A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 10200 Smith Road, commonly referred to as Sand Creek Open Space and 9507 East 35th Avenue, commonly referred to as Prairie Uplands Park in Stapleton. Rezones property located at 10200 Smith Road and 9507 East 35th Avenue from OS-B to OS-A, open space recreation to open space parks, in Council District 8. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 1-24-17.
Yeah. Councilors reconvene. We have one public hearing this evening. Speakers should begin their remarks by telling council their names and cities of residents and if they feel comfortable doing so, their home address. If you're here to answer any questions when your name is called, come to the podium and state your name and know that you're available for questions of council. Speakers have 3 minutes unless another speaker has yielded his or her time, which result in a total of 6 minutes on the presentation monitor. On the wall you will see your time counting down. Speakers must stay on the top the topic of the hearing and must direct their comments to the council members as a whole. Please refrain from profane and obscene speech director comments the Council as a whole and refrain from individual and personal attacks. Councilman Cashman, will you please put Council Bill 45 on the floor? Thank you, Mr. President. I move the Council Bill 45 to be placed upon final consideration and do pass. All right. Let's see here. It has been moving for a second. It has been moved and singing it. The public hearing from Council Bill 45 is open. May we have the staff report? Jeff Hurt Community Planning and Development. So yes. Jeff Hurt With Community Planning and development here to present on case number 2016, I'd ask 000 to see these are two properties that make up about 150 acres that are city owned and Council District eight. So it's located on the southwest corner of Smith Road in Havana as part of the Stapleton Development Plan. And the two properties together, they sort of straddle the same creek, Sand Creek to the north and south, but there are a total of about 150 acres. So the property owner is actually the city. So the city recently acquired this property in November 2015, and the request is to change the zoning from OSB, which is open space B, which is for privately owned parks and open space to OSA, which is for explicitly for city owned open space. So the purpose of the U.S. aid district, which is what the request is for, is, like I said specifically for has a lot of the same sort of intent as the OSB districts. But OSA is specifically for four parks that are owned operator maintained by the city. And as the property is currently zoned OSB with the recent city acquisition, it became inconsistent with the zoning since it's in the city hands. The subject properties around the area to the south is the Stapleton development area residential mostly and to the north and east you see the zoning that reflects the industrial nature of the area and then you have the railroad tracks to the north as well. And then some images from the subject property. See a variety of things going on on the property, including the urban urban garden at Stapleton to the north of the creek and to the south is almost all open space and recreation. Planning Board voted to approve this seven nothing on January 4th of this year and has gone through looting. And here we are tonight. So I won't go through each of the criteria. Certainly more detail in your staff report. But these are the plans that we looked at on the screen here. And I wanted to highlight some of the findings in the staff report leading to the recommendation of approval. One is, like I said, to as a reason for the rezoning, is to align the zoning with the current ownership. Going from private to public hands. She'll skip through. That. And so another main reason I wanted to highlight as far as a justifying circumstance is the change condition on the properties, which is the city acquisition from First City and Stapleton to the city. And that is the change condition that sort of reflects the need to go to OSA and not OSPF. So this is just repeating kind of what we've already said. So CPD does recommend approval of the request for a number of reasons. Be glad to answer any questions that you might have. Are you done? I'm done. Oh. Okay. Thank you. More details, certainly, if you want to. No, no, that's. That's great. We have one speaker for tonight. I want to bring up Mark Taber. Well, yes. What's going on, guys? Yes. I'm Mark Taber, assistant director for Planning for Parks and Recreation. And I came tonight to just answer any questions that you might have about the subject parcel. It's part of Prairie Uplands and Westerly Creek Park Unit and we're pretty excited to be transferring this property. And, and again, I'm here to answer any questions you might have. Mr. Taber, you can have a seat. This concludes our speakers for the evening. Are there any questions by members of Council? Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. Mark, could you tell us what Parcs might be planning in the way of integrating, if at all, this space into Central Park in Stapleton because it connects along Westerly Creek? That's right. We have an existing trail that has just been completed. The Prairie Uplands Park has just been completed that also contains this regional the regional trail for Sand Creek. And so it's it's a marvelous new part of the park system. And this is the portion of the the site that is on the south side of the Great Sand Creek. The other portion, about 100 acres to the north, is going to remain. But in its existing condition, it contains the urban farm, established a partner organization there and there, farming and and animal husbandry operation. It also includes our north east district maintenance facility on a portion of it. And then there's other areas that are that are unimproved open space, and those are going to remain. And is this a compatible? Is the urban farm and the maintenance center a compatible use under this under this zoning change? Yes, it is. It's our understanding it's allowed. Okay. Is there anything different that OS A allows it to be? Does not the OCA actually gives the the council a certain amount of additional oversight for any development that exceeds a certain a certain square footage, actually. So the OSA is is even a little bit more restricted. I like that speed. All right. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you. If you wouldn't. Mind staying there, Mark. Sure. So who owned the property before. Denver purchased it? Well, it was it was, of course, originally Denver Airport. Stapleton Airport property. It transferred to Stapleton Development Corporation, which was the the entity that that would transfer property to the master developer and or the city. In this case, the land came from development, from SDC, from Stapleton. So it was never under the control of urban drainage in flood control district. No. And actually urban drainage in flood control district is does not own land. It only manages properties for drainage and managing wastewater. So did we get a discount from the air? I discount. I think we bought it for a buck. Oh, we did? Yeah. Okay, that that's. That's a pretty good discount. Yeah. Are there any. Proposals to put any structures. On the site, on the property? No additional structure, although the the urban farm establishment is looking at a at a small greenhouse to to complement their programing. We're poised to spend upwards of $750,000 to bring the old FAA building that they use for their classroom and their administrative purposes up to a standard that's commensurate with the uses that they put it to. And so we're going to make some investments there, but no new structures, just improvements to bring existing structures up to grade. So what's the total amount of. Acreage of all the abutting. Parkland. Including the total? I heard somebody mentioned a hundred acres. Is that is. That this in its. Entirety? 100 acres. 100 acres? Is it just the portion that's to the north of of Sand Creek? The whole the whole I think rezoning includes some of the improved parkland to the south of San Creek that Jeff described, which was the larger parcel of 200 hundred. The total is about 150 acres total. So yeah, the the one to the north is 101 to the south as well. Okay. Great. Thank you. I have no further questions. Thank you. Councilmember take it, Councilman Espinosa. So the acreage that's getting red zoned and I'm sorry, because we've talked about this a lot through different things. Is it dedicated parkland or is there a plan to dedicate it as parkland? It. There would be a plan to. I think if it's eligible for designation, it would be considered to be added as designated parkland. I that's that's our our policy going forward. But no sort of timetable or practical plan in place. For what needs to be done to make that happen. I can I can get back to you with that with a more definitive time frame. I think there's a there's a number of properties that are set for designation in this next wave. And I can let you know when this one is scheduled. Okay. And then my next question I think might be for Broadwell. So I'll wait till he's done deliberating here in the sidebar. Well, I'll ask it and then I'll repeat it. Well, NASIR, you mentioned that the council has some additional oversight in OSA. DAVID Does that council or any attorney, city attorney does that oversight that he's and he's mentioning there? Does that go? Does that remain if the property were to be designated as Parkland? Namely Services. So OSA is property. It's own from B to A when the property is owned by the city. And that designation just means that the manager of Parks and Recreation makes final determinations with respect to uses and structures. So I'm not sure if what the Parks representatives said was accurate about council's role. They're more akin to CPD, except the manager in that situation has has the authority over structures and uses. And I'm glad you said it that way because that's that was my understanding is basically one that once it becomes a sort of city owned open space, it becomes under the falls under the manager of parks purview on on issues of structures and land use. David Brower, did you want to weigh in on that? Yes. And Mike, I might kick it back to Mr. Taber because there was a separate law adopted at the same time as the 2010 zoning code was adopted. That does create special prerogatives in city council to approve structures over and above the language that Mr. Lucero was quoting in the zoning code. And and I believe, Councilman, to your question that that goes as equally to City Park as it would to this property. And it was part of the whole conversation we had at the time about creating special zone district categories for parks. They used to be like an r-1 and standard zoned there six. But we created a special zoned district. As Mr. Lucero indicated, vested a lot of authority in the manager of parks to manage the land. But Councilwoman Robb was very involved in getting this extra layer of council oversight related to structures of a significant size. And it looks like you may have that in your hand. I do. I do. Section 39, Dash 211 Building Plan required, which essentially calls for, I think, council review of of any structure over 3000 square feet. And as Mr. Taber indicated, that's over in the park section of the code, not in the zoning code, which is which is one reason we always have to remind ourselves how it got there. But it's kind of an extra part of what was brokered by Councilwoman Robin in 2010. So do either the parks rule or or the existing zoning code require a public hearing when a structure is being used. Built over 3000 square feet? Since Mr. Tabor is holding the law, having reviewed the law recently, Councilman, so I'm not sure about detail. Sure. We'll review it. It doesn't. But I just want confirmation of that. So because that that to me is is is sort of a lingering concern, maybe what Councilwoman Robb had done in the past. Well, well-intended didn't go quite far enough, because our matters of land use that come before council do have a required public hearing where. But once we're in this OSA zone district. Certain sorts of redevelopment under 3000 square feet purely parks over 3000 square feet us but none of it with a public hearing except for maybe a courtesy public hearing. And I don't even know if that that council review actually comes to comes as a bill or an ordinance. So it's a it's a it's a concern that I just want my colleagues to understand things. All right. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa, for bringing that up. Looks like we have no other speakers. So this concludes the question portion of the public hearing comments by members of council. Councilman Herndon thing Mr. President. I. Don't have any comments. I would urge my colleagues to support this. All right. Any other comments? All right. It has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary. Rocco. Herndon, I. Cashman. I can eat right. Lopez I. Ortega I. Black all. Clark. All right. Espinosa. Hi, Flynn. I. Mr. President. I. Tin I's Council Bill 45 has passed, seeing no other business before this body was then adjourned. Thank you.