A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 12680 E. Albrook Drive in Montbello. Approves an official map amendment to rezone property located at 12680 East Albrook Drive from S-MX-12 to OS-A (suburban, mixed-use to open space) in Council District 8. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 7-31-18.
Hi, Madam Secretary. Please close the voting and thus results choice. 12 hours, countable. 881 has passed. Councilwoman, can you please be accountable? 791 on the floor. Yes, I move that council. Bill 18, does 791 be placed upon final consideration and do pass? It has been moved and seconded. The public hearing for Council Bill 791 is open. May we have the staff report? Yes. Thank you, Mr. President. Members. Counsel. Good evening. I'm Courtney Livingston. And with me planning and development. I'm here to present on a rezoning for 1260 East Albrecht Drive and Council District eight in the Montebello neighborhood, the size is about five and a half acres, and the proposal is CPD on behalf of Denver Parks and Recreation is requesting to rezone the property from as the Max 12 to OSA to align the zoning with city ownership and use as a public park. As I just mentioned, the subject's site is zoned as Max 12. The surrounding properties are as max 12 as well. We also have some form of Chapter 59 zoning surrounding the property to the north, R3 to the south, before waivers to the West Bay. You are one you go to. In terms of the existing context for the land use. As I said, the park is the property is currently under construction for the open space park. It is showing is currently vacant. But on this map we have various commercial, retail and institutional uses surrounding the property as well as industrial to the south. This is showing the property and site photos of the site we have showing it that is under construction currently. And here is photos of the surrounding context. We have Denver Health Building to the west. North, you'll see the multifamily to the east, just general commercial, retail to the south, industrial warehouses and to the west. You have an extended detention base and that is serving flows from the industrial warehouses to the south. The proposal is to rezone the property to OSA. The OSA district is open space public parks district. It's specifically intended for parks and open spaces owned, operated or maintained by the city and county of Denver. In terms of the process. We had our public planning board hearing on July 11th and it was unanimously approved. Lee was on July 31st. In terms of public comment, we had a letter of support from Montebello 2020, the registered neighborhood organization. Three additional letters of support from various organizations in the area. We also received a timeline and update of the Mount Belo Open Space Partnership, an acquisition that is in your packet. And so we'll go through a step through the criteria for approving a rezoning. First one consistency with adopted plans. There are four adopted plans that apply to this rezoning the comprehensive plan Denver Parks and Recreation Game Plan Blueprint. Denver and the Montebello. Green Valley Ranch Neighborhood Plan. For the comprehensive plan. The request is consistent with several comprehensive plans strategies for use as parks and open space. And we also have the game plan and the request is consistent with several of the game plan policies as well as the OCA district will allow for greater flexibility to support the partnership with Environmental Learning for Kids. And with Blueprint Denver, the concept land use is town center and the ozone district supports the town center land use by better integrating a park into the town center. And it is an area of stability. And the goal for area stability is to allow some change in development. The proposed MAP amendment to OSA creates a better alignment between the use and the zoning, and both of those are consistent with Blueprint Denver. With the Montpellier Green Valley Ranch Neighborhood Plan from 1991. It contains various policies supporting community services, parks and open space uses. The proposed rezoning is consistent with the My fellow GBR plan, and the plan has various policies that support those open space uses. So we'll look at the other review criteria two through five. The rezoning will result in uniform application of the OSA district regulations across the site. It furthers public health, self safety and welfare as it furthers adopted plans. The justifying circumstances. The change in the area is that the city has property has been conveyed to the city transfer city. There is an approved site development plan already on the property under the Max 12 in the construction of the Montebello Open Space Park is already underway. It is consistent with the neighborhood context and zoned district purposes. Ten. As I mentioned, it's the open space context. That context is specifically for to support various active passive recreational uses. And also the OSA Zone District is specifically the A is specifically for parks owned operating or maintained by the city and county and Denver, which this is . So in conclusions, committee planning and development recommends approval of the application based on finding. All review criteria have been met. Thank you. That concludes my presentation. Thank you very much. We have four individuals signed up to speak this evening. So if you signed up to speak on this one, if you could make your way to the front bench there and I'll call you up in order. And again, your time will start as soon as your name is called and you reach the podium. First up, Loretta Pineda. Good evening. Welcome. My name is Loretta Pineda, and I'm the executive director for Environmental Learning for Kids, and I'm here to answer any questions you might have. Thank you very much. Next up, Mark Taber. Good evening. I'm Mark Taber with Parks and Recreation. And we wholeheartedly support not only this zoning change but also. The use as it is being developed right now is. Open space park and an environmental education center. I'll be happy to answer any questions you have. Thank you very much. Next up, Chairman Sekou. Chairman Zuku doesn't need to say all that other stuff or just get started. You can just get started. Okay, good. All right. First of all, thanks. I missed class. I was gone. Thank you for the instruction. I will be no public perception that he was interrupting me being rude, but that wouldn't have meant I wasn't having it all. It was just informing me how it was working. I didn't know. And I thank you for your courtesy of helping me out with that in the hallway. So, Mr. President. We support this. His only change. Because it's consistent with what's going on with the development out there now, with massive projects going up and buildings going up in the air. Folks. From here. This used to be in in this neighborhood. And I grew up in this neighborhood. We need some air, man. We need some space. And we need some brass for the kids somewhere to go play. And a safe place environment and a good place to go walking around, you know, exercising and stuff like that, feeling at home. You know, healthy physical fitness, mental wellness and. Spirit of lifting space. Space. This is the wild, wild west. We need space, space, space. Now, we have an issue, though, in that public safety. Protection of folks walking around so they can feel safe. And I'll give you an example. As businesses growing and a development a city and people coming in from other areas of the country. We're also attracting that which is so good. Say That ain't so good. And then the to the police about incidents that happens to people in the neighborhood of little. Example is candidate run for city council just attacked in West Side. At a train station with his bus on there. And the police did like what? But if that had been you, you, you, any of the body could have been in the papers due to due to investigation. All that ain't nothing happened. It was like. Oh, well. How am I going to feel safe now? I'm going to say. And I'm running for elected official, and I'm a good guy. Can't walk from a train station home without getting attacked because his bike is a trigger for folks who want to steal it. That ain't from here. And that's one of the things we have to protect against, because as we attract all of this, we track in good will, tracked and bad. We've tracked an ugly. And this thing could easily become real interesting and unmanageable. Like the city of Chicago. We have to be careful about how we go about doing all this. But those open spaces must be sacred. They've got to be sacred. If we don't protect nothing else, where there's playgrounds and kids and senior citizens come in there and people jogging around the park and just relaxing so they can get ready for the grind to Monday. That's got to be sacred space, not just open space sacred. And so as we go about doing this thing, think about the police protection that's got to be included in the plan. How much money are we going to need here? We're going to need here to manage this here without being obtrusive. So don't look like it's no armed camp. But you're going to need to add that to this idea because we're growing way too fast with resources trying to catch up. The development is pushing us as opposed to us. Pushing to develop. So we caught up. So we got so this thing down. And then suddenly we got speed this thing up and as we slow it down for stability so we can keep going, we got to protect territory. We got to protect the land. We got to protect, first of all, the children, the women. Senior citizens. The ones that are most vulnerable to these outside elements. So. I say that I didn't break the rules. No, that's okay. I had to do all that. Did great. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Jesse Paris. Good evening. Jesse Paris Blackstar. Some Movement. Denver Homeless out loud. Candidate for City Councilor at Large 2019. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it seems like a good idea on the surface to put a open space park where there used to be a park and ride use service people of Northeast Denver, which was torn down. And now people in northeast Denver have to go all the way to 40th and Peoria to catch the train to get to downtown Denver, opposed to having to go to the Montebello Park, a ride where this site is located. My whole thing is we don't need any more permanent patties and barbecue. Becky, is this predominately black and brown neighborhood? If you put a park here, what is going to stop these transplants, these gentrifiers, these newbies from calling the police on people for just simply barbecuing in the park, simply having a get together in a park? That is my concern. So if I also I want to know what it's all going to be here is it's going to be a park. Is it going to be a garden with what is all this? And tell me. So if I get some clarification on, I greatly appreciate it. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. That concludes our speakers. Are there any questions from members of council councilwoman? Can each. Thank you. Mr. President, I just had a quick question, and I just had never caught this before. And maybe it's because this is one of our first of several partnerships the is doing. But you mentioned it was a city owned, operated and maintained. But I actually think that the agreement with the environmental learning for kids has them doing some maintenance and maintaining of this. And so I just want to clarify that everything is okay with the zone district that you don't have to have city all three of those being done by the city. Just can you clarify to me I just want make sure that we're good with the arrangement we have and the zoning. Yeah, you can definitely you can be owned but maintain there's many different OSA zone properties that are owned by the city, yet maintained or leased to a different entity. Okay, got it. So note no incompatibility. All right. Thank you. Thank you, councilwoman. Can each councilwoman or it. So I was just trying to understand if it was elk that was the applicant or if it was the city of Denver that was the applicant. And I was trying to look through these documents and that wasn't real clear. Right. So the city and county in Denver is the applicant. So community planning and development, the department, we are the applicant on behalf of Denver Parks and Recreation as they have the partnership formerly without. Okay. And how much of the land actually. So it's my understanding there's a structure being built on the site that it's not all just open space, is that correct? Currently, and that's in the phase two. The site development plan has phase one and phase two on the property. Phase one is the open space park and phase two would be the the Environmental Learning Center. So is there any limitation that Parks and Rec has for how much? Structure can be on their parks. So that would be with the ozone zone district. It is up to the executive director, Happy Haines, and I believe it is 2500 square feet before it has to go to city council for additional approval. Do we know the size of the building that's proposed for the building for that site? I'm not 100% sure. So I'll let Loretta answer that question. Thank you. Council on Woman Ortega. Right now, the building will be 7800 square feet. That's the plan. So if there's some other process we need to go to. Well, we'll have to see. Okay, we do that. But you don't propose. I mean, I know you're probably just raising the money to build that right now. So do you propose it any time in the future that it would grow or it's really intended to use the building to then interface with the park? Right. Yeah. The open space, it's one acre is dedicated to the building and the 4.5 acres are dedicated to open space. So with that much open space, hopefully we can still. That's a helpful explanation because that that wasn't clear from looking at the information that was provided to us. Okay. I think those are all the questions I have. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Ortega, Councilwoman Gilmore. Thank you, President Clark. Courtney, could you go to Slide eight on the presentation? I just want to make sure it's clear that this has always been, you know what, I might be on the wrong slide. It's the slide that has. Yep. That one right there. The previous one. And this one for the Nets. Yeah, that one right there. So this has always been raw, undeveloped land, correct? That's my understanding, yes. And so the park and ride that was referenced is actually to the west of this parcel of land. And so this isn't on the current RTD park and ride that has been vacated. Now, the RTD is that concrete, you know, to the north, I guess would be northwest. So you see the corner of Peoria and Walbrook, it would be just to the east of that that concrete area. That's the park and ride. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman Gilmore. Seeing no other questions. The public hearing for Council Bill 791 is closed. Comments by members of Council. Councilman Herndon. Thank you, Mr. President. I don't think Councilman Gilmore, she took my first point. This is not where the parking ride is going. I was going to make that correction. Thank you for that. This is a no brainer. I'm a huge. Fan of what environmental learning for kids has been doing under your leadership. Thank you for that. And of course, we have to give. Huge. Kudos to your predecessor who created environmental learning for kids. So I will. Look to. My left and look for my colleague, Councilwoman Gilmore. Thank you for that, for educating our youth. And so I welcome anyone to come out to this space once it is done to learn about our environment and how important it is no matter where you live, because anyone could benefit from that knowledge. So I want to thank you for your. Leadership as we move forward. Best of luck as you continue to fundraise. For this cause. I know they were still still working to get to our total goal, but I certainly hope my colleagues will support this because this is a great cause for the Marbella community and beyond. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Councilman Herndon. Councilman Brooks. Yeah, thank you, Mr. President. A couple of things. One, I'll be supporting this because it is in conjunction with the criteria we need to approve rezonings. This falls right in line with that. So I'll be supporting it to environmental learning for kids. You know, I think it really touches the kids of the neighborhood, which I appreciate. And so to get kids of color in the neighborhood, connect it with the environment is huge. So I just really appreciate you all doing that. And three, 18 years ago, I lived at our Brook Apartments on our brook. And so this is like really exciting to see this area getting so much attention. And so thank you all for your hard work on this. I think the city to for for really parks and rec for being proactive on on doing open space in the city. I think it's a critical time. I think we're going to look back on this time and say if we hadn't had done this and increased our acreage of open space in the city, we would not have had such incredible greens in our city. So thank you for all your hard work. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. Councilwoman. Thank you, Mr. President. I also agree that the criteria have been met, and we'll be happy to support this rezoning today. I just wanted to share my recollection of getting toured this site back in, I think it was 2014 and it was, you know, at that point we were just doing an, you know, tour, just just the two of us. And there, sure enough, was a totally unscheduled school class that was going around and comparing weeds to native plants and just, you know, as high school students. I don't remember if they were from Montebello, Ohio, where they were from. But anyway, so so this community was already trying to interact with this space and create an open space. I mean, sometimes it's like when you let the community use a space, you can they'll tell you what it's going to be. And so and then I juxtapose that with doing neighborhood night out at the Albrecht apartments where what they do is they empty out the parking lot for neighborhood night out. And it is just so many children. You can see all of them playing and you just imagine that most of the time they can't do that because their cars parked there. And so just the proximity of it to, you know, some really much needed high density housing but without, you know, that big open space to play, I just think that the synergy is you couldn't imagine a better kind of way to make use of urban infill to do a park. So and just lastly, having had a few years of experience converting a place into open space, we have no idea how much where Councilman Gilmore and the new leadership and Parks has done to get here. So it's just exciting to see a vote on this. We've had a couple other little midges come through, but this one's a big one. So congratulations to everybody who's worked on it for all these years because it's it's it's more than this slide show could ever tell us. Thanks. Thank you, Councilwoman Kennedy. Councilwoman Gilmore. Thank you, President Clark. I was kind of reviewing the history of this site and my work on it, and we started this conversation in 2006. My daughter is 14 years old and just started high school. She was two years old when we started. Working on this project. And so from that standpoint, you know, having founded Environmental Learning for Kids, we had all of our community meetings in our home in Mount Bello. And when we. Ran out of space in our backyard and we couldn't fit 75 people in our backyard to do leadership programs and education for young people in their families. The kids and the families in Elk said, Why don't we have a place in the community so that we have a home, we have the Gilmore House, but that's not our home. We want this in the community for us. And so after 12 years in the making of robust community outreach, engagement, education, advocacy, it's nice to see us finally get here to rezone it because the schematic that's up there, there's a 7-Eleven to one corner, and we had a social path that ran through this property that went right from the 7-Eleven car wash, straight over to a marijuana store and a payday loans and a liquor store. So we had people. Utilizing. The property. But to break that up and to create an education zone, an open space, a park is something that has definitely been a labor of love and happy to support this tonight and see where it might go forward. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman Gilmore. Councilman Nu, I just want to support two is going to be a wonderful educational facility for kids. I just can't wait to see it happen. It's really exciting and thank you and all of the supporters. And I especially want to thank one of my constituents and Bennett, who's been a real active supporter of this program. And so she she's just as party or more as passionate about this as she was helping me with the minority or weirdness legislation we had earlier did it earlier than last year. So graduation is what you're doing and it's going to be a wonderful facility. And thank you for all your leadership in what you're doing. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Using no other comments, I'll just end with that. I'm happy to support this. Thank you for the great presentation showing how it meets the criteria for rezoning. Outside of that, it's really exciting to see something come forward to change the zoning that this will be a permanent addition to our public park system and our public spaces. Thank you to parks. But on top of that, it's not just a park in a community. This is a park that that was built by the community. And having spent my entire career working in environmental education, health is the gold standard for working in this community, specifically working with kids and with youth, and doing the critical work that is connecting communities of color, kids of color to careers in wildlife, biology and natural resources. I mean, it's the it's the measuring stick that every other nonprofit that is working in this space is working towards. And so to see all of that come together where you have just this gold standard of a nonprofit partner and you have a piece of property that is vacant and underutilized and a place where we can build a park and have that nonprofit immediately activate it and just take the work, the great work that they're doing to the next level in a way that the city could never do on our own, never bring that level of expertize, that level of engagement. It's it's really exciting to see and I'm thrilled to be able to support this tonight. Thank you to our current leadership and past leadership. Very exciting day and excited to vote yes for this one. So with that, Madam Secretary, roll call. Herndon. I can eat. Lopez. I knew Ortega. Sussman Black. Brooks. I. Flynn, I. Gillmor, i. Mr. President. I. Madam Secretary, please close voting. Announce the results. 1212 hours council bill 791 has passed. On Monday, September 17, the Council will hold a required public hearing on council will eight five approving the service plan for the creation of the Denver Rockdale Metro Metropolitan District and a required public hearing on Council Bill 944 approving the service plans