A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 1576 South Josephine Street in Cory-Merrill. Approves a map amendment to rezone property from E-SU-Dx to E-SU-D1x (allows for an accessory dwelling unit), located at 1576 South Josephine Street in Council District 6. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 2-23-21.
Councilmember Herndon, would you please put Council Bill 13 on the floor for final passage? Yes, Madam President, I move that council bill 21.0013 be placed upon final consideration and do pass, but it. Has been moved. Then we have a second from Councilmember Hines. The required public hearing for Council Bill 13 is open. May we please have the staff report and we've got some here with us. Good evening. Let me. Yeah. Let let's go ahead and get that into. Are you seeing it, Christine? If you go ahead and hit that display settings, I believe there'll be another dropdown. And you should be able to. Yep. There you go. You got it. Perfect. Good evening. My name is Edson Ibanez and I am with Muni Planning Development. Before you today, we have a map amendment for 1576 South Josephine Street and the applicant is requesting to reason for an 80 you. It is currently in Council District six in the Cary Merrill neighborhood. The site itself is approximately over 6000 square feet. It's a single unit residential. It is in close proximity to the University of Denver Station and just north of Interstate 25. The current zoning is ESU D x. It is surrounded primarily by that use, by that zoning and the land use is single unit residential and it's surrounded by single unit residential. As you can see, the subject property is on the upper right corner of the screen. As you can see, it's a new construction and you see a lot of predominantly one and two story structures in the vicinity. As you can see, the bottom two residential single unit residential buildings, it went before the planning board on that 217 but just want to make reference that it was originally scheduled for planning board on January six and the applicant asked to postpone the meeting so that they can have more public outreach and engagement. And so I went before fine board on February 17th and it was approved unanimously and it is before it tonight. As a present we have received a permit from the quarry. Merrell are now in opposition and they have two, primarily two primary concerns, which is a third unit in the basement and under occupancy concerns. So city records show that there is no unit in the basement. If the applicant elects to permit a basement unit in the future, then the code would not allow and one would not also permit a detached adu. So there is a lot of concern with people in the community that there was actually a unit in the basement . As a present we have received eight comments of opposition and six letters of support. The comments of opposition were primarily related to the placement of the detached a new and detached adus following the detached 882 building form standards, as well as there is concerns around a third unit in the basement, which our records don't indicate that as well as there is owner occupancy, high parking and noise concerns. The Denver zoning code requires owners to live in and maintain the property. There are several review criteria that are analyzed for a rezoning. The first one is to see what the doctor plans. And there are two plans that we are focusing on, which is comprehensive plan 2040 and Blueprint Denver, a land use and transportation plan 2019. The staff report specifies specific policies that are consistent within comprehensive plan 2040, and I will focus on Group and Denver in this presentation. Within Blueprint, it is classified urban edge, which is primarily predominantly residential. Within the future place type. It is classified as low residential, which is primarily primarily single and two unit uses and accessory dwelling units are allowed. The future street classification for a Josephine Street is a local street, which is primarily served by residential uses. And we do have some policy and blueprint. Specifically the land use and the foreign policy housing for which is talks about diversity, housing choice through the expansion of accessory dwelling units through throughout all residential areas. The other review criteria are specified in the staff report. Therefore CPD recommends approval based on all the findings and other of you have been met. I'm available on the question and the applicant, Greg, is also here for any questions that you might have as well. All right. Well, thank you, Edson, for the staff report. And counsel has not received any written testimony on Council Bill 20 1-0013 and this evening. Let me add, we've got one speaker signed up to speak. We have Jesse Paris. Go ahead and get Jesse in the queue. All right? Yes. Jesse, you're up. Go ahead, please. Yeah. Getty. The Council cannot be heard that. You can, Jesse, but your audio is kind of breaking up a little bit. Okay. How's that? Yep. That's better. Okay. My name is Jessica from Paris and represent him Las Vegas. ExxonMobil for self-defense. Positive actually move social change as well as the unity party of Colorado and frontline black knows and I will be the next mayor of Denver in 2023. I'm in favor of this rezoning tonight. We need more addus throughout the city and county of Denver. Despite what the opposition is saying, we still need these dwelling units. So I'm in full support of this rezoning to make good job Councilman Cash with. All right. Thank you, Jesse. That concludes our speakers questions from members of Council on Council Bill 13. Council member, Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. Edson. Could you tell us how the city assured itself that there is not a second unit in the basement? We looked through our solar permit permit records to see if there is any permit specifically for some sort of unit in that in the basement. And then not only that, but when they submit plans for a detached aide to you, they will also verify that when the zoning inspector will go out there as well. So currently there is no buy on records for a unit in the basement. Okay. So we didn't actually go and look at the basement. No. Okay. Because I know just because it's not in the assessor's records doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't. It could be an unpermitted second unit. The other question I have is the owner is listed as lioness, but in the assessor records, it's B.B. and L LLC. And I'm just curious if maybe the owner who is here that the individual could address that. Who actually owns this property? Craig is the applicant and he can address this. Thanks. Huh? Yeah. We'll go ahead and get. Great promoted. All right, Greg, we have a question for you from Councilmember Flynn. And so wanted to give you an opportunity to respond or if you need him to restate his question. No, I heard I understand the question. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'm reformed being able because of my wife and I own the property together. So we just formed an LLC in order for both of us to own it together in that structure. That's all it is. Okay, so who is Linus? Linus. That's my wife's corporation. Oh, so that was a recent transfer. And is it on the application? So the change to BNL has been since you filed the application under Linus. Is that the. Application for the permit? You mean? I'm not sure which. The application for the rezoning. Yes. Well, actually, Bibiano was in there. It was right around the same time. So maybe you can catch up with it. But it is it is under BBN now, which is just 50% myself and my wife. Okay. And how long have you owned the property? Since before we started renovating it. We've owned it about a year. Okay. Are you related to Linda, by the way? I am. She's my cousin. Oh, hi. Nice to meet you. The why are the neighbors saying that you have a unit in your basement? No, we're not really sure. There's a back door that was. Existing in the house when we bought it. There is no unit in the basement. There's just a bedroom and a bathroom and a big rec room. With no kitchen or anything like that. No, there's nothing like. That at all. Okay. Thank you. Edson. Maybe you could answer this in these two. The presentation, which was not. I could not find it in our granicus. I couldn't retain a copy of it. But one of your slides showed what I thought was the subject property, and it looked nothing at all like the one storey house that was in the staff report. What what what went on with that? It looked like a strange story, kind of a post-modern nightmare monstrosity. Showing and showing my my lack of taste, I guess. Yes. So when we create the staff report, we get a lot of times we get the images from Google Maps. And so they haven't been updated. And so. Or in order to have the presentation updated what? I asked the applicant to send me the most recent photo that they took. So you can see the actual notice, like hearing notice in front of the photo I can set up. If everyone wants to see it again, I can put it up as well. Okay. So the image that I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Pardon me isn't the image that was in the staff report then of the one story, brick looked like a maybe a forties ranch fifties rancher that's been scraped and replaced with this three story thingy. Correct. Okay. Thank you. That's all I have. Madam President. All right. Thank you. Councilmember Flynn, Councilmember Cashman. Thank you. Council President Edson, do you in one of the letters from the constituents, they speak about. The. Property owner having sent out a letter stating that all the neighbors were in support. Do you do you have a letter like that in your file? I didn't see it in the packet that came online. No, I don't have a letter like that. What I included was a letter on the comments as an attachment in page 18, 19 and 23. Right. That's the after the after CPD told the applicant that it was felt their outreach was insufficient. They sent out a second letter and I believe may have had communication with with some some neighbors. Is is that what. You're referring to? Yeah. We always encourage them to do more public outreach. I wonder, Greg, if you could speak. Did you send out a letter at one at some point in your communication indicating broad support from neighbors? When we first reverse this whole process has been a learning experience. What we first did is. Contact all the immediate neighbors. To our left, right and. In front of us. But what we did. Not do was contact the neighbors behind us. And those are the neighbors that came forward and said, hey, we're not really thrilled about this because of the alley access and the traffic situations. It was after that that we canceled our meeting and decided we needed more community outreach. Then we wrote a second letter with giving. People much more time to digest that and appear at the next meeting. And we canvased the. Entire street of Josephine. Between Iowa and Florida on both sides, and the complete west side of Columbine Street, which is the alley the backs up behind us. Because we felt we had not really done a good job reaching out to all the neighbors. So to. Answer your question. In the beginning, we did reach out what we thought was substantial community outreach. But after hearing the feedback from the neighborhood, we decided it was and we postpone the meeting started again. Thank you. Greg Edson, what direction does CPD give neighbor give applicants about community outreach? So in our application, we, we, we encourage them to submit a narrative explaining their community outreach. And then in the Pre-Application stage, we always encourage the applicants to reach out to as many neighbors, to talk to their council representative, to see how many neighbors they should be reaching out to. And then we just leave it to the discretion of the applicants to reach out. But we always encourage you to try to reach within 200 feet. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And just as a general question. You know, I hear a lot in these applications about the the roster of standard concerns is one especially. Concerning. To two neighbors is that it might be. Used for short term rental. And that is an option under under if an aid to you is approved. Correct. It is correct. And for any to have any aid, you approve the property owner, whether they have a relative living there or a short. Term rental or a long term. Rental, the property owner needs to reside on the premises in one of the structures. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. Is there. Is it legal. Or is it possible or has it been done that a a property owner would make some sort of agreement? To limit how that property might be used. You know, a neighborhood agreement. Good neighbor agreement. I have not heard of one, but I believe it to be possible. Is is there a city attorney on that? Could let me know whether or not it would be legal, say. For an applicant to make an agreement with their. Neighbors that we won't use it for rental at all. Or we won't use it for short term rental. Is there a reason that wouldn't be legal? Oh. Hearing, hearing person. I'm looking for Nate Lucero. Up there he goes. We've got him moving over here for you. Good deal. I couldn't imagine they wouldn't be on the line. All right. We've got made up there. Nate. Did you hear the question, sir? Yes, sir, I did. Thank you. I'm your assistant city attorney. So there. There. There's nothing that would prohibit two neighbors from entering into some sort of an agreement among themselves. It would be a private matter and not be involved in that. That's what I thought. Just wanted to put. That out there. In general, because I think that it's one area that concerns me just as a Denver resident and I in general have been supportive of that to use as an important addition to our housing stock. But I have no desire to have them use short term rentals. That, to me is not what the short term rental program was developed. For, nor the. 80 new program. But that's kind of adjacent or tangential to this discussion. Nate, thank you for that. Let me see. What we're doing here. Oh, another thing I wanted to clarify that again, it's tangential, but since I have the owner here, Greg, you have a very large sort of spruce, blue spruce in your in your backyard that will have to come down, as I believe, if something is constructed in the back. Is that correct? We do have. A very large blue spruce of looking at it at the moment. We are honestly torn about whether or not to tear it down or not because we do enjoy it. But it really depends on what a tree expert tells us in regards to even. If we move the garage to the southwest corner. Of the lot. With the effect where the TV affected. Sure. And have you have not had it evaluated as of yet? No, I have not. Okay. As again, in the torrent of conversation that I've seen fly by, I've seen comments this someone believe they heard it. They were told that it was not a healthy tree. And I drove by it again today and it sure looked like it was to me. But again. That's tangential to this discussion. That's all the questions I have. Council President. All right. Thank you, Councilperson Cashman. Up next, we have Councilmember Flynn, your backup in the questions, but I now see council member Sandoval. And so we're going to go ahead and go to Council Member Sandoval and then we'll come back to you, Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. I have a question. For the owner. Great. Hey, Greg, thanks for being here with us this evening. Do you currently live in the property or why do you have this property listed on? Hat Heights as an apartment rental. We do not. We live in this property and we do not have anything was to dismantle it. I don't even know what hot spots is. Okay. Just so you know, this rent, this property. Is listed as a rental property going for 1790 and insist it is four bedrooms and it's talking about 1850 a month with a security deposit. So you might want it. And that sounds like a scam to me because we are not we're fully moved in and living here. So what's it what's sir. What. The name of the website is hot pots. Hot pad. Peter. And it's an apartment rental and it, and it's pretty expensive listing so someone has and there's even pictures of the inside of the house on the listing. Okay. Okay. And it says it was just recently purchased within the last year and renovated on the listing. Interesting. You know, we're definitely not us, so I don't know what that is. Okay. Thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Councilmember Sandoval. Councilmember Flynn. Thank you, Madam President. I was going to ask the same thing. I think the same people might be emailing both Councilman Sandoval and I at the same time. So I had one of its hot pads, I believe was was the website. And in that listing, it also says that the owner is willing to rent only the upstairs if that were the case, if that were what the potential renter wanted. And perhaps that's why that's led folks to think that there are two units in the building. So great. You said that this is not you didn't place that and you don't know anything about it. No, I did not. And, you know, to be quite. Honest, I'm a little surprised, but also a little bit annoyed that somebody put it up there. You know? Oh, yeah. Or whatever. I'd be alarmed, too, whatever reason for this hearing, because. Now we are fully living in the house. We're not renting it to anybody. I trying to find it now to see what. The the pictures are that you guys. Are talking about. But yeah, yeah, it's not at. All what we're going to do. So. Okay. And you moved into the property recently? February and February. We were okay because your voter registration isn't yet at that address. So you are. But you are living there full time. We are all those. Rent a little don. Brag about president. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Flynn. Well, we all found a lot out about hot pads. I guess you don't have to show ownership to post something up there. And thank you to the council members for your questions and the owner for being president as well and seeing no other hands raised. The public hearing is closed. Comments by members of Council on Council Bill 13 Council Member Cashman. Yeah. Thank you, Madam President. This has been an interesting. One for me. There's been a lot of speed bumps along. The way, and this is certainly not. The poster child for how I think a zoning application issue should be handled. In that there was the property owner sent a letter out mischaracterizing my conversation with them when I went out to view the property. Theirs was a stop and then a restart on the on reaching out to the neighborhood. I think in general there is more discussion to be had, as I stated earlier on, what a use role should be in general, citywide and in our housing stock. It looking at the criteria. You know, I, I struggle a little bit with the third criteria as far as the health and welfare of the community. Just when when you get a situation where there's so much. Uncertainty about who said what, where, when. I don't know that that that really strengthens the the interaction of neighbors and. The creation of a true feeling of. Community. So yeah, I like I say, I think I think CPD may want to look at their instructions to applicants and perhaps there needs to be more clarity in what's expected in the way of community outreach. But yeah, this this has been a cloudy one for me that I don't know that it needed to have been. So that's that's my comments for now. Thank you. Council Member Cashman. Council Member Flynn. Madam President, I am going to abstain on this. And by abstain, I mean I'm not going to vote no on it or but I'm not I don't feel that I have enough information to vote yes at this point. So if it comes to a vote, I still have some some uneasiness about the situation here that that I would need more information before I would vote. Yes, ordinarily would have supported this. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Councilmember Flynn. And I have to say, based on the information that was presented tonight, and it does seem like some things are a bit cloudy, but based on what was presented, it looks like it meets all of the criteria. And I'll be voting yes on it this evening based on that criteria. Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 13, please. Cashman abstained. Can. Each. I. Ortega. I. Sandoval. At. Sawyer. Now. Torres, I. Black. I see tobacco. I. Clark. I. Flynn Epstein. Herndon. I. Hines. Ah. Sandoval. I. Madam President. I. Madam Secretary, closed the voting and announced results. One nay, two abstentions. Ten Eyes. Ten Eyes Council Bill 20 1-0013 has passed Council Herndon. Will you please put Council Bill 175 on the floor for final passage? Yes, Madam President, I move that council bill 2101758.