's what they did for their day job all the way to, you know, you know, executive director in the case of so and yeah. How large was the committee? Remind me again, please. So it shrank by a couple of members, but by the end of the process, there were 12. And so were there any representatives from communities of color? There was one steering committee representative who was nonwhite at the end of the process. There was another one at the beginning of the process, but she had to drop out because of other commitments. Thank you for that. Another question. I have two more. Madam President, if you don't mind, I'm wondering, how are height incentives working around town? Are they successful? Have they met expectations? Yes, it's a good question. I think. I think our point of view in CPD is that there were lessons learned from the recent pilot at the 30th in Blake Station where that was. That project moved forward and we are underway now. There is a the affordable housing zoning incentive projects that's looking at that pilot. Lessons learned ways we can improve upon that. And also looking at all the other cities that are using zoning as a tool for more affordable housing to try to maximize those community benefits. So does this plan allow for implementation of those lessons learned down the road? Yes. It recommends that we look at all of those lessons and we we improve upon that zoning based affordable housing incentive program in a way that sort of informs the regulatory process that's just been kicked off. Okay. And I guess the last question I have and it's I trying to reach for the right word and I don't mean to be too cynical, but have have have we been successful or where have we been successful in halting displacement? Well, I mean, that's a it's a big topic and a big priority. I mean, I think what we can do in a plan is articulate the goal of reducing and using all of the tools we have at our disposal to prevent involuntary displacement, including new and innovative tools that we aren't yet existing, and that include zoning, which oftentimes creates, you know, very intense opinions on how to use zoning for some of these goals. And so what we have said is that we need sort of this all hands on deck approach to try to address this problem of not only residential displacement, which is a huge concern, but also small businesses, small business displacement, which is also a huge concern, especially in the east central area, where almost 80% of the businesses are small, locally owned, mom and pops. And so we've had to think outside the box and create some creative strategies to try to address that issue as well. Yeah. Okay. And Scott, I had asked about rental as opposed to ownership, if you have that. Yeah. About 70% of households in East Central are renter occupied. So do you have do you have quantity of businesses in the in the study area? Yes, we do have that somewhere. I can find that number for you as well. All right. Well, I'll I'll say thank you, Madam President. And Scott, if you can get a stat whenever you find it. All right. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilwoman Black. Thanks Madam President, and thanks for the presentation, CPD. Just a couple of questions. In your beginning remarks, Kurt, I think you said there were 3500 participants in 10,000 comments. But on slide, I think it was 23, it said there were only 300 commenters. Right. So the larger number at the beginning, the 3500 participants, those were people who participated throughout the three years. So at all of our workshops and events and community meetings, the 300 number was just a few months at the end of the process when all of the information was compiled into the draft plan document and people weighed in on those specifics wording and the details of the plan document where we received several thousand comments from 300 participants in that process. And of the 3500 participants over three years were those 3500 unique participants. Yeah, so we call that touch points. So we did. I mean, it's we did our best to try to weed out duplicate duplicative participants, but so that's an estimate. But yeah, it's about 3500 unique participants. Do you know the demographics of those people and what neighborhoods they came from? And yeah, so we did track those demographics racially. The, the, the participants in our plan are generally consistent with the census demographics within a few percentage points of the east central area. As I mentioned before, the largest underrepresented group throughout the process were younger, lower income renters, which is why we disproportionally adjusted our resources again through that equity lens to try to target more participation from that from underrepresented groups where we saw the largest disparity. Okay. And we heard from, I think, one R.A. tonight who does not support it. Do you have. Supportive other Arnaud's. Yeah. So you also heard from China, Capitol Hill, United Neighbors. That's an R.A. They they support the plan. There are others that other RINO's that didn't take an official vote on the plan because I don't know why, but I don't know if they got to a complete consensus, especially when you're you're talking about some of these recommendations around zoning and density and building heights. People have very strong opinions. You know, there's only there's over 50 recommendations, policy recommendations in the plan. And when we originally released those recommendations over a year ago, and we did it in survey form and asked people how they felt about those recommendations. And nearly all of those recommendations had very strong support, over 70% support, with the exception of the recommendations that had to do with building height and density. Where those recommendations were more like 60, 40 or 55, 50 or more mixed opinion. And people just have very strong opinions about that topic. So of all the Arnaud's you heard from, there was just one that was in favor of it and one that was officially opposed. I believe that's right. Okay. And on that, I think one of the slides said the steering committee, there were several members of the steering committee who didn't support it. What were their reasons? Well, the the final vote, the vote of the plan at the steering committee was seven in favor and two against. One of those members, Miles, provided his comments tonight in his remarks. And I think I won't speak for him, but he has some questions about the process. And oftentimes, it's it's a it's a hard technical concept to explain. And we run into this in many of our plans is the difference between a planning document, which is really a guide that articulates a long term outcome and outlines some some policies to achieve those outcomes versus the very specific regulatory language that is that lives in zoning or the very specific designs of infrastructure. And those happen in later processes. And the difference between a plan document and those details has created some discomfort among some some members. And I think, Miles, I can safely say, was one of one of the people who were uncomfortable with that. And then the other member who was concerned about the plan, I think it's echoed some of the concerns that we've heard from residents just regarding the impacts of potential density in the east central area. And those could include, you know, street parking issues and traffic issues. Okay. I just have one final question. So there are other efforts and CPD happening now and will be happening in the future. And I'm wondering if you discussed that during your efforts. I know when the Far Northeast plan happened, they which was met with much love and celebration. So we didn't have any of this controversy when that was brought to us. But they didn't talk about 80 news or a group living or residential infill or, you know, changing single unit zoning to duplex in triplex. Did you talk about all those things during this conversation? Yeah. I mean, we we learned early on in the process that we could not ignore. We had to have a strong emphasis on the affordable housing shortage in the east central area. I could pull up some of the numbers, but they were pretty mind boggling when we started looking at the data that we had. About 11,000, over 11,000 households in the east central area were cost burden, which is over a third of all the households being they're struggling to pay their rent or their mortgage. There is also a shortage of affordable units at the lower income levels of over 3000. We calculated through one of our consultants. For the first time I've seen in an area plan the specific number of low income units that we were short, which is over 3000, and we made that public. We say we have this huge problem. We also looked at all of the income, the current today income restricted units in the area. And we found out that almost half, about 46% of those current income restricted units or 1400 units were going to expire over the next ten years and potentially come back on the market as market rate units and therefore lose their affordability protections for people. So we knew early on that we had to do something pretty specific and serious and we could not avoid some of these really difficult conversations about how we were going to fill that affordable housing shortage. But did you specifically talk about these other efforts that are happening concurrently and plan for the future? And by that, are are you do you mean the missing middle in-fill housing options, the affordable housing zoning incentive project? We did talk about those two concurrent efforts, if that's what you mean. Yes. And group living and residential infill. Yeah. So, yeah. So the missing middle housing options is the residential infill program. We talked quite a bit about that. That was one of the topics that generated those strong opinions. We didn't talk so much about the Group Living Project. Even though those questions came up. We were pretty far into our process when that process started, where I think it was. We were already on year three when the group living proposal came out, but we did answer many questions about how that project might intersect in interrelate with these plans. So is addressing the missing middle the idea that single unit zoning would be replaced with duplexes and triplexes in four collapses? Yeah. So it's, it's looking at some of our lower density areas and in trying to figure out what is the best, most thoughtful way to introduce new housing options that are more affordable for particularly for middle income people. And so that you know how would we might integrate duplexes? Triplexes and four flex's. The east central area is almost entirely not a single unit today. So it's it's almost entirely apartments, a row, homes, duplexes. There's only a few blocks, basically the southern portion of one of the neighborhood statistical areas and Congress Park and then the northern two blocks of City Park West are really the only single unit areas. Even those areas have some of missing middle housing in there already. So it's it wasn't as big of an issue generally in East Central area as in terms of a topic as in some of our other plan areas like the east area. But it did have very strong opinions in those in those portions of the plan area. Okay. I know I said that was my last question, but I just have a follow up to that. So I I'm yet to see any new development in Denver or Inglewood, which is right next to my district where this is happening. Where there. Duplexes or triplexes or SLI homes have gone up on what was formerly a single unit dwelling, where the new dwellings are much more expensive than the original house that was there. So I, I'd like to see some kind of evidence that that is going to result in that missing middle housing. There's an entire statistical neighborhood in my district, University Hills, where they're tearing down what were very modest homes. And you'll see slide homes or duplexes that are six, $800,000, which are not affordable. And that's what I'm seeing in Inglewood right next door. And we've all seen it a lot up in not me understandable districts so for a future discussion. But thank you for answering my question. Sorry I went on so long. I'll just make one one quick point, because that's an important point. I think we definitely agree with that point of view. Councilwoman Black, we heard that point of view throughout our process. And so we've we've crafted that recommendation to be very focused on not encouraging demolition and redevelopment of of those homes, but rather repurposing some of those homes as duplexes. And I think that's why you see some support from historic Denver, for example, for some of these recommendations, because we're taking more of a preservation approach to that integration of housing. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Black. Councilwoman CdeBaca. Thank you, Madam President. I want to dove a little bit deeper into some of the questions Councilwoman Black and Councilman Cashman were asking about guaranteeing this affordability and this missing middle that we need. We have multiple plans across the city that have tried to address equity and affordability. And when it comes down to a rezoning, what we've found is that our plans don't guarantee any kind of movement on our goals. And so can you guys tell me how you've fashioned this to be different than any of the other plans we're using that are not yielding any results? Well. So I think for for the missing middle housing options in particular, what we recommended, again, was to try to get away from the debt, the consequence of scraping existing bungalows, for example, and then putting up larger duplexes, for example. And so we've explicitly said that that's not the outcome that were intending with this. And we've crafted the recommendation to say that that that those homes should be preserved instead of redeveloped and created creating larger footprints. I mean, some of the ideas around Missing Middle is that in general, smaller square footage is far more affordable than larger square footage is. And so obviously, you know, there's prices rise in single unit areas very quickly as well. And so we're trying to address that issue in some of these neighborhoods. What's different also, I'll say about the density approach in the central area, and this is particularly along Colfax and our transit corridors that we're recommending is what we would typically do in a plan like this, where we're planning a high capacity transit facility or BRT along Colfax is we would automatically allow more housing to be built near those transit stations. So that's a planning practice called D.O.T. or transit route development that's been used in Denver, that's been used in almost every city that has high capacity transit, both nationally and internationally as a way to improve carbon pollution, to lower air pollution, to manage traffic better, to allow people to reduce transportation costs. And so that has been the standard that we've used. However, we took a different approach in the East Central area, in part due to the number of shortage of affordable housing units that we researched at the beginning of this process. And what we've said is you do not get any additional units even near our transit stops unless you provide community benefits with the top priority being affordable income restricted units. So that's a different approach than we normally would take and what cities around the world would normally take when you're planning a high capacity transit route. So while we don't use the word guarantee because the city does not itself build affordable housing, we invest in affordable housing, we create policies to encourage and incentivize affordable housing. But we have shifted those policies to say, if you want more, then you have to do more and provide those community assets and affordable housing being one of them. So. The issue here, I think, is, you know, if you split a historic home or you reuse a single family home and make it a duplex. There's nobody saying that. In order to do that, you must charge an affordable amount for rent. In fact, they can charge really whatever the market will allow them to charge. And you can say you're in a historic home, so that makes it even more valuable. And so I'm wondering. With that and with Todd development, knowing that Todd development has really backfired on us. Are we incent are we pushing growth in an area without recognizing what causes displacement? When we talk about displacement, it happens because we increase the value of an area for speculators, for developers, for landowners. When we increase the value of the area because we allow more things to be built, we allow more profit to be generated, taxes go up and push people out and cause displacement. And so I'm wondering, you know, when we talk, when we say the city doesn't do affordable housing. How have we fed into displacement with the plans and the way that we drive growth? Have you guys analyzed the growth after we've created a plan in an area? Yeah. I mean, that's a it's a insightful question. It's definitely a complicated answer. And it's something that I think all cities that are growing, especially are trying to address. There's the many factors that that you find that contribute to displacement and gentrification. There are some neighborhoods that don't see a lot of development that have rising prices, and there are some neighborhoods that we have development that also see rising prices and vice versa. So it's not just as simple as development causes displacement according to data that we've seen. What we do know is from examples like San Francisco is that when you severely restrict the supply of housing while the city is growing and more people are moving to it, that prices tend to rise very rapidly. And so the thinking around density is where can we place density where people can benefit from infrastructure like transit, like parks and community services so that people have a higher quality of life and that we can manage pollution and carbon emissions in a more appropriate way. And what we've said in this plan is that we should couple those strategies for strategic growth with our affordable housing tools. So included in that missing middle recommendation, which is the infill housing options of duplexes and triplexes and row homes, we've said that we should that we should couple that recommendation with affordable housing tools, such as the pilot study on the West Side, looking at use and creating incentives again for residents who want to become sort of their own developer and develop their own properties and how we can partner with them through other organizations to keep those rents at a reasonable level. And using some of those that same thinking and that pilot on the West Side in this missing middle housing recommendations. And that's that's part of the East Central policy recommendation as well. And so my last question, with respect to affordable housing, we got really close to being explicit about what we expect to see from development when we said that height would only be allowed. Four. Originally it was for affordable housing, and then we softened up on that language to say that height would be allowed for a community, substantial community benefit. And we didn't set in stone what a community a community benefit meant. We just gave some examples. Can you explain to me why we softened up on that language? Why we backed up and what could be the unintended consequences of backing up? Yeah. I also think that's a really great question. So, yes, we did not limit community benefits only to affordable housing. However, we did say clearly that affordable housing is the top priority through this process. Remember, one. One thing to remember is that this is a long term plan and must be a long term plan. And so it's looking out 20 years. And the hope anyways is that 20 years from now we won't always be in an affordable housing crisis. And so we did put on some additional community benefits. One being that you heard tonight was the issue of small, locally owned businesses being displaced. And so that is an issue that we don't really have many policy tools. The Denver doesn't. Most cities don't. And so we had to think about how we could look at that issue through these creative solutions of using zoning and entitlements. And so we put on the table affordable business space as a way to incentivize that that outcome that we heard from the community. And that's particularly important along corridors like Colfax, where, again, more than 75% of those businesses are small, locally owned independents. So for that reason, we did broaden that recommendation, too, to look at businesses and as well as other things that are in short supply in certain areas. So if there is a food desert, we have said that an affordable grocery store and we we and we were specific about saying affordable grocery stores in affordable daycares where those essential services are needed, where there is accessibility issues. We also clarified, I think, to your concern, Councilwoman CdeBaca, about those details not yet being decided upon, and that's correct. And so we've clarified that those entitlements, those that additional height or density, cannot be granted until council has decided upon those community benefits. And those details are figured out. So you're committing that council will get to decide what appropriate community benefits are before CPD makes a recommendation to approve a rezoning on Colfax. Yeah, that's what's written in the recommendation. Awesome. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilman. Up next, we have Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. I've got a couple of questions. Some are somewhat along the lines of others, but I'm going to start with a different set that has not been asked. So first of all, this is probably for you, Kurt. So can you tell me if the same level of outreach was done in in all areas, and was there any concerted effort made in areas that were more predominantly minority, both African-American and Latino? You know. So we. Did intentionally. Hold. Community events and workshops geographically, dispersed it in every single neighborhood throughout the three year process. As I mentioned previously, we did shift our resources to be to do disproportionate outreach to those underrepresented groups that contained, you know, the demographics that were that had the disparities. So that was younger, lower income renters in in neighborhoods like Capitol Hill. In terms of your question about racial demographics, the east central area, while there is some diversity in the east central area, I believe and correct me if I'm wrong, the percentage of nonwhite residents in the east central area is, I think, 20 or 30% somewhere . Is that is that correct, Scott? It's about 22%. Right. And it's pretty widely distributed. I mean, there's no obvious location in East Central area where there is a concentration of people of color. That said, we did try to do outreach to places that are, you know, historically more diverse in terms of their destinations. So schools. Recreation centers. We target our outreach at places where communities gather. We as was mentioned previously, we did outreach directly to people who've been marginalized, such as people experiencing homelessness. We did pop up events at bus stops in other locations. So we didn't make an effort to try to diversify who we were hearing from. And in the final percentages of plan participants versus the census, demographics of the East Central area was generally consistent in terms of the percentage of nonwhite participants. So are you familiar with a Title IX complaint that's been filed? About outreach to I believe it's more concentrated on the Spanish speaking population within the boundaries. So there was a Title six complaint. Which is the term used in the federal statute, because the portion of this planning process received federal funds that went to the Federal Transit Administration. That's the. Other. Entity that was the guarantor. And that was several months ago in the complaint. And in that email that was sent to them was that we did not do a mailer as part of our notification process, whereas we did do a mailer in another plan area. And that was that. The complaint is that that was an unfair process that we had. And so we did have a discussion about that. We did evaluate it. We did respond to that complaint to the person and explain why we did what we did. And we found that there was not any kind of violation. Both RTD, which is the overseer of the federal grant that we had as well as the FTA, were not we did not find that there was any title issue with that notification question. We have heard. Just to be clear, let me clarify one point. Was the grant isolated to. Just specific conversations around the transportation part of the plan or was it isolated to the BRT? And so my next question after you answer that will be how did the BRT fall into the plan? All the work that's been going on with that. Into the short. So to your first part of the question, no, the grant was used for all the topics in the plan. So urban design, interpretation, preservation, etc. It wasn't just focused on BRT or the Colfax corridor, however, you know, because it was the Federal Transit Administration who was the Grand Tour. They were the Federal Transit Administration, you know, is also looking at Colfax to be an investor in that Colfax bus rapid transit. And so part of the reason that they give out these grants is to make sure that the land use and other issues like affordable housing are addressed and planned for ahead of that infrastructure, which is why we decided as a city to move forward with the east central in the east area plans ahead of some other parts of the city, because we wanted to make sure that we were being proactive and helping to guide that change that could occur from a huge infrastructure investment like BRT along Colfax and making sure that we're trying to guide that those changes in an equitable as a way possible. So that's kind of how that fits in as we looked at what the impacts of that infrastructure may have and try to create strategies and policies so that the community benefits from that infrastructure in there and we try to minimize any unintended consequences. So who who specifically responded from the city of Denver to the the complaint that was filed and was that submitted to the RTA? Yeah. I think it was it was submitted to FTA. FTA. So yeah, the Federal Transit Administration, Federal Transit Administration said that the city and RTD being the grant, the grantees should be the one to respond. And so I don't know the exact staff person that responded, but we sent a variety of emails related to this issue of mailer notification to those who are complaining about it. Okay. So one of the questions I ask during our budget process is who is our Title six person in the city of Denver? The airport used to have one. We used to have one in the city attorney's office. I don't know that we do have one now. So that's part of why I was asking who responded. And I guess I want to see if our city attorney is on to see if we do have a Title six point person in the city attorney's office as we did before. Of me. If you're on, would you mind chiming in and then I'll jump back to you. Purpose another questions. All right. We're going to go ahead and get Nate promoted up into the Pamela's. And Nate, I'm assuming you're the right person to answer this question. It may need to get bumped above your head, but that you might know since so many of these end up being interface with land use and transportation. I don't see him in our queue. Not yet. Or I can say well, always. While we find Nate in this specific instance. I think your question, councilman, our customers take it as a little broader. But in this specific instance, because we were a federal grantee, that RTD was is the the designated call, the designated recipient of federal funds from transit from Federal Transit Administration. So it's really their purview and their role in this instance to be the compliance person for Title six. But we were rewarded for responding. But that doesn't answer the question about who our point person is. And if if we get made in, we can maybe plug him in. If I can just continue with a couple more of my questions with Kurt. Do you mind if we move in that direction, Madam President? We can. And I'm getting information here that right now, you know what? I think we have Skye Stewart in our panel, so I'm going to go ahead and look. Okay. I think I can answer that question. That question about Channel six. Okay. Sir. Hi, Sky Stuart. Mayor's Office, Council one. We do not have someone assigned in the city attorney's office to that role. It's something that we are talking about. You raised this question during budget hearings and we're working through who is the most appropriate person. It's something that HRC has talked about taking on in the past, but we don't have it officially assigned there. So following up on your question, we're working to get that assigned. It is not someone assigned in the city attorney's office currently. Okay. Thank you for answering that. So all right, proceed with my other questions. So when we look at the height recommendations that are in the document. You know, obviously there are areas that are much higher densities than what exists today. And I want to know if any of the conversation looked at sort of maintaining a floor. And this is very different from what the 38 than Blake looked at. I mean, they looked at raising the density and then anything above that would be, you know, that included affordability could go higher. And if we used today's zoning as the floor and obviously, you know, the the change of the plan doesn't automatically result in the properties. But if we. Looked at setting a floor differently than what we did at 30th and Blake. And then people who want to go up to the levels that are spelled out in the plan could could reason, but it would require the the contribution of affordability. Was that part of the discussion at all? So that that gets to sort of the the issue that has been raised in our planning process of like those very specific details. And that that specific question about, I think we were talking about is the base height. That we call the floor. That's part of the conversation that's going on right now with affordable housing, zoning and seven project in the regulatory process. What we've we've recommended as a policy in the central plan is we didn't answer that specific question. But what we did say is that if you want to go beyond what you have today, you have to provide community benefits with affordable housing being the top priority in terms of where that exact base will go. That question specifically will be answered by that affordable housing and zoning incentive project. And that will create a base for the overall area, or will it be a case by case situation where the base is set? I think the goal is to create a consistent approach throughout the city and not just a case by case decision. Okay. I think that's probably going to be much easier to apply if it's done that way. You know, the other thing I just want to share is that we have seen that where we have encouraged higher densities, it hasn't equal affordability. And until we put the right levers in place and they're not always necessarily incentives, but where we have the right levers, that's where we're going to start to see affordability. Because, I mean, you could look at the Reno area, you could look at downtown, you could look at almost any area of our city or any of our TOD locations. You know, it's not generally where there are affordable projects. You know, some of them have incorporated some affordability, but not by and large. So can you give. Nest played a role in giving input into addressing some of the displacement concerns or recommendations that could have folded into the plan. And how was that incorporated? So yeah, Irene and her team announced we formed a interdepartmental working group. They've been a great partner and looking at our affordable housing recommendations, our anti displacement recommendations, along with other staff and host detail and others. And absolutely, I mean, the the neighborhoods in East Central are not one of the nest target areas. But in another project that we're working on in the East Cole Fox neighborhood, that is one of their target areas. And so we were having those discussions simultaneously with the same question about how we're going to get innovative and do everything we can to look at this displacement issue. And so our recommendations were developed in partnership with NEST and other staff members. And did that apply both to residential as well as businesses? Yeah. Displacement issue. Thank you. Can you tell me if the issue of connectivity was part of the discussion so that where we're including or asking any of the development to include affordability, that we're ensuring that connectivity to the Internet, whether it's through Comcast or CenturyLink or whatever, is not a lead behind barrier for for certain communities. And, you know, we've seen this played out in COVID with kids having to work from home and not having the Internet and having to be sent home either with our light by our libraries, with hotspots or other ways to ensure that, you know, lower income children are not being left behind in their education. So did that come up as part of the conversation? I think. Poverty covered it. Also. That's why I'm asking. Yeah, it didn't come up. In terms of like those community benefits that we're talking about, which were more a little broader than that. But what we did have as part of our sort of long term vision statement of outcomes was this idea of having free, high speed Internet service in community spaces, whether that's, you know, the rec centers and libraries, even parks and plasma spaces. And so that that concept is in is in the plan. Okay. But it didn't come up as part of the actual developments that may be going on, if there are new development, new projects that take advantage of some of the density opportunities. You know, not not that not that level. Okay. And then just one last question. Jumping back to the BRT. We're. Any of the details that have come out of the whole BRT planning effort incorporated into the the East Central Area Plan. And and can you just sort of highlight where that's at? Is that in the transportation section trying to pull up the. Yeah. So really in two and two places, we have a whole section of the plan called the Colfax Corridor section where that linkage between BRT and the plan is, is, is articulated also because we receive extra grant funding through this project, we hired two planners in the Department of Transportation Infrastructure to work exclusively, exclusively on the central plan and east area plan. And so they provided that close coordination with the with the BRT team throughout the process. So that got folded into them into this central area plan. Okay. If you could maybe highlight where I find that in the document, is it in the transportation or the transit part of it? So yeah, if you look at the Colfax corridor section of the plan, you'll see the BRT stops in a lot of thinking around the land use changes that we've contemplated near those stops. It's kind of sprinkled in many sections of the plan. I mean, the BRT is such a big project. That's how we we for example, the height recommendations along Colfax were considered. You know, there were proximity to BRT stops. Many of the improvements that we've recommended for mobility in the mobility section where we're connecting bike lanes and crossings and pedestrian improvements, are that those station locations were looked at as connections to those as sort of nodes or little hubs along Colfax, so that the concept of BRT was really integral into many, many elements and topics throughout the plan. Those were extracted from the BRT plan into this plan. Yeah. I mean. It's it's a little of both. Right. So the the recommendations in the East Central Plan are informing the the BRT plan, which is now in the design phase. And everything done ahead of that informed that central plan. Okay. I think that's the end of my questions for right now. So. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. And we do have Nate Lucero up in the queue. And so just wanted I know, Nate, you had your hand raised. Wanted to give you an opportunity if you had something to weigh in on the Title six issue. Thank you, Madam President. I don't have anything in addition to what Sky has already said. Thank you, though. All right. Very good. Thank you, Nate. Next up, we have Councilman Hines. Thank you, Madam President. Mr. Upton, I have some questions for you. I want to start on civil rights. So, as you may know, civil rights are the reason why I am elected official today. And any sort of civil rights complaint is concerning to me. And, you know, my. The reason I'm an elected official is because my interest in protecting the civil rights of working for people with disabilities. So I do I guess I just want to add, in addition to what Councilmember Ortega had mentioned, did you. Have you gotten anything from RTD lately saying that that the Title six investigation is open or closed for what? Those statuses. You know, we've. We've heard some sort of rumors in the community that like this that this was done. But we've been checking in with RTD and they have consistently said no, there has been no complaint filed with us. We haven't received any official complaint. I checked with them just as, you know, like a 3:00 today just to make sure. And it was a no. It was at 106 today, but yes, this afternoon. So sorry, I. Was asking you question and knew the answer to you. But but I think it's important that certainly we've heard about the Title six complaint and and you reached out this afternoon. And as we understand, there is no process or complaint under way. So we're. Whether we have a Title six attorney or representative, I think that's another issue. And I think I think Councilmember, take it for for bringing that up. I think that's beyond this particular plan and discussion tonight. But but I do support her. Her concern that. How many public meetings did you hold for that very plan? Well, with your help included in that final push, when we did that extension to get more underrepresented residents, we're over 100. I don't know the exact number, but I know it's over 100. Okay. Yeah, that's it's good to get a sense of the size of those meetings. How many of them did someone request interpretation or translation services? I don't believe I can check. I don't believe anyone ever requested it. And even though all of our community workshops, we did invest quite a bit of resources into making sure that we had professional interpreters available at all of them. And we sent out the all of our outreach materials in both English and Spanish. We didn't get people taking advantage of those at those meetings. And I think that's in part due. It wasn't really surprising because when we're doing our research and we're setting up our communication plan, at the beginning of the process, we were looking at the demographics of the central area and the percentage of limited English to non-English speakers is quite low and the east central area ranges from anywhere from 0% in Congress Park to, you know, around 2% as a high end city Park West, I believe. So it's really around 1% average in the whole East Central Plan. That's different from other plans we do in the West area plan or outreach we're doing out in East Colfax where, you know, we have participants from five or six different languages in the meeting simultaneously and we provide those services. I know in the Far Northeast plan, Councilman Gilmore had a really great relations with many of the Spanish speakers and Latino community up there. And so we had more participants up there, but we just didn't we didn't see it as much in the east central area. Yeah. So thank you for that. And and just some of the demographics because someone asked them and. And the response was 80%. The it's actually on page two that the basic I mean, page one is the title page and the page to. Date the basic demographics. And and this is a I is a very Caucasian district. So 79% or 78.8% are are Caucasian or white in the in the plan area. And that's very close to the to the demographics of our district, ten to so about nine or nine and a half percent Latino. But but many of those are English speaking or maybe bilingual. And there are very few I know that I've not had any concerns with any of my town halls or outreach about native Spanish translation or translation into any other language. But I certainly am willing to accommodate it. Should it should it be necessary? Um, so I want to talk about. So speaking of, you know, um, a bit of diversity. So again, this is a pretty white plan. Um, can you give. So, but as you mentioned, there's diversity in other ways. So Miss Robinson. Mentioned that. 70% of the. Of the plan area is renter occupied. Do you know where the highest concentration of owner occupied? Where's that 30%? I believe the the highest concentration of owner occupied is in Congress Park. And the. Southern. Portion of cars park. Yeah, well, I would agree with that. So what it was. So let's let's take a snapshot. So Draft One was released in November of 2019, I believe. And and then in February of 2020, I think you and I did a check of where the data elements, the data that we had received so far . Do you do you know where the majority of data points were from at that point? Yeah. Scott, can you confirm this? But I recall we had a disproportionate at that point in the process, we had a disproportionately high number of comments and participants from Congress park from that from the car park neighborhood. And I want to say for some reason, the number 65 sticks in my head that 65% of the responses or the data a data points were from Congress part and particular South Congress part. So I guess the conclusion I'm trying to draw here is that in some ways it makes sense, but that people who were homeowners in single family homes really represented overrepresented. The demographics in February, I guess, is that. Do you do you think that that's a reasonable. Comment. That's right. I mean, that's the other side of the coin of the underrepresented population that we tried to target was we had overrepresentation in the opposite area. Yeah. And that's that's also what I'm what I was trying to get at. You mentioned even today that that the lower income renters and younger folks were under underrepresented. If you're also looking at page two, the vast majority of the district, I mean, the majority of the district is millennial, right? So, you know, between 25 and 34, there's a huge spike. Is that? Is that right? Yeah, that's right. I mean, generally the east central areas, younger, um, younger and again, huge majority renter. Yeah. So I mean, I think it's important just that in context in that, um, you did mention that you, you did some specific targeted outreach and you mentioned Capitol Hill. I think where I'm trying to go with this is you reached out to Capitol Hill because it wasn't because Capitol Hill was the only data point you were trying to get. It was you got a whole bunch of data points from other areas and you were trying to trying to create a more representative set of data based on, as you mentioned, the census data. So the next thing I want to ask about is reach. I think that you mentioned 10,000 data points for your cap at this point, is that right? I could do wrong. Yeah. Yeah, over over 10,000. And do you know how many data points blueprint got? I remember looking at this at some point a while back, but I remember when I looked at the numbers that were in East Central versus Blueprint Denver as they were comparable. I don't know the exact number, but it was surprising to me that we had almost the same level of outreach. And blueprint, a citywide plan that I mean, you know, 78 neighborhoods. It covers all 78 neighborhoods. Right. And this is only six neighborhoods. Right. So I just seems kudos to you, I guess is where I'm going with the amount of outreach for this plan is. Is on. Par with the citywide plan. Yeah, it is just six neighborhoods, though. The last thing that I wanted to ask you about was affordable housing. So I hear some concerns about affordable housing. Yeah. As we heard in the testimony earlier tonight, we have so many affordable housing providers who have spoken out in support of the East Central Area Plan. Can you help me understand how this plan provides benefits for affordable housing, where the market rate providers may not have certain benefits? Yeah. I mean, so this is one of the yeah, this is a plan where we looked at this question pretty intensely. We created an entire chapter which was little different than other plans we had done previously. That was all about affordable housing. So we have a number of recommendations, both zoning related and non zoning related. Again, in that partnership we have a host and NEST and other organizations. We did focus groups with affordable housing developers and we really have a robust package of policies and recommendations to look at affordable housing. And I think the one that has gotten the most attention and community feedback has been the one around zoning. And what we've done, as I tried to explain earlier, is with this with this recommendation that says you must provide community benefits if you want to be able to develop higher and more dense. And the priority is affordable housing. I think what that does is it gives an advantage to developers that build affordable housing. So affordable housing developers are now at more of an advantage because all of these properties have an incentive to build in affordable, affordable housing and a disincentive to not build affordable housing. So if you're affordable housing, if you if your job is to build affordable housing, you know, generally you're supportive of this plan, which is why I think you see that the testimony. And then so Telluride, the Telluride decision. You know, I would I would admit I am a little. I would like for there to be more affordable housing discussions. Homelessness is the biggest issue facing District ten. And the best way to. Do to help with homelessness is to provide them homes. And and so, you know, the Telluride decision is a state law that. That permit. Prevents any political subdivision from allowing rent control. And in the year 2000, the Colorado State Supreme Court decided that any requirement of workforce housing is considered a form of rent control. And so let's there was legislation introduced in the state legislature this year, COVID mix things up. But let's say that in 2021, the the folks at the in in the General Assembly, they pass something that allows us to require affordable housing and all developments. How does that how does that fit into the U.S. Treasury plan? Well, we have to start over. Or will we? Will that plug in to what we've created so far? Absolutely. I mean, the, um, you know, the what would result from that would, you know, would just be more affordable housing. Right. So what we've done this really thoughtful research, especially along Colfax, really a lot by lot analysis where we applied criteria on which lots would be most appropriate to add additional density or additional height in which should be preserved from a historic preservation standpoint or just an urban design standpoint. And we really went through that a lot by a lot of analysis and created a very detailed plan of areas, what we want to preserve and this balance of growth and preservation, which is why I think you see the testimony tonight from historic Denver and others who want to see more housing both support. The plan is that if you know, if additional tools like state laws change, that's just going to accelerate and help us meet those housing goals even more than the tools that we have provided. So I think that answers the question. Yeah. And I have one other question. We've gotten some feedback today from a registered neighborhood organization that they they're frustrated that their entire earner was not included in the plan boundaries. Can you can you help me identify which what the plan area is, um, by, I'm assuming it's actually, I'm, this is a question I know the answer to and I'm trying to get you to give me the answer anyway. So let me, let me be a little blunter. The plan area we chose statistical neighborhoods right as the boundaries we chose six statistical neighborhoods. Why did you or the city or whoever the powers that be chose choose statistical neighborhoods as a boundary as opposed to registered neighborhood organizations as a boundary. Yeah. So we get. This question from time to time. And those statistical neighborhood boundaries were established in the 1970s. They align with census tracts. The city has been using those statistical neighborhood boundaries to track demographic change over the years and as as you know, RINO's basically determine their own boundaries. And so for those reasons we use the statistical boundaries as a way to make sure we're being consistent. We have a basis of research and understanding an area over time so that. The statistical boundaries survive through rezonings, sorry. Well, through rezonings too, but through our analysis, they come and go and we're about to do a remapping of our city council districts. But the statistical neighborhood remains the same even through those those reapportionment processes, too, right? Correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. All right. Thank you, Councilman Hines. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. I wanted to ask Scott. Simply because I emailed him earlier today in the interest of giving staff adequate time to actually answer a question with preparation. But it would help me very much in analyzing this. It was enough to read through the plan itself, but it supplants for existing neighborhood plans. I think it's uptown. And what are they? Uptown Capitol Hill, Cheesman Park, Congress Park and the East Colfax Plans. It would really help me analyze this if I better understood in what ways are we perhaps radically changing those existing plans to something else, and in what ways are we keeping or retaining some of the elements of those existing plans? That would help me understand how much change these these neighborhoods might reasonably expect over the next 20 years with with the E cap. So, Scott, again, did I give you enough time to to love that or to analyze that question? Yes. Yeah. Thank you for saying that to us. And it's a great question. One of the first things we did in this planning process was read through those existing plans. One of the recommendations in those plans of whether it was still relevant or not or things have changed and no longer made sense, all of those into the new plan. But a lot of these plans are fairly old, including the Up to Never Plan, which was 34 years old now. And he's never that's been a very different situation when a lot of these plans were written in the eighties and nineties by the mayor. So a lot of the recommendations just make sense. Back then, there was a lot of concern about encouraging reinvestment in these neighborhoods. That is never as it seems for disinvestment for the recent years. And there's concern about how do we get people to move into these neighborhoods and spend money on these neighborhoods? And as we know, that's not the issue we're facing today. We're facing the opposite issue that we have a lot of people that want to live in these neighborhoods and not enough housing. And these old plans didn't really deal with housing at all. And as we've talked about tonight from our housing is a major component of this neighborhood plan or the new neighborhood, and that's just one example . So the ceasefire plan is significantly different than what these old plans had. That, I think, reflects how the city's evolved over the last 25 to 35 years. You recall offhand of those four plans, how old were each of those? Uptown. When was that? Yeah, uptown was 1986. 86, 86? Yes. That's before Councilman Hines was born, I think. And he lives there now. The Capital Hill Cheeseman Park Plan is 1993, I believe the current plan is 1995 and East Colfax Plan is 2004, I believe. Okay. Thank you. I. I also wanted to ask. Well, the other question I e-mailed you has already been addressed here. And I was about the the ethnic and racial makeup of the steering committee. And I hear that you addressed that earlier. So thank you. Or maybe Kirk did. I don't know who's best to address this. Last question. I have maybe, Kurt. We've talked about a lot about affordable housing. I'm still a little unclear on how this plan incentivizes it. What I see is encouragement, actually, maybe discouragement that's wrong said encouragement not to demolish. And I don't that's a double negative or something. In order to add units to existing properties as opposed to scraping, I know we love to throw around this term gentle density. I, I look at gentle density as displacing you with a smile because the neighborhoods where I've seen it happen. My aide, Dana montano, bought her grandmother's house when she and Albert were married. Her now late husband sold it off in the nineties. And we look that up recently. It's in Philip Park and it was valued by the assessor the last time in 2016 at 169 nine, it was bought and demolished a year later for almost 300, replaced with duplex units that each sell for about $600,000. So like Councilwoman Black and some other members, I have a concern that that we keep doing these things thinking that will produce one result. Yet they keep producing the other. Resolving Telluride, as, as Councilman Hines mentioned, won't solve that problem because this is private investors building new housing, selling it on the open market. So I worry about this gentle density. So how does cap. Do a better job at encouraging affordability. I read through and I saw the you know, maybe we can relax the bulk plane requirements or rear setbacks to discourage demolition. Is that it? And also is in this plan that will actually accomplish this goal. Yeah, I think that's that's a great question, Councilman Flynn. I mean, like I said before, there's a number of recommendations. We have a whole. Affordable. Housing section of the plan that gets into things like trying to prevent the expiration of covenants and more more of those program programmatic recommendations. But to your specific point about the general density or the infill housing density, it's again, a small portion of the east central area that's that this that that recommendation applies to. But in our partnership with historic Denver and discover Denver through this process, um, we have a, we have a Discover Denver survey so that we surveyed all of these neighborhoods for historical significance and the single unit areas where that recommendation would apply are historically significant. And so for multiple reasons, not for the reasons you said which, which are, which we agree with. And it has been a point of view that's shared through our process about demolishing smaller bungalows and replacing them with larger monster, like maximize every square inch of the zoning that you have. We explicitly have said in our policy that that's not what we should be encouraging, right? That's not the outcome we want to happen. And if the recommendation says that if additional housing units are added in these areas, the actually have to preserve the existing structure if it's historically significant. And all of these areas where this would apply are historically significant. So that's the approach is it's it's encouraging a preservation and it's discouraging that scrape and, you know, the sort of McMansion style homes. Right. All right. We also have some interest we also have more specific versions about encouraging programs to provide dedicated, affordable housing when these new units are added. So I feel like that recommendation 11 in the plan, it has recommendations specifically about the. A missing Middle East is built into these neighborhoods. Look at programs that can help them get built and then as part of that help requiring affordability in those units. All right. I will I will look at that while the rest of the debate goes on. 11. Thank you, Madam President. That's all I have at the moment. All right. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Councilman Hines, you're back up. Thank you, Madam President. Mr. Upton, people keep moving to Denver. Does de discourage people moving to this plant area? No, I think it is balance again. We come up with a balanced approach to allowing for the projected growth. So one of the first things we did was we looked at the 2040 Dr. Card housing and job projections, and we made sure that the land use recommendations could accommodate those housing and job projections. And while still putting into place policies to address that housing shortage that we had, especially at the lower income levels and trying to balance that with historic preservation. So that was kind of that balanced approach that we took. So a lot of people are moving to Denver because of jobs, because we've suddenly gained a lot of jobs and because of access to outdoor activities. Does or can ICAP discourage people moving here for jobs or outdoor activities? No. Okay. And then what about in 2020? We've got people moving here from. The coast because. They're climate refugees. You know, the West Coast is on fire and is flooding and the East Coast is. Is there anything in the U.S. plan that discourages people to move into the six neighborhoods because of. Global warming. I don't. Yeah, I don't think so. So I guess so. If we had people moving to Denver for a whole bunch of reasons, does that affect housing affordability? Yeah. Like I previously mentioned, you know, it's something that we look at in making sure that housing supply is keeping pace with the number of population moving to. To Denver. Yeah. I mean, I'm not trying to I guess I'm not trying to be critical of you. I'm trying to say it's very difficult for us when we have a perfect place to live and people really want to live here. And and so, you know, if we could keep the factors, just the people who are existing in the area plan and not have anyone else move to the area, I think we could we could perhaps tackle housing affordability a little bit better than one when we have a whole bunch of people really care because because it's a perfect slice of our planet. Thank you, Madam President. All right. Thank you, Councilman Hines. I have one remaining question. My other questions were asked by my colleagues, either Kerr or Scott. Are any of the bus rapid transit plans, are they funded or will they be funded in 2021? So we do have dodgy staff if you want to get into specifics. But it's my understanding that the next phase of the Colfax Bus Rapid Transit Project is funded through a general obligation bond funding. They're moving forward with that project and advancing the phase. I think. I think Mike Gill is on the call. If you have any follow ups or don't want more specifics on that, he's that he's in charge of that project. Okay. You know what? We'll go ahead. I just as long as we know that that you're considering something and I'm not seeing him raise his hand right now, so. Oh, there you go. Mike, do you want to go ahead and chime in? Yeah. I missed a little bit of the conversation when I was being promoted, but the question was around the next phase of the BRT, we do have about $5 million in city funds from previous years, as well as $55 million in the 2017 go bond that's available for this next phase. And that's what we're moving forward with, our NEPA clearance and the design phase. Okay. Great. Thank you. That was the the question I wanted answered. So. Thank you. The public hearing for Council Bill 20 dash 0930 is closed. Comments by members of Council. Councilman Hines. Thank you, Madam President. I want to open my comments by thanking more, thanking everyone who is still here, because this is obviously a long conversation, but this is an important conversation. But I also want to thank Councilman Cashman. When I was elected, he quote, he was quoted as calling me an urbanist. If only I had known that word before I was elected, I definitely would have used it. So to me, urbanism is about having places where people want to be and having places where people want to go. I talked a lot about the concept of a 20 minute neighborhood. Basically, we all deserve the opportunity to be close to things. We need to survive and thrive all within a 20 minute walk or role as in no cars. We live in the real world, not Narnia. But I still think that District ten is pretty darn perfect. Much of what makes District Ten so perfect is that we're a slice of the city where people want to live, work and play. I've lived in the East Central Area playing boundary since 2007, and I personally followed this plan since before I was a candidate. I sat on a blueprint representing Central Denver for a while and it's a central area plan was a natural extension. Obviously, my role now is different than than in 2017, but I definitely had a long view of the process. DeKalb extends Blueprint Denver and pushes that concept of the 20 minute neighborhood further to the forefront. It means adding reasonable density where it makes sense, like Colfax as an example, and limiting additional density where it doesn't make sense . Like, for example, in South Congress Park. It also means a limit reducing or eliminating certain areas of proposed additional density. As an example, the plan had at one time a proposed additional density around the businesses in Congress Park. And after hearing from the neighbors, those those proposed additional density areas were removed because it was clear that's not what the neighbors wanted. So as you've heard, this plan has been endorsed by numerous organizations, including the OMB, Denver, Denver Streets Partnership, Colfax and Blueprint BID's Neighborhood Development Collaborative, including our 15 Affordable Housing and Social Service Providers. And historic Denver. These are very different organizations with different priorities. Yet this plan finds a way to appeal to each of them. There are elements. There are elements on the planet supporting local businesses, housing affordability, addressing homelessness, vision zero and historic preservation. Again, just one example. 54% of Congress parks homes were built before 1940. And this plan, encouraged, encourages preserving those buildings to preserve the character of the neighborhood. This includes encouraging more historic districts, creating adaptive reuse ordinances to to encourage reuse of a building rather than a scrape. And it even encourages expanding private property rights for people with historic homes so that they can make better use of their own property. The intent is to provide additional tools to preserve our city's character rather than demolish it for the next McMansion. District ten and cap as some of the oldest neighborhoods in the city. And I'm glad that helps the city and property owners preserve that beauty, even if it's in Capital Hill, Cheeseman or Congress part. I do want to provide two cautions for recap just like everyone, most everyone else. This isn't exactly what I wanted either. First, I wish there were more affordable housing in the plan. Still, this isn't really a I don't believe a problem with the plan. It's more to do with the laws that handcuff our ability to require affordable housing. State legislation was introduced in 2020 to preserve reverse the Telluride decision, but COVID decided to upend that bill along with lots of others. I continue to encourage everyone to contact their state legislators to ask them to reverse Telluride and to give us all political subdivisions, including Denver. The tools we need to do what is clearly demanded by the people of Denver. Second. I'm saddened by the amount of misinformation that is that surrounds this plan. We've talked about this before as a council, and I want to bring it up again for this discussion right now. Denver law says Ana's are the way we should communicate with the people and the way people should respond. It's it's clear that that communication process needs improvement. And and it is no more front and center than with the central plan. Here's a troubling point. We've got all of us have received a bunch of email in the last 24 hours, and about half of them that I analyzed don't even live in the plan area. It's trouble. Troubling for two reasons. First, because they believe they're in the plain area. They after all, they signed it saying that they were eastern shore area plan residents, but they're not. Second, there are maps of the plan area on pages two, three, four, ten, 13, 14, 16, 17, twice on page 18 and all over the, etc. airplane document. So and if you prefer words instead of images, you don't have to read beyond the first sentence of the first page to get the list of included neighborhoods. So it suggests that people were taking positions without even looking at the plan at all. That's okay. If the if the information people are using to base their position is accurate and if the process is transparent, I'm not certain that is the case. So. One of the things that we did me we as in the district office, is we assisted that conversation between government and its people. I asked to delay the planned process. I didn't just ask for the delay without doing anything. We dedicated 100% one of the one of the team in district office to the essential airplane outreach. We fired thousands of residents. We partnered with property management companies who sent emails to their renters about etc. area plan. We held 14 additional community events and several train the trainer events to some of our events. Had a few people and one presentation had more than 150 people. There was so much outreach that my office had a scheduled event at bang up to the elephant in Capitol, an unknown to us. One of our trainers also had an early plan program at the exact same time and the exact same venue. As I understand it, the outreach more than doubled the data points thanks to that extra 30 day extension and more importantly, increased responses in areas that were underrepresented before outreach. 83% of this plan houses districts and residents. I want to thank them sincerely for their time and their fair consideration of others interests, not just their own. When it comes to the future of our beautiful city, it takes courage to change our approach to land and land use, transportation and climate as we move forward. I want to thank the steering committee members for their time, because I don't think anyone received 100% of what they wanted throughout this process. I also want to thank my team. We augmented city staff and our nose with outreach and I want to thank all of them for the extra work and stress during this process. I believe it is a strong plan thanks to CPD with help from so many other stakeholders and I urge my colleagues. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman. Councilwoman CdeBaca. Thank you, Madam President. First, I'd like to thank everybody, Scott, Kurt, everyone else in CPD who put an endless amount of time into seeking input, including you. Councilman Chris. Councilman Hines. I appreciate all of that. And as much as input is important, all the input in the world doesn't matter if we don't heed the recommendations and deal with the concerns that people raise. I personally really love the adaptive reuse and change of use elements and the historic preservation pieces of the plan. And I want to thank her for acknowledging that I was the only person of color on the steering committee after inheriting Councilman Brooks seat. While the makeup of the steering committee was very disturbing. They were appointed largely by my predecessor and fortunate for me, Frank Lo Cantor was very graceful in addressing several instances of inappropriate comments around race and class from other steering committee members. So a huge thank you to Frank for helping in that way as the only person of color on the steering committee for the tail end. Responding to the articulated plan, I was extremely disturbed to have to have had a conversation in our very last meeting where we had to literally define social equity because not all of the members of the committee had heard the words or heard of the words or their meaning. We had several moments where I had to challenge committee members on comments about affordable housing not being appropriate, an appropriate community benefit, because it would bring down property values and comments that we needed to clean up the seedy parts of Colfax. I'm very frustrated by things mentioned by several other speakers tonight, including Miles. Miss Camacho and Joe Miles brought up the BRT traffic modeling, the design, the parking, the walking density, the walking and density studies that they requested and the alternate B BRT stops that were never really included. And but this whole plan was catalyzed by BRT. So I felt like not blending those two things together, the way that members were asking for it to be blended was problematic. I wish that we were having separate conversations about the mobility and safety component because from the few meetings that I was able to attend pre-COVID, most residents , especially the frustrated ones, they didn't appreciate tackling the potential for upcoming density with the needed safety, street measures and bike lanes. And so I wish those were separate and I support a lot of those elements in the plan. But our office had over 620 residents voiced their opposition to this plan. I think we need to be really careful about believing that will be able to meet our missing middle needs with a plan that doesn't explicitly define housing needs that must be met. The height incentives are even looser here in this plan than they were in the high incentives in the 38th and Blake overlay. And those incentives didn't yield any affordability. Everywhere in my district on the south side of Colfax, on the north side of Colfax is proof that more density doesn't equal affordability. While many of the neighborhoods in District ten have had plans, neighborhood plans in as old as many years as I am old, my district happens to have almost all of our neighborhoods have a neighborhood plan, and they're relatively recent. And what we know is that first comes the plan, then comes the rapid displacement and gentrification. And so I want us to be very cautious about that. Incentives without a mechanism to actualize affordability will once again open the doors to rampant development and accelerated displacement, particularly for the 70% of renters in this corridor, with the majority of the area relying on benevolent landlords to maintain affordability. I'm very concerned about how how rapidly land speculators will pounce on the opportunities presented for massive redevelopment along this corridor as long as they include community benefits. Community benefits that could range from parks, a swimming pool for the elite to affordable housing for those who actually need it. I'd love to believe that the insight, the height incentives. Open the open, the. Market for affordable, affordable housing developers, as mentioned. But the price of land is the first barrier to any benevolent build. This plan exponentially increases the value of land along the corridor with seven votes and nothing else for those reasons. I can't. Support this plan as it stands. Without firming up our expectations for affordable housing development and defining in the plan what our priorities are around community benefits. So with that, I'm a no tonight. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilwoman. Up next, we have Councilwoman Black. Thanks, Madam President. And thank you, Councilwoman CdeBaca and Councilman Hines, for your great comments. I just have a few things to say. One is that although most of you know, I am a lifelong resident of Southeast Denver, I actually was born in the East Central Area Plan area at Saint Joseph's Hospital many, many, many, many years ago . So in my district, unlike yours, Councilwoman Sayed Abarca, we do not have one neighborhood plan ever in the history of Southeast Denver. So I have been pushing for a long time for some plans in my district. And so when we have one in my district, I want it to be more like the far northeast area plan where everyone came to our council meeting to tell us how much they loved it. So this controversy with this one is really troubling me. And so I just want to express my concerns to CPD as we move forward with future area plans. I don't like this current controversy. I think it makes us all feel really uncomfortable. I feel like we need to listen to all of our residents. And right now I feel like we're having a war between NIMBYs and NIMBYs, and I feel like there's got to be a middle ground somewhere. So I hope moving forward we can find a middle ground that more people are happy with what we're doing. I also have concerns that our areas are too big. They're they're massive. I know we're trying to do a lot in it in a relatively short amount of time, even though it's going to be more than a decade . But these areas are they're just so completely different. Every neighborhood within the plan is so unique and so different. And I think that's part of the reason we're seeing that the disagreement and the controversy that we're seeing tonight, I don't know if there's a way we can divide them up some more, but I do think that that's going to end up. Having more opposition as we move forward. I also am concerned, I mentioned this earlier that there are too many CPD efforts going on and there are siloed. I think we need to talk about all of them together with our community members so they understand everything that we're doing. And they don't just hear about one thing and they get comfortable with that. And then lo and behold, something else pops up and they're like, Well, but you didn't tell me about that one. So I do have concerns about that. We can talk about it later. And as I think most of us mentioned tonight, we have concerns that density results in affordability when that's not what we've seen at all in Denver. So that's something else I have huge concerns about. I will be supporting this. I feel like there is overwhelming support for it. I appreciate Councilman Hines. It's predominantly in his district and he's an enthusiastic supporter of it and I will be supporting it. And I look forward CPD with working with you on the Near Southeast Area Plan, which is a tiny part of it is in my district. Thank you. Thank you. Up next, we have Councilman Sawyer. Thank you, Madam President. I also want to thank everyone the staff and steering committee and community members, and especially the council members who participated in the process. These plans are incredibly time consuming and a really complex task full of trade offs and tough conversations. So I really appreciate the hard work that went into this. And I think, you know, no matter whether you're a supporter of this plan or not, I really admire the dedication of the group of people who came together to get this done and what they've accomplished over the last three years. So I think this is a tough decision. I think from the testimony that I heard tonight, some of the community is voicing its frustration really with the process. And based on my own personal experience in the area, you know, in the East Area plan, you know, I can I can understand that concern. I can understand that frustration. This is the first area planned to go through in an area that was already settled because the far northeast plan was adopted. Yeah, it was adopted a year and a half ago. But that plan covers an area that was largely undeveloped. And so it was it had different challenges, I think, and broad community support, certainly much broader community support than this one. So I think this plan and the East Area plan are different because they're they're the first plans that are involving neighborhoods that are fully built out and where there are people who are already there. And there are some tough lessons that were learned by CPD in the process around these plans that are just sort of a different situation than that first plan. But I really appreciate that CPD took the time to slow down and, you know, really reengage the community in partnership with the council office and ensure broader and more thoughtful engagement in the community. We've heard a lot of testimony about how different organizations, especially District ten, council office and CPD, some of the neighborhood organizations steering committee, worked hard over the last year to bring awareness of the plan to the community, particularly to the renters who hadn't previously heard about it. And I think to the our, you know, community of residents who are experiencing homelessness, which is incredible. I mean, that's unheard of in the city and county of Denver. And I don't I'm not sure that we have really celebrated that enough tonight. I'm not sure that we've really, like, taken a moment to celebrate that enough tonight. Think about what we just said. When has that ever been done before in the history of the city and county of Denver? That's amazing. And say what you will about this plan. The fact that that was done is really incredible. And you guys should all be incredibly proud of yourselves that you were a part of that because that is a big deal. And I just don't think that we really stopped tonight to think about that for a second. So I just want to really make sure that we do that for a minute here and celebrate that because it needs to be celebrated because that is that's really important that that we took the extra time and the extra thought to be inclusive, because that should have been happening this entire time and it wasn't. And so thanks for doing that. So and I think it's really important to recognize, you know, this wasn't some backroom process that was secretive and created only by the wealthy and well-connected. I think one of the things we as council members here so often is that, you know, things backroom deals happen and things are done and we find out about it later as a community members, that's not what happened here. And that's really amazing and really important. So, you know, I talk all the time about how I truly believe that under the principles of Plan 2040 and Blueprint 2019, all of our neighborhoods are better off with a plan than without a plan. But really, the question is, is this the right plan? Does this plan achieve its purposes? Right, because no plan is perfect. But is this is this plan, you know, does it do what we need it to do? And, of course, we all wish that the neighborhood plans went further to guarantee affordability. You know, Telluride severely limits us. And so I also want to just please put out there to everyone and anyone in the state who is listening right now. Please tell you ride has got to go. It is crushing us and we will live with, you know, this missing middle for for a very, very long time and the consequences of Telluride for a very, very long time. Because we've lived with it for 20 years and it's it's ridiculous. So, you know, everyone on the stage, please, this has got to be fixed. But I digress. Thoughtful development doesn't mean no development. And I say that all the time. Our city is going to grow because cities that don't grow die. And that's not what we want. We but we've got to grow in a way that makes sense. And so the question is, does this plan make sense? And I think the answer is it's not perfect, but it does. It focuses growth along the Colfax corridor, where it belongs and where those additional residents can help support our local businesses. So that that makes sense. You know, no one is going to get everything that they want when it comes to these plans and everyone has to give. And that means no one is going to be completely happy with how the plan has turned out. Everyone's a little disappointed and everyone's a little mad, and that's probably the way it should be. And from what I heard tonight, that's kind of what I wanted to hear. That's a signal of success. Some people telling us that there isn't enough density in the plan. Some people testifying that there's too much development and density in the plan. To me, that's indicative that we have found a good middle ground and that's an indication that we are sort of where we should be with this plan. And so that means that I will be supporting it tonight. So thank you very much. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Madam President. There's enough from the principals in the process of this plan for me to support it. However, I agree with Councilman, said Abarca, that I'm not comfortable that we really do have the techniques in place to prevent displacement or to guarantee affordable housing emerges out of this plan. And so I just heard, just to keep our shoulder to the wheel, to find those tools for a while. Well, I support what's been said about the need for changes to give us more flexibility in affordability. Lacking those tools, we need to figure this out. So I would continue to look in that direction. I think the outreach budget needs to be larger. I believe it's been a substantial effort. And that said, I know some of the people who've testified tonight that were dissatisfied with that process. And I there are people I respect. So I believe there were some holes that can be patched. I think that is very frequently the case. And again, we need to keep trying to figure that out. As Councilman Hines brought up, you know, the the way we don't send out information into the community and the way we expect the community to respond to us is a bit of a piece of Swiss cheese. And again, it has holes that need to be patched and we need to get that done. As far as one part of the process that I wanted to look at is, you know, having been a journalist for a long time, I would write articles about processes like this that unfold over a period of years. And inevitably, when the bulldozers are at the door, people are I never heard about this. No one ever told me about this. I think we need to recognize that that is a fact of life. And so when we get to that last stage where we're ready to go, then we need to put on the brakes as a matter part of that process and understand we need more time. And at that last stage, we need to put out another blast and let people know, hey, the bulldozers are here. Here's what's going on and give it that one last time for public input. That said, I you know, I thank the staff and I thank the hundreds of neighbors who participated and lent their ideas. I feel for those who don't feel that they were heard, and that's always a tough piece of this. But as I said at the beginning, I think I'm hearing enough about the process and the principles that that I can give this my support and being one of the next council people up for the Near Southeast plan, that will begin, it looks like early next year. I'll be looking to do my best to help fill those those blanks that need to be filled. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilman. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Madam President. Some of my comments have been made by my colleagues on both sides of this issue. I also would like to say thank you to our staff from CPB, Kurt and Scott, and the consultants that worked with you, and all of the neighbors who participated and gave input on all sides of this issue. We received quite a bit of email communications from both sides on this issue, and I've tried to listen intently. I had not taken a position one way or the other until listening to all the input here tonight. I appreciate the the concerted effort to include the historic preservation component. I think that's important in trying to recognize the value of some of our historic structures that we have throughout our city. And without speaking to it and including it in our plans, it doesn't always happen. I also appreciate the inclusion of Nest into the conversation about how do we move forward to include displacement measures to ensure that development doesn't always equal displacement and gentrification. As we had heard about concerns about outreach to some of our minority populations that have language differences. I think it is critical that we always adhere to following the Title six guidelines, and I would appreciate if we get a copy of the response that the Federal Transit Administration sent back to RTD, and I heard that that does exist. So I think it would be helpful for us to see that. Lastly, the conversation about the fact that CPD is already engaged in discussion about looking at Bass Heights as one of the levers, if you will, that can be used to. Address. You know, where we can include affordability, which is. Different from Telluride. I think council needs to be included in that conversation. It can't just be a CPD discussion. I think we need to have some input into that before it's a final product that's brought to us for adoption, assuming that includes, you know, approval by council. But I think we would all want to have some, some input into looking at that and sharing our thoughts and feedback before anything is finalized, whether it includes council input or not. And I just think that this has had a lot of input on all sides. And I am. Concern that we were not able to accommodate Ms.. Camacho just knowing there was a Title IX complaint filed around language issues and somehow we should have been alerted so that we could have accommodated ensuring that her voice was was heard as she shared it with us. And I appreciate that. Councilwoman CdeBaca, you know, tried to interpret what she was saying for us. And, you know, I know at the end she asked the question about how are we ensuring that that we are covering languages as one of the things. And and I did hear from our staff that that was accommodated. But I also heard from the community that on the front end of the process, it took people speaking to that issue on multiple occasions before some of the materials started getting copied. You know, in in Spanish. In English, before there were interpreters. Interpreters accommodated at some of the meetings. And I think this just needs to be our norm moving forward on any neighborhood plans where we identify what specific languages are needed to incorporate the materials and to find the right people to help ensuring that we're capturing the voice of those communities where needed. I will be supporting this tonight. I think there's a lot of work that's gone into this. I attended at least two meetings in the community where the central area plan was discussed. And, you know, I saw that the staff was listening intently, whether everybody's. Input was folded into every component. That doesn't always happen. But I think this this is one that looks like it has that balance to it. And so I will be supporting it to my. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Torres. Thank you so much. Just want to thank the team, CPD and. Particularly the council offices of Councilman CdeBaca. And Hines. It really does take that partnership. With those offices. You know, I'm heavily. Involved in my own area plan and we're still working our way through some similar issues of reach. You know, feeling like you can fully inform 50,000 people. In a constantly. Changing city is a really difficult task. So I thank you for the three years of that effort. And and really being able to show that you made some really diligent outreach. It takes it takes that depth. The resources and time that everyone put into this. Are most important. Working council is. Land use and it always comes back. To plan compliance. So. That these plans. Really speak to what a neighborhood. Wants at the end of the day, and what they. Want to see their community grow into is really difficult. To come to a singular decision about. So I appreciate. The hard work that you. All put into it. I will be supporting tonight and just want to thank all the folks who have been involved, the duration of the project, but even those who came in at any point during that that. Period of time and tried to come up. To speed. It is lengthy. It is a huge document. It is complex and sometimes hard to see how does it affect my home and my property and my family? And sometimes in the face of that, it just creates resistance. And we have a lot of. Resistant communities and neighborhoods and. Homeowners. In the city, and we've got to be willing to. Be adaptable for a greater good. So thank you to CPD and to my colleagues. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you, Councilwoman Torres. And I'll go ahead and add my comments. The far northeast plan has been referenced a few times, and I have to say, myself and Councilman Herndon, we were relentless in. Pushing back and asking CPD when they said, We want 15 members on the steering committee. We went back and forth and I think we got it to either 18 or 20 members on the steering committee. And that is how you're welcoming and engaging folks and KCUR and Scott and your team. I want to thank you for the work that you've put into this and also Councilman Hines and Councilwoman CdeBaca. But you also need to have the representation. And it's unfortunate that we didn't have more people of color engaged in this process. And unfortunately, this is we're starting to see a pattern, I think, with CPD and the engagement, that it's not where we need it to be. It's not where community wants it to be. You've got to build that trust with folks. And even for some of the the monolingual folks that we had on the steering committee, I believe we even had some that shared a position so that we weren't taking up individuals time unnecessarily, that they could kind of tag team it and that we could get more outreach that way. And everything was always translated. Even if my council office had to do the translation, we translated it because it was that important that we knew we needed to have that, and so we were going to go that extra step. And so I would just ask that CPD really reevaluate how you're authentically engaging with community. And if you have one person of color and that is the elected councilperson for that area, that's not good enough. That's a point where. There should be a pause and there should be a recalibration. And I understand that this process has been going on for three years and there's been engagement, and there's about 70% of the folks that live in this area are renters. But we've got to up our game as a city and be more responsive to what those in our community who. Maybe don't have the privilege and the power to push their way in the door. We've got to open up that door and make sure that it's the right door that they want to come through and continue to do that over and over and over again. And I know a lot of times in the far northeast plan, I'm sure our planners were like. She's overdoing it. They're doing too much. But that's the work that we did. And that's why I believe we didn't have a big push back. And it wasn't contentious because we did that work upfront. And I appreciate all the community members that spoke and even in favor or in opposition. I'm glad that we were able to hear you and the comments of my colleagues tonight as well. And I'm I'm going to support this because there's been three years worth of work put into this and thousands and thousands of comments. But I also want to. Really point out the deficits that we're continuing to see and hear from CPD. And I'm not blaming the particular members that presented tonight. I think that this is indicative of. A larger conversation that needs to be had among CPD staff and administration to make sure that we're truly getting this right because this can make or break a neighborhood. And the one thing I would say, Councilman Hines and Councilwoman CdeBaca, there is going to be parts of this plan that you're going to have to go to bat on, that maybe CPD planners are trying to do something or shape something, and it's not the intent of the community. And we've had occurrences of that. And so we've had to go back and kind of call the bluff on it. Is that really what the community said or did the community say that because they were trying to get to a different outcome, not more of the same, and to really have those conversations. And so I will be supporting it tonight, but not without a bit of frustration and also sadness that we're at this point in the city around equity. And we're still, unfortunately, having some of these same conversations. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black. I. See tobacco? No. Clark. All right. Flynn. I. Herndon. I. Hence I. Cashman. I can h i. Ortega. I. Sawyer. I. Torres. I. Madam President. Bye. Madam Secretary, please close the voting and announce the results one day. 11 Eyes. 11 Eyes Council Bill 930 has passed. On Monday, November 2nd, Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 965, changing the zoning classification for 4714 North Bryant Street in Sunnyside and a required public hearing on Council Bill 983, changing the zoning classification for 1790, South Humboldt Street and University and a required public hearing on Council