A bill for an ordinance placing a moratorium on the approval of site development plans and the amendment of approved site development plans for developments using side-by-side dwelling units with certain building forms in the Denver Zoning Code for a period of approximately two months. Places a moratorium on certain site development plans. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 2-6-18.
All right, 12 eyes. 94 has passed. Congratulations. Okay. Um, Councilwoman Kinch, will you please put 129 on the floor? Yes, Council President. I move that council bill 18 dash 0129 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. All right. It has been moved. And second it a public hearing for 1 to 9 is open. We have the staff report council. Do I have my presentation? Counseling. Counseling? Sorry. I'm looking for Amanda. Where is she? There she is. Sorry, guys. We'll get started here in a second. Yeah. Load up. You want to do an intro for us? This is the slot home moratorium. The Council bill 129. Am I just there? Oh, sorry. I know what I'm supposed to do. What? I was floundering. Okay, let me do this officially the. Way I see it. You don't have to do that. Council can do it that you can just. Yeah, you can go right into the bill. All right. I wanted to just go through the presentation. This is slightly abbreviated for some of you who have been part of Rudy committee. This is going to be a little bit redundant. So before I get started, I just want to acknowledge the importance of Councilman Wayne New, whose building form development is on your desk. Councilman, news efforts on the misuse of the garden court, much like what we were just talking about, resulted in the moratorium that we're about to consider coming forth, because his work and the collective actions of this Council have advanced the creation and work of the slot Home Task Force, which is a group of very capable individuals from all sort of walks of Denver that have tried to tackle the difficulty, difficult challenges that slot home to present. Anyway, the task force has made many recommendations that this Council will consider for adoption later this spring. But is the task force last recommendation that is before you tonight? That recommendation called for a faster end to the use of existing form standards used to create slot homes while a solution is advanced. The slot home moratorium is a means to an end in preparation for potential changes that the task force believes will greatly improve the detrimental aspects of side by side attached dwelling units. The purpose of the proposed bill is to place a moratorium on the approved the approval of site development plans, otherwise called steps for side by side attached dwelling unit projects. Formal SDP applications that are eligible for approval once the moratorium is active have until 4:30 p.m. on November 10th of 2018 to be approved using the existing zoning standards. The moratorium shall expire upon the adoption. Next slide, please. The moratorium shall expire upon the adoption of the slot Home Text Amendment or June 4th, 2018, whichever occurs earlier. As you know, slot homes are derivatives of many different building forms in Denver's form based zoning code. The forms that are used to create smart homes today include Row, House, Townhouse, Apartment General and Shop One Shopfront Building Form Standards. And fortunately, through a combination of previously adopted text amendments and the current garden court moratorium, the use of the duplex and garden court forms to achieve unintended developments have has already been ended. The proposed site Home Moratorium specifically addresses the remaining building form standards so you can go to the next slide. So highlighted in yellow are the remaining building form standards where projects characterize this lot of homes can be built. The building forms that the moratorium addresses specifically are the townhouse row house, apartment general and shopfront building forms. In part due to concerns expressed by this committee during its November or not. This Committee, the committee during its November slot, Home Task Force Braking Briefing. The task force in January reconsidered its implementation recommendations. The task force voted unanimously, unanimously to put forward the following recommendation. The task force chose to keep. And I apologize for the slide. Hopefully the task force chose to keep its prior recommendation that was presented at that ludi meeting for a November 10th approval deadline. Cognizant of the expressed desires to have both additional STP approval time and earlier in an earlier end to the creation of slot homes, the task force agreed to recommend a proposed earlier stop date to the acceptance of the steps at the time in mid-January. It was unclear how soon that could occur, but the intent was as soon as possible. Working with staff, we determined that the moratorium is the appropriate means to achieve the task force recommendation, and that is what's up for consideration tonight. So. So as of right now and as of the last week in January, early first week of February, CPD has and will review and provide comment based on the new on the proposed urban townhouse standards, which is going to be what's used going forward. If sorry. However, completed reviews will not be approved until the urban townhouse form is adopted, which is anticipated in May. The approach of allowing developers to begin reviewing under proposed standards is similar to what we had done for the for 38th in Blake when it was being proposed for the incentive and design overlays currently. So at some projects may be submitted right now and could have for the last month and a half using the new standards even though they're not able to be approved. So during this moratorium, the Slide Home Text Amendment will follow. The normal adoption sequence has shown in normal adoption sequence and schedule mean. Planned for a council hearing as soon as May 7th. It is that May 7th date that then establishes the the end of the. In the end date of November 10th of 2018. On when. Well, actually, you know that that establishes the end date of November 10th on when the approval process. I may have gotten that. Eligible projects mean. Sorry, I'm confused by my own language. The last day for. Uh. Scratch that. So. So I just. For those that are paying attention. I'm talking about two different things. So the slot home moratorium is effective as soon as it's executed upon to the council tonight and the slot home test text amendment which will result in that urban townhouse standard which you can submit and review under. Won't be available until council for actual approval. Until Council adopted in May. Things. Sorry. Okay. We have no speakers signed up for this, so I'm going to go into questions. Members of council, um, and actually councilman new do you want to chime in here as a kind of co-sponsor on this? Yeah, it was, it was a very collaborative process, really appreciate and at least the leadership in committees leadership on this and the attorneys recommending the moratorium for us for this two month until the new criteria is developed and finished and approved. So we're we were real pleased. It was it was like Councilman Espinosa said, we had a well-rounded committee and we went through a lot of discussion and it was a very collaborative process. And so it was very interesting to hear all the different perspectives and and through the real deals and after we came up with some actual criteria. So I really appreciate all the work that we did and I think we've got something very good in there will be coming forward in the next cycle. Planning Board should have CRC and Planning Board and so it'll coming up to Louie again and then the approval process coming in May. So we're looking forward to it. I think you'll be pleased when you see the new criteria. Thank you. Mr.. All right. Thank you, Councilman. New members of Council. Question. And I'll just just start off off for the edification of folks who were not able to tune into the committee meeting and ask maybe and a Elise to come up to the podium real quick. And just Councilman, you just talked about the collaboration with CPD on on this effort. Obviously, this is an effort put forth, you know, by the councilman. Just want to make sure from Speedy's perspective, it was unanimous. I heard from my constituent, Maggie Miller, that it was unanimous to move this forward. But from Cbd's perspective, you all are supportive, etc.. Yeah, and I spoke with Community Planning and Development, senior city planner leading this Home Tax Amendment and evaluation project. Historically, CBD has not taken a position on moratoriums, but we're willing to provide the technical support to ensure that the task force recommendation does move forward with support of the council members. Okay. So you're not opposing it? That is correct. All right. The other question is, you know, there's been a lot of question of who in the pipeline gets to get their project done. And so I know there are several individuals who are in the pipeline. So can you just explain that again? And I know Councilman talked about it just for a second, but if you can explain it, I'd be great. Absolutely. So what this moratorium aims to do is to allow for projects that were submitted prior to the 14th of this month to continue under the existing regulations. That is what is currently adopted under the Denver zoning code, which does allow for a slight outcome. And those projects will have until November ten to complete and gain approval under those existing regulations. So in that pipeline, there's approximately 30, maybe a little bit more projects we can expect to see be approved in that pipeline project. And kind of that was an important compromise that I think we heard in Ludy as well as from the task force, is that we stopped this as soon as possible. But people who have already made significant investment and invested into the formal process, it was important that they were allowed to continue forward. Okay. So these 30 projects that are in that formal step will not be a part of the new design standards and guidelines that will be coming through planning board. When will it become into the planning? Yeah. So they'll be going to planning board on May 21st and then becoming the City Council for full consideration on May 7th. They absolutely have the opportunity to adhere to the new standards, but they are not required to do so. Okay. Thank you. Very helpful. All right. Seeing no other questions by members of council. We're going to. No. Yep. We're going to close the public hearing 129 and go to comments by members of Council. Councilman Espinosa, you want to make a comment? Yeah, I just wanted to explain. Was flustered and I had to look at my own bill to understand it. So I got when the task force made its recommendation in November, we ended up circling around November 10th. That was based on six months from a, you know, projected adoption date. And I, I got confused myself that, yes, it is, in fact, hardcoded in this moratorium that these existing SDP approved steps have to be done by November 10th, even if council doesn't adopt the if even if the urban townhouse text, it means thought home text amendment, urban townhouse form gets at all delayed. So it's a bit of a detailed nuance, but it is hardcoded in this moratorium that the existing city approved steps have until. Um, formal steps not approved. Sorry. I should have looked at Annalise. I think we got it. She explained it. Is that it, Councilman? Yeah. I shouldn't play CPD planner on TV. Thanks. Oh, actually, but I do want to comment. I just on Elise's has been you know, she actually wasn't the the leader of the task force at the time it started, but took it over quickly thereafter and has run with it and just done an incredible job leading that group to two solutions and compromises. And we'll talk more about that. You know, as the as the Urban Townhouse Forum comes to council, but even on this thing, this was this was, you know, the conversation that council had at LUDI was an interesting one. And it presented some challenges that she led that discussion and navigated it so well that the developer, a developer from the development side, is the one that actually proposed this idea that we're of this early in date and it won unanimous support in the end, which I don't think was an outcome that anyone would have necessarily predicted when we entered the room. So it's been great. Thanks. Okay. Oh, Councilman. No, go. Ahead. One last thing. And it also we really emphasized to the developers with these 30 projects, if they could use the new criteria, we should really, really encourage them to do that is it's going to be an excellent improvement to that building form. And we just really want to just encourage them to use the new criteria. Thank you. Yep. Thank you. Seeing no other comments. Madam Secretary, Rocco Espinosa. Flynn are Gilmore. Herndon. Cashman Canete. Lopez. All right. New Ortega assessment. Hi. Clark. Hi, Mr. President. I please the voting announce the results. 12 eyes. 12 eyes. Proclamation 129 has passed. Congratulations, everyone.