Speaker 0: Councilwoman Gilmore, will you put Council Bill to 29 on the floor?
Speaker 8: Yes. President Brooks, I move.
Speaker 2: That council bill 18.
Speaker 8: Dash 0229 be placed upon final consideration and do pass.
Speaker 10: All right.
Speaker 0: It has been moved. And second it the public hearing for council bill 229 is now open. But we have the staff report. Theresa, Lou, Sarah, welcome.
Speaker 8: Uh, trying to get this to open. Which is. So this is an official map amendment. Location of the property is 584 Street. The proposal is to rezone from suburban single unit D to suburban multi-unit three story. It is located in Council District five in the Washington, Virginia, Vail neighborhood. Property is about 6800 square feet. It is currently a single family residence. And again, the proposal is to go from single unit to multi-unit three story. Existing zoning is single unit to the north, south and east. There is a PD approved in 1980 that has three storey condominiums. And then to the west is the city of Glendale, which the zoning is Urban Neighborhood PD, and that has a height limit of 55 feet. So land use existing single family home. As I said before, north, south, east and west are multi-unit residential properties. And this gives you an idea of the location of the property and the surrounding building forms. So the property itself is the top middle of these slides then either side. Top left and top right are the condominiums that surround the property in Denver, and lower right is the open space in that condominium complex and lower left is the Glendale apartment house, three story apartment house directly across the street. Smooth three is a multi-unit zoned district, allowing a suburban house, duplex, townhouse and apartment building forms and basically an intended to reinforce the existing development patterns and accommodate reinvestment process has been. We received this in October of seven, 2017, and that's when our informational notice went out of a completed application planning board. Notice was posted properly and at the Planning Board hearing of February of this year. They voted unanimously to support this application and we were at Liberty in March. And here we are for a public hearing tonight. The there are several neighborhood organizations in the area and we do have comments. The Washington, Washington, Virginia, Vail Community Association took no no position. The four mile historic park members had no objection to of the property owners in the condominium complex, objected to the three storey heights, but thought two stories was okay. And then the Four Mile Village Condominium Association entered into mediation with the applicant and reached an agreement limiting the height to 30 feet. And the details of that are in your the letter they've written and that's part of your staff report. So you know, the criteria, the plans that apply are plan 2000 and Blueprint Denver. And staff believes that these strategies are the ones that this application conforms with, basically speaking to increasing density where we have the opportunity and where it's in conformance with the neighborhood and increasing housing where we have a chance. And so that's why we think this conforms with current plan in 2000. The area is an area of stability in Blueprint Denver and it's single family residential land use concept. Areas of stability are where we want to preserve character and allow some reinvestment. Single Family Residential speaks to single family homes being the predominant residential type, but there is a mixture of housing types, including single family, duplex, townhome and small apartments. And a significantly smaller employment base for a street is an undesignated local street lead style, which just a lot about a block to the north is a commercial arterial and an enhanced transit corridor where we want to see mobility rather than access as the primary function, where we want to balance mobility and access and where we want transit supportive land use is. So staff believes this does conform with the adopted plans that by using a standard zone district we are consistent with the zoning code and we're not doing anything non-conforming with that. And we're we're by allowing reinvestment in this neighborhood and we're furthering the public health, safety and welfare changed conditions. Is that justifying circumstance? And there are many changes occurring on beach now avenue so staff believes that is the appropriate justifying circumstance and. Although this is a area of multi-unit in a single family neighborhood, the majority of Washington, Virginia male is single family. And this this application would conform with the existing context that it's in, since it's surrounded on four sides by multi-unit. And with that, staff recommends approval.
Speaker 0: All right. Thank you, Mr. Lucero. We have two speakers tonight for 229, and they are both speaking in favor, if you would, come to the front. Here, I would greatly appreciate it. Karl Jenkins, you're a first. And chairman say. Your next.
Speaker 12: Good evening. How you doing?
Speaker 4: I was just going to say I'm here.
Speaker 0: Can you say your name for the record?
Speaker 4: It's Carl Jenkins. I'm the owner of the property at 580 South Forest.
Speaker 5: And I'm here to answer any questions people have on the.
Speaker 0: The rezoning. Great. Thank you, Chairman Sekou.
Speaker 6: Yes. Good evening. My name is Chairman Sekou. I am the founder organizer for the Black Star Action Movement for Self-defense, primarily focused on advocacy for poor, working, poor, homeless and senior citizens. Youths. We enthusiastically support this ordinance change. One because all the criteria has been met and style innocence in talking about it, they're going through the same thing everybody else did to get approved. So I expect unanimous decision on approval just on the strength of the report. One of the concerns that we have is the timeframe. Where this started back in 2017, trying to get this done. Anuses and tell them how much money that cost. And then we get here and we're able to make a decision like that. Don't take until six months. And so there has to be some kind of subcommittee hearing on this thing to see how we can streamline this process so we can get these joint zoning changes that are appropriate so that we can meet the demand for housing that we're currently under a crisis, and that time is wasted six months to make a ten minute decision when that project could be started, or at least the relief of having the ability to get it started can be done in half that time. So I'm asking council to entertain the possibility that we can work on this thing and not just for this particular area, but for the entire city, because that's what we run into every time we go to these to change it. And then add on to the caveat with this, as you increase the capacity for folks to have more people on a piece of land. We've got to factor in as we go do this citywide. It may not seem that big in this particular project, but as we go about and doing multi level projects and they're going higher, hard up the end, we have to consider public safety and police protection because that's going to increase the number of people in the neighborhood and with the folks that we got coming here from different parts of the country. And I'm not talking about people come across the border, I'm talking about people born and raised in this country. We're going to have a serious problem because there's different ethnic and color people coming from New York and D.C. into it and you can see it in traffic. And people got this thing about this addiction to the horn and blowing the horn which I get aggravates term cycle. I got 17 seconds. Okay so here we.
Speaker 0: Go to 29. Stay focused on.
Speaker 6: 220. Oh, yeah. So excuse me. Gotcha. Thank you very much. So, in summary. That's all I got.
Speaker 0: Okay. Thank you, sir. Okay, that concludes our speakers. Are there any questions by members of Council? Councilwoman Ortega.
Speaker 8: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. President, I should say.
Speaker 0: I take care.
Speaker 8: Teresa. I have a question for you. Can you tell us for this 6833 square foot lot, how many units can fit into that site under the SMU three zoning? Well, the applicant can probably answer that question better, but my understanding is that through the mediation, they've agreed to no more than four units. Correct. 4 minutes is one thing you can come up because I have a question for you as well. Is the applicant. So the the height limit, actually, maybe this is better for you trees than what is the normal height limit for the SMU? Three feet. It's 40. So this is being capped at 30. So where is that being captured? Is it a it's in a mediated agreement between the condo association and the applicant. Is it a covenant on the land? No, it's not. Okay. So let me just then ask if this is an agreement between the neighborhood and this developer. If this developer sells the land, what happens to the agreement? Well, I think it goes away. Okay. That is a concern. And this is why most of our neighborhood associations are asking for covenants on the land. So let me ask the applicant just to come back one more time. Sorry. And I'm sorry. I forgot your name.
Speaker 4: Carl.
Speaker 8: Carl. So is it your intention for you to develop the site?
Speaker 4: That is correct. So I've got architectural designs for the four units based on the that they comply with the agreement that was discussed with the highway. Okay. It's my honor, my intention to build on the site after going through the. The processes.
Speaker 8: Are you looking at them being for sale or rentals for rentals? Okay. Thank you. I have no further questions.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilman Ortega. Councilman play.
Speaker 6: Thank you. I'm Carl or Teresa, so maybe you could address this. But I'm looking at the aerial and I see that the four mile village is condominiums and townhouses.
Speaker 8: Yes.
Speaker 6: And the condominiums are the bulk of the buildings that surround this little site. And the townhouses are those that line the perimeter? Yes. Is that how that works? So the height, the heights of the of the condominium buildings are 35 feet.
Speaker 8: They are.
Speaker 6: Okay. So this site is completely enveloped by the condominiums that are 35 feet. But the association wanted this particular parcel limited to 30 feet.
Speaker 8: They did.
Speaker 6: Okay. The height of the townhouses that are on the outside perimeter are 30 feet. Is that okay? Mr. Jenkins could. What what was going through your mind during the mediation when people who totally surround you at 35 feet asked you to limit yourself to 30 feet?
Speaker 4: So they were happy with the 30 to.
Speaker 1: 30 feet for the top layer, plus.
Speaker 5: A dog house on.
Speaker 7: Top.
Speaker 6: Oh, okay.
Speaker 0: And and they they've they've agreed to that in the letter.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm. So it's it's a reasonable.
Speaker 1: Ask for people that have.
Speaker 4: Never had neighbors living as close as them. Okay. And, you know, I think we did a reasonable mediation to try to get to something that was a fair compromise between the two.
Speaker 6: Okay. And you just bought this site about a year ago, correct?
Speaker 1: Yes, that's correct.
Speaker 6: Okay. Teresa, one last question. Do you have any idea, looking back into the dark recesses of history, how on earth this 6000 some square foot parcel was not included in the the.
Speaker 8: I don't.
Speaker 6: Okay. Thank you, Mr. President.
Speaker 0: Yeah, thank you. Councilman Flynn. Councilman Espinosa.
Speaker 5: No questions.
Speaker 0: All right, we this concludes a public hearing for 229. We're now on to comments. Dr. Sussman.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Mr. President, and thank you for Theresa and Mr. Jenkins. I just want to commend you for your very thoughtful way of going about this, letting the neighborhood associations know before you even filed and discussing with them entering a mediation and thinking about, you know, what it means to them. Because to Councilman Flynn's question, if you looked at it, you'd know it looked like it was from 1800. It looks like an old and out shed from a farm is what it looks like. But I do appreciate all the work that you did with the city, with Teresa's help and with the community to reach a real, a happy conclusion with your project. And I urge all of my council members to vote yes for this.
Speaker 0: All right. Thank you, Councilman assessment. Councilman Espinosa.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I didn't have any questions. Otherwise I would have. I managed to look them all up, all the answers. But there is between the building code and the zoning code and the definition of story, the allowable number of stories, the height limits that are allowed under the base zoning, which are radically different than this private agreement which we can't consider. The um, there is, there is, you know, in my own dealings with my own community prior to being on zoning, you know, we had good faith proposals from developers. One was on the order of 196 to 212 units in an apartment development that actually came to because of the difference between what's allowed by zoning and where the community was, that ended up being a million square feet and 700 units. In another case, it went from four units to six units. There's always this difference and we can capture that in zoning. The tools are there and would probably lend itself to the same support, with the exception being that staff might not support it because their policy is that they don't support customized zone district. So the height that we're talking about this reduction or that was mentioned from 40 down to ten, could have been captured in in in customized zoning. But we don't do that. We've been down that road before. Right. I understand where we're at. That said. That said, just looking at this zone district, the IMU. I have my own sensitivities because I represent an area that is heavily JE immune. This is that is a different context but it is interesting to me to read about the fact that there is no there is no bulk restriction on the apartment form in a GMU three. So it could be the 430 feet all the way to seven and a half feet from the setback. And so there there there are concerns that I have on the appropriateness in a Usou RD area that was approved on whether this is the appropriate zone district to be mapped to this context given the existing situ current existing situation. I do believe if it were if it were customized, I do believe you could actually do something that is consistent with the PD developed the PDX type development here and be consistent with the plan. But this actually the actual zoned district that is being proposed deviates from my own sensibility about what would be conforming to the PD and what is consistent with all adopted plans and everything else. So, you know, it's hard to it's hard to fully articulate, but I actually see some some some issues here relative to our adopted plans and relative to the criteria that we're not. I don't intend to debate, but I could. So for, you know, for reasons that are hard to explain, but I think are two completely legitimate, I won't be supporting this even though I think with with some customized zoning that would be sort of a consistent way of of of of amending out of a PD. I do think that there would be a legitimate way of capturing some additional density in this on this particular zone lot. But for for because those things were not captured in this base proposal. I won't be supporting this tonight. Thanks.
Speaker 0: All right. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. Dr. Sussman.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you, Counsel. As Councilman Espinosa and I understand what you're saying, but this also was a zoning that was crafted very carefully by the neighbors and and and speaks to what the neighbors were wanting. And I'm not sure that tweaking the tweaking your idea to conform with the PUD would have been something that the neighbors would have felt comfortable with. So I want to make that clear. Thank you very much.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Dr. Sussman, for making that clear. I guess when Espinosa.
Speaker 5: And I just want to support everyone, both sides, for having had that conversation and and, you know, hopefully everything gets followed through because I do think what was articulated tonight as far as a compromise would be something I could support if it were in the zoning. It's because it's not codified. That is where I, I have that bit of pause because there is that discrepant difference between what the allowable zoning is and what is actually consistent with the, you know, you know what is desired here. And so I do encourage the owner to give that additional bit of assurance that the community that you do consider a private covenant on the party get a third party signature, that it restricts the number of units to four, restricts the height, maximum height to 30 feet as articulated, because right now there is no written assurance that even those things would be followed through. And so but I do I applaud everybody to getting it to this point. I really do. And so do not take my reticence to vote on this zoning as as it's presented before us as some sort of any sort of detriment negative aspect to what you guys have already done. Because I, I do appreciate both sides coming together and working these solutions out. And thank you.
Speaker 0: Okay. All right. Excuse me. See no other comments, Madam Secretary.
Speaker 3: Raquel Sussman. Hi, Black Clark. Hi, Espinosa Flynn.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 3: Gilmore Cashman can each knew Ortega. But Mr. President.
Speaker 0: I please go to vote against results.
Speaker 3: Ten Eyes, one nay.
A bill for an ordinance changing the zoning classification for 580 South Forest Street in Washington Virginia Vale.
Approves an official map amendment to rezone property located at 580 South Forest Street from S-SU-D to S-MU-3 (suburban, single-unit to suburban, multi-unit) in Council District 5. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 3-13-18.