Speaker 4: On 13.
Speaker 1: Eyes. All right. 13 Eyes Council. But 1193 has passed. Congratulations. Okay. Councilman Ortega, will you please put Council Bill 1189 on the floor?
Speaker 2: Mr. President, I move the council bill 1190. 93 right now. You said 99.
Speaker 1: Next page.
Speaker 2: 1199. Sorry, I was just looking at the agenda. Celtic 1199 be placed on final consideration. Do pass.
Speaker 1: Right. It has been moved. And second at the hearing for council 1199 is open. May we have the staff report? Courtland Heiser, Community Planning and Development.
Speaker 9: All right. Thank you very much. Here to present the proposed rezoning for 4211 Encke Street, Cortland, Hisar and CPD. So moving on to slide two shows the location within City Council District one. Slide three shows the location within the Sunnyside neighborhood. And Slide four shows the specific location of this proposal, said 4211 North Anchor. This is the northwest corner of Anchor Street and 42nd Avenue. This is within the 41st and Fox station area, and specifically one block north of the new pedestrian bridge that was constructed at 41st to connect Sunnyside to the station platform across the tracks and in the Globeville neighborhood. Slide five shows the specific request which affects this property, which is approximately a half acre in size, little smaller than a half acre. The current use as a concrete and construction company. There is no billboard on the site, although the billboard use overlay is currently mapped on the site. The applicant is requesting rezoning to allow for transit oriented development on the site, and the specific request is to go from the Light Industrial Zone District with the billboard use overlay to the S.R. eight district with no overlay. S.R. eight is the urban center residential mixed use eight stories maximum. The Sierra eight district emphasizes residential uses. Commercial uses are secondary to the residential uses within this district, and so properties are allowed to have street level retail office and commercial uses. But the upper stories are limited to residential and lodging uses only. The zone map is shown here on slide seven. The site and surrounding properties have the I.A. you oh two zoning. The exception to this is to the east where the freight rail tracks have the general industrial zone district. I'd be. And Slide eight shows land use for the site in the surrounding area. The property and properties around it are an industrial use. TCU to the East stands for transportation, communication and utilities. In this case, it's the rail infrastructure. And Slide nine has some images to go along with the map. So starting with the subject property in the upper left hand corner of the slide with the red arrow pointed to it, that shows the current use the concrete and construction company. And then moving clockwise around the slide slide to the upper right shows the property to the north, which shows up on a records as being a vacant property, but in fact has an industrial style storage building located on it. Then to the east, the image below that middle right shows the new improvements that have been made to Inca Street, the multi-use path that was recently installed, and then the freight rail infrastructure to the east beyond that lower right hand corner shows the property to the south across 42nd Avenue, which is another industrial property, and then to the west, across the alley in the lower left corner of the slide. Another industrial use. Moving on to process here in Slide ten. So informational notice was provided when the application was received back in June and then in August to announce the receipt of a revised application. The revised application removed the UO to overlay from the rezoning request. Planning Board was originally scheduled to hear this case back in September, but that hearing was postponed at the applicant's request to allow for additional outreach to the neighborhood and surrounding property owners. It was rescheduled for October, but there was a posting error that required the hearing to instead be delayed again until November. So when Planning Board did hear the case, they recommended approval by a vote of 7 to 0. It was at Luti back in December 6th and then is at City Council tonight. We followed our standard notification procedures throughout all those steps. In terms of public outreach, there are many registered neighborhood organizations within a couple hundred feet of this property. Those are listed here at the top of the slide and each was notified throughout the process. We did receive a good deal of public comments on this particular proposal, including a letter of support from the Sunnyside registered neighborhood organization. They provided a letter initially at the planning board phase of the process, which was included in the staff report as an attachment. And they have since updated that letter, continuing their support, but indicating that they've reached a private agreement with the developer for moving forward. And that was emailed to you directly to the city council inbox just yesterday. In addition to that, and also included as attachments to the staff report, we have five or excuse me, 15 signed statements of support, mostly from surrounding property owners. Slide 12 outlines the five review criteria for rezoning. All of which apply in this circumstance. And so, starting with Slide 13, will begin with consistency with adopted plans, beginning with comprehensive plan 2000. Slide 14 shows of the points of consistency of the proposal with guidance from comp plan 2000. Details on each of these can be found in the staff report. Slide 15 shows consistency with Blueprint. Denver So the proposal is located within a Blueprint Denver area of change. The blueprint land use is urban residential, which is defined as higher density, predominantly residential, including a noteworthy number of commercial uses and with retail or active uses on the ground floor. So the requested district aligns very well with the guidance from Blueprint. In that respect, street classifications for adjacent streets are UN designated local for both INKA and 42nd Avenue. Moving on to Slide 16, this shows the recommended guidance from the Sunnyside Neighborhood Plan, which was adopted back in 1992. That plan does predate Blueprint Denver and the conception of the fast tracks system, and therefore some of the land use guidance within the plan is now out of date and we have more recent plans that would apply in this area. So for current guidance, in this particular location within Sunnyside, we need to look to the station area plan, which is summarized here on Slide 17. The station area plan does not recommend any industrial within the portion of Sunnyside that it covers along the eastern edge of the neighborhood. It recommends urban residential 2 to 8 stories for the majority of the edge along Inka Street, running along the commuter rail corridor. There is an error in this particular plan for this specific location. You can see the red box showing the location of the proposed rezoning and the land use map states. Substation. The substation is actually located a block to the north, so this property is not located co-located with the substation. It is an area in the plan. And so therefore we must infer the land use and building height recommendation from the plan because the land use recommendation is consistent along the entire edge of Inco within this area and there isn't any variability in the recommendation. It's urban residential to date stories. For every block along that edge, the staff feels comfortable asserting that the intended land use recommendation was urban residential 2 to 8 stories. So wrapping up here on Slide 18, then showing points of consistency with the other four required criteria, starting with uniformity of district regulations. The finding in the staff report is that the proposal is consistent. Number three, it advances the public health, safety and welfare by implementing adopted plans. The justifying circumstances a change or change in condition. In this case, the pending opening of the 41st and Fox station, new pedestrian and bike infrastructure along Inca Street. Ongoing revitalization of the neighborhood. And increased development activity and interest in the station area. And then finally, point five regarding consistency with neighborhood context, zone, district purpose and intent, the finding was that it is also consistent. So Slide 19, the CPD recommendation is approval based on finding that all of the criteria have been met.
Speaker 1: All right. Thank you for the presentation. We have five speakers. I apologize in advance if I mispronounce any of your names. Well, actually, we have four speakers. Why don't you guys make your way down once I call your name on this front bench? Billy Wang. Mark Stroh. Niles Emerick. Xin Wang. First up will be Billy winning. You'll have 3 minutes, sir.
Speaker 7: Good evening, councilmembers. My name is Billy Wang. I am a Denver resident here and have been for. About 20 years now I am the applicant to the entity that submitted this rezoning at 4211 Anchor Street, and I'm available for any questions that you may have.
Speaker 1: All right. Thank you, Mr. Wing. Mark Stroke.
Speaker 7: Good evening. Thank you. Mark Stroh. I'm a resident of the city.
Speaker 0: And county of Denver in Sunnyside and.
Speaker 7: Represent the registered neighborhood organizations. And you say the United Neighbors, and I'm available for questions.
Speaker 1: All right. Thank you, Mr. Stroh. Niles Emerick.
Speaker 7: Niles Emmerich, resident of City and County of Denver, board member for Sunnyside United Neighbors. And I'm available for comment.
Speaker 1: All right. Thank you. And lastly, and Chin Hwang. Sorry if I'm wrong. Hi. My name's Ancient. I'm a resident of Denver, and I'm here for if I can answer any questions. Great. Okay. Congratulations, the four of you. That was the quickest comments I've ever heard. Wow. Okay. Questions by members of council. And I'll actually start them off real quick, Courtland, and just ask you. I've wondered this and I struggle with it a little bit around this forty-firsts and Fox area, the city of Denver, when reaching out and working on this, working on this area plan. Categorize it as C.R. X instead of C-Max instead of. I mean. Tell us a little bit more why it is so stringent on Citrix.
Speaker 9: So this shows the land use recommendations from that plan. On the slide, if you can you see it on your.
Speaker 1: It's coming to okay on our huge.
Speaker 9: So the when this plan was created the philosophy was to create a more intensive major urban center on the east side of the tracks, on the Globeville side of the station area. And you can see that in the purple and blue colors that are map there. The uses are pedestrian shopping, district, mixed use office and residential mix. And some of the building heights are 12 stories and more. They go as high as 20 story recommendation there. And then on the sunny side, half of the station area, the philosophy was to focus more on residential development. Just to paraphrase what's in the plan, I think that that was viewed as being more compatible with the residential Sunnyside neighborhood that exists. It needs to step down pretty quickly and intensity from Anchor Street over about a three block period to where you have existing single family homes and duplexes. And so I think that's why the residential mixed use was emphasized. More so than commercial mixed use.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And so the C, our X, it still promotes ground floor activation and and things like this. So you can still do mixed use development. I've heard folks lately complaining about the C.R. X model not allowing as many uses as the senior MCs. Do you get it? I mean, is that true? Do you have anything to say about that?
Speaker 9: Well, the big difference between the two would be that in the CRCs, you're required to have residential uses if you have a building that's taller than one story. So your upper floors have to be residential, whereas in a cmcs district, they, they wouldn't be what you could do residential. You wouldn't be required to. Yeah. So this is, you know, the zone district that's supposed to promote higher density and mid density residential.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Councilman Ortega and then Councilman Espinosa.
Speaker 2: Yes. Courtland, if you could just stay there for a second, I want to ask some of the same questions I asked on the previous zoning, because this one also is adjacent to rail. So number one, have you been through the training with Evelyn Baker?
Speaker 9: No, I have not.
Speaker 2: Okay. So my second question is, did the issue of proximity to rail come up in your conversation with the neighborhood, with the developer? And if so, how was that addressed?
Speaker 9: It has been a topic of conversation. The focus of the conversations, though, have been the the transit, the commuter rail in this particular location. That's just one type of rail that's located there, the freight rail. There's a great deal of that just to the east of the site. And that was not discussed nearly as much as the the TOD opportunity associated with commuter rail.
Speaker 2: So I know this this is a little different than the developments that we've done on the east side of the tracks because those actually have the commuter rail as the buffer from the the the cargo. And so on this side, I'm I'm not sure that there is a buffer from the freight tracks or the the the cargo being carried on those freight trains. Is that something that you all looked at at the planning department? Did you have any feedback from the agencies? You know, we used to get all the agency input as part of the applications. But I guess in the rewrite of the zoning code, we don't see that level of detail anymore. So can you tell me whether there was any input from the fire department, environmental health around the proximity to rail and in any of the health safety concerns?
Speaker 9: So we do have agency feedback summarized in the in the staff report. I'm just looking for the specific page. That it's on. So that's summarized on the staff report beginning on page 11. You can see the agencies that commented and what they had to say. I don't recall any of the agencies calling out freight rail specifically in their comments. I'm just scanning through to see if that's the case.
Speaker 2: And I'm wondering if it's because we are not yet using the checkoff box on the application form that is supposed to be coming. I'm looking at the information that you. Directed us to. There are some environmental concerns about the Vasquez I-70 Superfund site and potential soils contamination. That would have to be addressed as part of their cleanup of the site. Assuming there's any of that on there, but I don't see anything in here related to rail. Okay. That's that's all my questions. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, counselor. Take it, Councilman Espinosa. Yeah, sort of. Actually, I wasn't going to talk about it, but since it's come up twice with both these rezonings, I want to say that I support the idea of a checkbox because I think it would sort of force us to at least ask the question. But again, I go back to sort of my frustration about traffic concerns, which I hear a lot about as the District one representative. And and a lot of times we can't do mitigation because it doesn't hit that threshold of of a problem. You know, we design those solutions to a certain percentile of counts. Councilman, I just this is the question section. Is that is there a question sort of answering, Councilman Ortega because it was my you know, I could have at some point raised my own concern relative to the real safety and the proximity of this project, but chose not to. And what it amounts to is that there's there that the well, there is a hazard and it is present. We have other mechanisms to address that. And then the sort of prevalence see of how much of the hours of the day does that? Is that issue present sort of has to factor in. We can design for that the sort of rarity of that event and compel a new development to address it when, you know. So I think I welcome the discussion and I do think the checkbox would sort of help in sort of promoting people looking into that. But I'm not sure that it would consequently change the sort of whole scale development options that are available in the future. So I do have two questions and I'm sorry. Thank you, Councilman Brooks. I appreciate that. The the. I wanted to say that because I don't think you mention it. There are agreements between the the R.A. that is present and represented and the owner. Is that correct?
Speaker 9: Yes, there is. And I mentioned it is just that it was emailed to you yesterday.
Speaker 1: Okay. So to the users, I think those agreements modify the uses to some degree. So Councilor, Councilman Mean President Brooks has concerns about the full gamut of uses that are available in our acts are sort of shaped by that in those agreements is that there's somebody from the R.A. or the owner want to say so?
Speaker 9: Or I would say that from the city perspective, the agreement can limit the users. It couldn't add users. They would be entitled to have whatever use is allowed under the zoning that's in place. But for specifics on the agreement itself, I'd refer you to the applicant in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you don't need to go into detail if you don't want, but I do think that it actually truncates the total amount of users available. Is that correct?
Speaker 7: That is correct. Councilman Espinosa, we have gotten to a memo you right now which will adopt and record with the city once the the the actual closing occurs at the end of the month. And specifically, the use would add commercial space on that ground for to activate the the first level to engage more community orient oriented destination on the INC side. Now that doesn't preclude the fact that we may also look into the 42nd site as well. But for sure our agreement with the Sunnyside and even the East Sunnyside R.A. is to to activate that with a minimum requirement of 2000 square feet of commercial, retail or office space.
Speaker 1: So thank you, guys. I'm glad your questions are led to mind so that it's some of that stuff. Some of those does nuance mean those details could be shared?
Speaker 7: Thank you. And if I could add one more councilmembers, I think I was talking to my architect in addressing the life safety issue. Some of that is, I believe, encompassed in the building and the fire codes that we have to adapt to when we do the design phase itself. Mm hmm. Great.
Speaker 1: Okay. Any other questions from members of council? All right. Public hearing for Council Bill 1189 is now closed. This is the comment portion of our time, Councilman Espinosa. Go ahead. Yeah. So I'd like to thank the applicant for doing robust outreach when it appeared that none had been done. Initially, the applicant reached out further and wider than ordinarily expected, which was critical because there aren't a lot of directly impacted property owners. But recognized that the greater community would be impacted by these initial redevelopments at this rail station. The community itself has conducted a thoughtful dialog and authored a small area plan for East Sunnyside to get ahead of redevelopment of the redevelopment conversation. The community's work speaks to the nature of redevelopment of redevelopment projects that would marry the generalities of the adopted station area plan for the 41st and Fox station and focuses these recommendations to suit the vision and needs of the current and future Sunnyside neighborhood. The agreements between the applicant, owner and the R.A. accompanying this rezoning are welcome voluntary commitment by all involved and for the people of North Denver to comment mean to commit to address the concerns communicated to the owner and the applicant. I want to thank the applicant and future owner Billy Wang for negotiating in good faith. And I want to thank Marc and Niles for their volunteer efforts to assert to to to get these to reach these agreements, to communicate these agreements, and to advocate for the language that addresses these community concerns. So well done, all of you. Thank you very much. With that, I will be supporting this rezoning. All right. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. And, you know, I just want to underline to both parties, thank you for coming to the table. You know, the the developer, the coming in, sitting down with the neighborhood. We're finding there's issues all over the city dealing with this that folks are not able to reach a compromise. But to those who are developing into the neighbors, it's our city. And so how do we begin to come together? So I really appreciate you reaching out, just echoing and Councilman Espinosa's comments. All right. It has been moved in, seconded. Um. No more comments by members of council's. Madam Secretary, Roll Call Flynn.
Speaker 4: Hi, Gilmore. Herndon Cashman. I can eat. Lopez. I knew Ortega. I Sussman. Black Clark. Mr. President.
A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 4211 Inca Street.
Rezones property located at 4211 Inca Street from I-A, UO-2 to C-RX-8 (from industrial to residential mixed-use) in Council District 1. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 12-6-16.