P&z - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

zoning commission meeting for tuesday july 7th do we have a call to order yes uh bill maren yo kyle overketter here eric fawcett here uh rob levitt yes cindy hershfield here uh bob caplan here uh ben feierstein And Mike Horvath is absent. You have a quorum.

Excellent. The first item on our agenda is to approve the minutes from our meeting on May the 19th and June the 16th. Do we have any comments, clarifications? Yes.

Yeah, I had one request for the June 16th minutes about adding to them that several people had raised whether it was possible or not to have a rec center at the proposed hotel site and that we had addressed that in conversation.

You would like to see that those, that be? That be added. That be further?

Well, just that that be included in the minutes.

OK. As a separate point versus from individual speakers.

Yeah. Or that I guess that I I had raised ask the applicants about the possibility of it.

Excellent. I'll revisit that.

That it was recognized.

I saw something in there Cindy I didn't necessarily see that was coming from you though so. Any other comments if not do we have a motion As per Cindy's comment or Do we have a second the second all in favor I'm gonna abstain since I was not there for either I excellent so the next item then is a continued public hearing on 218 east valley road pud amendments with a slight site plan review and we'll leave it to staff to get us going

Good evening, PNZ. Carlton Henry, Planner 2 at the Town of Basalt. Here to reintroduce development application at 218 East Valley Road for site plan review, special review, PUD amendment, housing mitigation report, and associated development review actions. This is a continued public hearing from the June 16th meeting of Planning and Zoning Commission. Just to provide a little background on this application. Since you have last seen it at the initial public hearing, proposed was a 94 key residence in by Marriott Hotel with two associated deed restricted affordable housing units for commercial mitigation. Tonight we are reviewing a very similar proposal for a 93 key residents in by Marriott hotel with three deed restricted for rent residential units associated for commercial mitigation the site is a Approximately two point one acres in size located at the northwest corner of the town of assault southwest of highway 82 and generally north of the Soper's village subdivision The property is located in its entirety within the town of assault although it is bordered by unincorporated Eagle County along its southwestern property line The property is identified as lot 2A in the Old Orchard Plaza PUD and is zoned PUD with an underlying zoning designation of C3 commercial through the town of Basalt's zoning code. The property is bordered by commercial properties to the north and to the southeast with residential uses to the south and Crown Mountain Park generally to the west of the site. The applicant has proposed the construction of three residential units for rent to be deed restricted as noted. of 457 square feet 553 square feet and 643 square feet respectively to be de-restricted at category 2 as proposed in the first public hearing These three units together total just over 1,600 square feet 350 square foot private storage spaces totaling 150 square feet are also proposed and The property does not currently contain any deed restricted housing and no commercial mitigation exists for the commercial use existing on the property. Staff has determined after the resubmittal of the application that as the applicant has met or further exceeded the standards for commercial mitigation with the addition of a deed restricted unit and with the addition of a deed restricted unit that meets The community housing guidelines staff has not referred this application back to Bach since the June meeting However, I will just note for the record that on June 11th of this year, prior to the last PNZ meeting, BOC did review the application with consideration given to items under its purview and unanimously approved the application with a referral to Planning and Zoning Commission. Discussion items this evening for Planning and Zoning Commission include consistency with the master plan. Staff has provided some additional goals and objectives after the review at the June meeting. Those are included in the staff memo this evening. The level of affordable housing mitigation and the unit mix as proposed are also under the purview of Planning and Zoning Commission. Compliance with the minimum livability requirements in the community housing guidelines. amount of private open space and type of private open space provided the proposed occupancy priorities for the application including the request from the applicant that priority be given to employees of the hotel above the occupancy priorities otherwise found in the community housing guidelines storage and bike storage. The request for a mixed use parking reduction. This parking reduction has changed minorly since the last iteration of this application. The proposed development has a minimum parking requirement of 97.5 vehicular parking spaces, 93 required for the proposed lodging use, four and a half required for the proposed heat restricted housing. Additionally, the parcel provides nine non-exclusive parking spaces for the adjacent parcel. Unless renegotiated, the applicant will be required to accommodate these parking spaces. The applicant has proposed 93 spaces onsite, four and a half fewer than required for the site redevelopment. With consideration given to the e-spaces, the applicant is now seeking a 16.9% reduction in required parking onsite by providing 81 units or I'm sorry by providing 81 spaces 93 less the 12 through the parking sharing agreement. That's quite similar to what you guys saw in June. Just the percentages have changed slightly due to the addition of deed restricted affordable housing unit. A couple items that are pertinent to P&Z, which I will verbally make note of here, but are also discussed at further length in the staff memo. The proposed development requires amendments to the annexation agreement and PUD agreement to address requirements related to usage height and sign dimensions. Requirements related to usage and sign dimensions have not changed since the June meeting. Since the June meeting, the applicant has proposed an amendment to the maximum height requirement for the proposed development The proposed maximum building height is 34 feet and 11 inches with a maximum roof height of 35 feet and 11 inches to account for parapets, roofs, and architectural screening elements. For reference, the underlying C3 zone district includes a maximum height of 35 feet. The applicant is proposing addressing this through a PUD amendment. The proposed amendment would additionally remove the floor area limitations for the PUD. This was discussed at the June meeting and defer to the town C3 zoning district for floor area standards. The applicant has proposed since the June meeting adding a cap to the floor area ratio through the PUD amendment of 0.8 for FAR. You may remember from a discussion related to this at the June meeting and the applicant was amenable to that suggestion from the public. I will also note that the architecture has notably changed since the June meeting. Staff met with the applicant to discuss changes to the height and ways that the applicant could bring down the height following public comment. As a part of those discussions and the applicant bringing their proposed use back to their design team. An updated set of elevations has been provided. The applicant has also provided 3D renderings for review by planning and zoning commission this evening. Those did not come in time to be included in the agenda packet, but were provided for review by Planning and Zoning Commission. Updates to the elevations were included, just the 3D renderings were not included in the agenda packet to be clear. And staff would request following the significant changes to the architecture that Planning and Zoning Commission provide feedback on proposed color and materials, John Potter, proposed building articulation and height and screening of the building staff wouldn't also note that the massing or articulation of the building. John Potter, has been revised and would request. John Potter, feedback from planning zoning on those items. Note to traffic the applicant has provided a traffic study as part of the application materials significant discussion at the June meeting occurred surrounding traffic staff reached out to Eagle County and was able to receive the traffic study prepared for Eagle County by McDowell engineering LLC ahead of the El Jebel Road reconstruction and has included those materials as part of the agenda packet this is the most up-to-date traffic counts that the town of basalt has access to in this vicinity also there's a note to green building and wildfire mitigation that the applicant will be required to adhere to those items the time of building permit it's pretty standard and staff has included a condition to that to those items as part of the draft conditions included in the packet this evening And staff has also received referral comments from various referral agencies. A couple updates to those have been included as part of the packet. Staff also did receive a formal letter from, or formal notification from Mid-Valley Metro and an updated will serve letter for this application. I'll make note of three more items briefly here from the June 16th meeting. I already mentioned that staff has attached the most recent traffic counts from McDowell Engineering. The applicant has also added to their application what they're calling a good neighbor plan to address the concerns of Sopras Village HOA that are outside the purview of Planning and Zoning Commission, notably as they're outside of the town of Basalt. limits and these include things such as operating procedures to minimize the negative impacts of this development those could be part of planning and zoning discussion this evening staff has also come back with Employee generation calculations for the element hotel as was requested by Planning and Zoning Commission as of 2024 the element which is a 113 key hotel. Please note that this is 20 Rooms larger than the proposal we're reviewing here this evening employed 16 full-time and 11 part-time employees Staff believes that with these numbers that the employee generation calculations from the applicant are accurate. I will also note that staff has added a condition requiring the monitoring of the Soper's Village well per discussion at the June 16th, 2026 meeting. And that condition will be required to be met before building permit. I will just kind of wrap up here. I know that was a lot. Planning and Zoning Commission has the following recommendation options to Town Council to recommend with approval of the conditions as included in the staff memo this evening, recommend approval with amendments to the conditions, or recommend denial of the application. Planning and Zoning Commission can also direct staff to work with the applicant should major changes to the application be deemed necessary. Again, included as part of the packet are a set of draft conditions as well as the updates to the application. These were split up in a couple ways this evening. So excerpts from the updated application, which are more limited in scope and relate to the changes just discussed, were included as Exhibit A. The full updated plan set was attached as Exhibit B. And then public noticing materials and referral comments included as exhibits C and D, respectively. James, do you have anything else?

No. Staff would suggest hearing from the applicants and then taking public comment once again and P&Z discussion.

I guess I would ask if there were any initial Planning and Zoning Commission questions about what I've just shared. Otherwise, we do have the applicant here to- Ask questions now or hear from the applicant first. Address.

Let's hear from the applicant and then we'll.

Yeah, that's how we normally do it. Questions.

Okay. good evening everyone commissioners thanks for having us again what I thought we'd do we put a little presentation together of what we thought were the most talked about comments from our last meeting I'll go through them relatively quickly but feel free to stop me if you feel like this isn't something that warrants more discussion some might need more than others so just jumping right into our presentation here one of the comments that we had heard from the Commission and from the public was about demand for hotels in the market and so we did go ahead and pull some data on hotel demand in the market there's a company called STR which is owned by CoStar that provides very good detailed reporting of occupancy and average daily rate for hotels you can't pull data from one specific hotel. So while we might be asked, what is the element doing today? I can't go find the owner to say, hey, will you share your average rate and your occupancy with the commission? So what we can do is we can pull aggregates of data to then share so we have a sense of where things are performing. We are willing and, of course, happy to share performance metrics from hotels that we do own. And in the example we have here, mud season performance from our residence in, which is located in Durango. April had 13 of 30 days where the hotel was more than 75% full, five of 30 days when the hotel was more than 90% occupied. These markets, over 70% occupancy is considered to be very strong for the hotel market. We thought we'd go ahead and show what the comparison was as well of data for hotel demand between luxury hotels in the valley and then what we call select service or non-luxury hotels in the valley. And notably, there's an over 10% occupancy difference with a higher occupancy towards the more moderately priced but still high quality hotels in this valley. And an average daily rate difference that's over $200. That tells us that there's an incredible amount of demand in this whole valley for high quality product that's more reasonably priced. That's really our business model as a focus as a company. We also, through some of the data analytics we use in terms of trying to figure out what people are looking for and even to maximize our search engine optimization for our websites when guests or businesses are looking for a place to stay we pulled the average searches for keyword items things like basalt hotel and related searches from google and over the last two years google searches for basalt hotel index is up 40 percent So if we're wondering whether or not people are looking for a hotel in Basalt, I can tell you that the occupancy in the market is showing that they are. And the searches on Google absolutely are as well. I think I'll pause after each major topic in case someone has a question. Is that appropriate or should I go through all of the presentation?

I think you can go through and if someone has a question, they'll pop in. Okay. Thank you.

Building height. So when we presented prior at our last meeting on June 16th, we presented the drawings that were on the lower image here. We had three, four architectural awnings that stretched up to 46 feet. We did that purely because we thought that the architectural interest of the building was better. And that doesn't necessarily generate more income for the hotel. We are trying to deliver a product that we are proud of. But we did hear a lot of comments from town and commission that height was going to be a big focus here. And so we worked with our architect to try and create the most architecturally interesting rebuilding that we can. within the bounds of the height limits that we're working with. So this building now is 34 feet, five inches from floor to top of parapet. And the adjacent building, the condo building on this same PUD, part of the same PUD is 34 feet. We still have a one foot parapet. We included that because we wanted to try and screen still some of the plumbing, some of the mechanical that we can have in here. And the rest of the building we created, we made it as flat as we could, and we compressed all of our floor-to-floor heights as much as we could in the building as well. So down from 46 feet with the prior architectural features, and now our maximum roof height is 34 feet 11 inches when measured from the grade. It's 34 feet 5 inches when not to top of parapet. again reminder the building adjacent to us is 34 feet from finished floor to the top of the roof these are renderings that we've had pulled together to help provide some context for what the building height and massing will look like again the building to the right here 34 feet finished floor to top of roof. And then we also had a image prepared from the view of Suburbs Village Drive as well. The trees that are in that easement adjacent to our property are all remaining. No intention to take those out. We'll be repairing the path or replacing the path that you see here. And actually it's the maintenance obligations of the hotel and the property to maintain this as well. Another item that came up through our review process was surrounding light pollution. We did provide additional context into the lights that we've selected. We have always and will continue to plan to adhere to the town code regarding light pollution and exterior lighting. We've also gone ahead and just noted that we're going to pick the light spec here, which create the least amount of light trespass off of the site. It's a little bit hard to tell, but the image on the left shows how light trespass can bleed off of areas like a sidewalk and potentially even across, say, like a property line. But when you use backlight control on some of these more expensive lighting fixtures, it limits the way that light moves off of the fixture. Employee estimation and housing. This was another comment that we got just to confirm that the information that we presented in our first package was indeed accurate and we wanted to provide additional support for the numbers that we did put together we had an aggregate of five similar hotels pulled and redacted of course for employee employee accounts and use those for our employee job generation. The town pulled employee accounts for the element hotel as well to back up what we have provided in that package. And then we went ahead and redacted our actual roster from our residents and which is a smaller hotel in Durango, Colorado. That's a 66-room hotel, and we have 13 full-time employees and three part-time employees. We own another asset there, so there's some shared associates there, but we've just counted them in this roster anyways for conservatism. So these are real numbers live from a hotel that we operate that also does not have food and beverage operation that is this type of product. It's just a slightly smaller key count and then we've extrapolated the job count using the 93 rooms that we have here just to help provide a little bit of additional support for how we came to our conclusion on the job counts. In addition to just providing some of that extra data, we did go ahead and change our housing unit count, increased it by another unit on the far corner of our building to try and satisfy some of the feedback that we heard from the town and from commission on going above and beyond. So 50% more, I know it's three units on the housing, deed restricted that will be including in the hotel and that's of course not inclusive of the 2 percent of our revenue that's a lodging tax that will go to employee housing fund in Basalt which is about one point four million dollars over the 10 years that we estimate would be open.

Can you say that number.

I say that number related to the funds that would go into the town basalt.

Yes. I also have a slide so I can show you guys that directly after. OK. Traffic study. We did also invite our traffic consultant from Kimley Horn to join and they're on virtually. So if we have more questions about the way that the study was conducted how why what we did they can speak to more of the technicalities that were brought up during the last meeting and from commission. um but i just want to point out you know there was a question about why we used the 12th edition for some pieces in the 11th edition for others we did this to be more conservative in the traffic estimates that we produced the 11th edition of the manual does not it does have full traffic counts available for a movie theater but it did not have full traffic counts available for a movie theater except for during peak hours. So what we did is we used peak hours from the 12th edition and we used full daytime hours, daily hours from the 11th edition because it just doesn't exist in the 12th. That created the most conservative peak numbers that we got out of the 12th edition with the regular numbers from the 11th for the daily to come up with our traffic counts for daily and for peak hours. Then we looked at two different ways of measuring traffic for two different hotel product types. There's now limited service hotel and there's full service hotel. Limited service hotel was included in the 12th edition and it has fewer traffic. It produces less traffic than say a full service hotel where you have a restaurant and all these other services, a spa, et cetera, that people are going in and out for. We still use the full service hotel model to help generate our traffic accounts for this analysis again to remain conservative and even with those numbers the traffic study indicates that we could build up to 165 keys and still be below with the 662 seat theater currently would be generating and what this whole road system was originally built built to accommodate Would you like me to introduce our traffic engineer now or are we OK to keep moving. You like to hear one here with the traffic engineers please. Mary if you don't mind helping to maybe more eloquently describe the traffic study.

Hey everyone. Good evening commissioners. That was a really good introduction and summary. I don't think I have too much to add besides just reiterating the fact that. our analysis is a little bit more conservative, like our team member said, that the total trips that are generated by the hotel, we analyze it as a full service hotel, knowing that our hotel will not have the spa, will not have a full service restaurant, and then also just reiterating that the existing roadway network is sufficient to hold and accommodate the the movie theater. And so even though the movie theater does not generate any trips right now, the surrounding roadway network did accommodate the movie theater when it was generating trips. And so that was what our comparison for the traffic letter has between the movie theater and the retail versus our hotel and then a little bit of additional retail.

Thank you, Mary.

Thank you, Mary. Next conversation topic that was brought up was around parking. Right now, we're providing 93 parking spots. Code specifies one stall per key, two stalls for a manager unit, and one and a half spots per housing unit. Code states, therefore, would be 100 parking stalls, 93 for the hotel, two for a manager unit, and four and a half for three employee housing units rounded up to five. We are requesting a mixed use parking reduction of 7%. We do have the adjacent building that has access for 12 spots across our parking lot. The use that we have is very complimentary to that building. It is a commercial use. The majority of those businesses are open during daytime hours. the majority of hotel guests park at night. That being said, we've provided a couple of comparable hotels on here in the area and in other mountain towns, including the Homewood Suites in Steamboat Springs, which is another extended stay product. Homewood Suites is the equivalent of a residence and it's just Hilton, not Marriott. and show what their average stalls per key are compared to where we will be just to show that we have enough parking for this hotel. We don't want to over park the hotel and we obviously are in the business of making our guests happy. We wouldn't be seeking a hotel or a parking variance if we thought that our guests were going to come in and then not have a place to park. We would obviously do very poorly our revenue side if that was the case and so we prepared this simpler chart although there was a longer chart provided in the original application as well but just for presentation purposes we just distilled it down here a little bit Okay, speaking to community benefit and tax revenues, this is the chart that we've put together that's based on estimated revenues for the town and Roaring Fork School District, including RAFTA and the Early Childhood District. This is a combination of Our property taxes, our sales taxes, and our lodging tax, as a reminder, lodging tax here is 6%. 2% of it is devoted to the town's subsidized housing program, and so that's where the $1.4 million of the 6% lodging tax goes to the town. $578,000 to RAFTA, $181,000 to the Early Childhood District, and then the balance of this from various fees, property taxes, et cetera. The total $15.4 million is total benefit, including county, et cetera. The 11.8 million is our estimate over 10 years, and that's including our construction period for the, revenues generated by the hotel. And if we would like to go to it, we did set up an appendix, too, so you can just see the breakdown of where all of the mill levies go, all of the sales taxes go, if you'd like to have more detail than what we've got on the screen here in terms of a summary of revenues generated from the asset. Okay, there are some items that we wanted to address just in terms of being a good neighbor for the homes that are nearby here. And the items that we've obviously heard a lot about are parking, protecting residential space, maintenance and security, light pollution. You know, we touched on light pollution. One of the other big items there is that we did get a waiver from Marriott to not only reduce the number of signs that we're going to have on our building, but reduce the size of those signs. The exterior lighting that we have is here to minimize light spill and fixtures are going to be shielded downward where it's practical. In terms of maintenance and security, some of the comments we heard is, hey, we don't want guest kids playing on the playground next to us. We don't want our We want the park to make sure that the park next to us, which is private, remains private. We are all for providing signage at the edge of our property line that explains you can go over to Crown Mountain Park. That's the public park where you can go to recreate. We will also address this at the front desk. There's a number of things that our front desk team typically address when they check in, whether it's where you're supposed to park, where you might like to go to eat. We typically create a script, and we're happy to include in that script, please go to Crown Mountain Park. There's a private park that is next door to us, and that's one of the ways that we are seeking to mitigate that issue. Outdoor areas have bear-proof trash cans. We're also a brand standard hotel, which means that we have inspections from groups that aren't even the town, right? So if we're not cleaning up our property, if it doesn't look good, We have problems with Marriott, and there's serious financial repercussions for that. It's not just a slap on the wrist, you gotta pick up your trash around the property. There's personal guarantees from John and I on the performance of the asset. So if we were to default on that obligation, it would be seriously problematic for John and I. Of course, regular landscaping, snow removal, litter collection. And then we did reach out to Eagle County because there was some discussion about protecting residential space. Eagle County agreed to put a no through traffic sign if the neighbors would like to have that added at the start of Sopris Village Drive. We'll put the signage on there to direct residents to Crown Mountain Park. And our quiet hours are 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. And then parking, you know, the question about just overflow and parking, I think that we've addressed that. But we do ask our guests to put a parking tag in the window so we know that they're a guest of the hotel. If for some reason someone were to choose to drive around and park on Sippers Village Drive, I'd presume that that car would get towed. That is all we have, and I'm happy to take questions. Really appreciate you listening to our reintroduction of the presentation.

Thank you very much. We'll open up for Commissioner questions. No comments at this point, and we do questions for the applicant as well as for the staff at this point. Bill, since you missed last time, I'll start with you.

All right, I only have one question, and this is regarding the- Who are you? This is involving the site plan and the circulation plan that you guys put in the packet that we have. How close to final is that or is that highly schematic?

It's very close to final. We've worked with Planning and Fire on that at length ahead of time to try and get it as close to what we believe should be final, but I may ask if you have a suggestion.

We're not into comments yet, but once we do, I'll talk about that. I was just trying to figure out how malleable we were at the moment.

It's very close to final the challenge here, of course accommodating, you know, we've wanted to have a little bit of extra parking But we were asked to include the fire access gate off of sopress village by the fire department so then we ended up doing the gate and we did None the permeable path there and so we laid this out in the best way we could just to not only satisfy that requirement from the fire department but then also protect against going over top of the water line that runs to service village making sure that the massing is majority against the back of city market and not against service village. That answers my question. OK thank you.

So I don't have any questions at this moment.

You know one clarification the parking sharing agreement with the retail next door is that currently in place or is that

Yes. I believe it's been in place since the PUD was organized.

Okay. It's been in place.

It is certainly in place now.

While we're in parking, just a little confused call. I thought you said we were getting a 16% parking reduction and then I heard 8%.

I can clear that up. The reduction that the applicant has proposed was related to the reduction just for a part of the I can't say where you got your 7% from but that's it was excluding the parking parking sharing and staff for our reviews including both the parking sharing and the remainder of the reduction that makes up that need from 81 to 98 all right or 97 and a half.

puts us in an awkward spot. What are we discussing, a 16% reduction or a 7% reduction?

I would review the reduction as listed by staff. The numbers are the same. The only other note I would make is that staff has deemed it appropriate to include the manager's unit requirement that was previously required by code as part of the 4 and 1 half units because of the commercial mitigation that's being satisfied on site, if that makes sense. OK.

The proposed F.A.R. cap would run with the land. Yes. Yeah. With the development. Yeah.

And it'd be specific to the hotel development plan.

And then finally you have a one foot parapet to shield mechanical. Haven't we in the past allowed taller shielding of roof structures.

Yeah, we've allowed taller roof structures to shield renewable energy devices like solar panels.

Not general mechanical?

In certain PUDs, we've allowed that as well, like Willitts Town Center has an allowance of up to 10 feet for screening.

Felt like we had discussed that. Are your mechanicals gonna be visible from the highway?

There would be portions of it that would be visible from the highway. Of course, we'll seek as best we can to hide it. Where the one foot is going to help is when you're at the street level. If you're walking down the path, that's certainly going to hide it better. If you're on the highway, you're going to see more, for sure. That's all. Kyle.

Question on waiving the school fees, that if the school gives a letter. That's just the standard. That's the standard language. And then kind of in relation to FAR too, my computer's frozen on this, but they have a proposed third amendment to the annexation agreement in the package, which would take the height variance, the parking variance, and I believe the FAR. I can't scroll down for the FAR. So it would run with the land and no longer become part of this development application.

Well staff is proposing in the conditions of approval that the floor area allowance would be specific for the hotel development here.

But if it's for changing the annexation agreement that gets recorded and then they sell the land to somebody else that new owner has all of these rights now running with the land.

Yes specific to the hotel development.

Well, no, because we'd be putting a C2 zoning on it.

C3.

We'd be changing the zoning. All these things they could record. Yes. Now it runs with the land.

but the the annexation agreement is supposed to be consistent with the development approvals so they would likely have to amend that third amended annexation agreement to be consistent with the approvals and the draft conditions would require the floor area and the height as required for the hotel specifically. So.

But they'd already have a height variance granted to them.

I think what he's saying is that you have to build this specific approved hotel to get those variances that we're allowing, which aren't variances. We're altering the PUD agreement commensurate with this application. So if they sell it to somebody else, they don't have a blanket height

But if you grant this, they can file the annexation agreement and get it recorded.

Yes.

Without building anything.

Yes. And letting their vesting rights lapse. and therefore it goes to the land. We talked about this last time, Bill.

Yeah, I missed that. So my understanding of this in the past is that in order to gain those things, even though they go with the property and the annexation agreement and the PUD, you still have to build this specific building to get them. Is that correct?

That's correct.

How do you do that legally? You, if someone is looking, if I'm buying their land in the future, I'm going to look at the PUD and what's allowed. It's going to say C2 zoning with these heights and these now runs with the land. I know I can't, I just have to apply to build something else, but I now have a height variance.

But it's specific to building the hotel and so the annexation agreement would also cover vested rights. And so if you're a potential buyer of that property in the future, you're gonna have the discussion of vested rights in that annexation agreement to inform you that you're only able to get that height change for that specific hotel development.

I would love for the attorney to weigh into that at some point, maybe in front of counsel. Sure. I don't necessarily agree with that. Okay, that's everything for me. Thank you.

Ben, any questions?

Kyle asked my questions.

Cool. Thanks for asking about the school if you had the same question. Yeah, yeah. We're going to open up for a public hearing in a minute or two, so hold on. We're coming to you. When you're looking at the new light systems that you're looking at, how does that compare to what's on site right now?

That's a great question.

I'd have to get back to you on what those numbers are. All I know is that what we have planned to put in here is within code and then with the backlight control even better. I'm sorry, I don't know. No, no, it's fair.

Just as you were talking, I wanted to do this. For staff, we will have another shot at this if it gets through us in council. They'll come back final. No, this is one round. Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you for that and just for clarification on the traffic study so you were trying to compare the trips and I appreciate you taking a conservative route and looking at a more full-on hotel than just you know what you're proposing but there is a huge difference in the timing of the day correct when those trips will happen yes you know our traffic problems are in the morning going up Valley you know and then coming down Valley and so 45 conservative trips compared to 60 trips coming to the movie theater on a Friday or Saturday night to me are not Apple to Apple so was that in considerations was that something that this you know in the studies was looked at or Was it kept kind of separate? Sure. I'm going to let Mary weigh in on the daily. Thanks, Mary. Thank you.

Perfect. Yeah, of course. Thank you, Commissioner. So we did take a look. Apples to apples. So it is the peak hour in the weekday. AM is 7 to 9 and then PM is 4 to 6. And those are the peak hours of the adjacent street traffic, just like you were mentioning. So the rush hour traffic going down 82, then up 82 in the afternoon. Those are the trips that are being generated by the existing development and then also by the potential future development. So we don't look at any weekends or peak hours specific to the movie theater. For example, we have trip generation potential for the movie theater on a Friday, and that's twice as much traffic. So we don't keep that into consideration when we do the comparison.

Thank you for that clarification. There are no more questions. We're going to open this up for a public hearing at 646. I see there's a lot of people online already. Dan, I know your hand's been up for a while, so maybe I'll give you an opportunity in a second. When you come up, please be respectful. State your name, your location, and if you can keep your comments to three minutes or under, that would be appreciated. But everybody can do that. Dan, since you were waiting online, do you want to? You want to say what you want to say or a question?

Dan, if you'd like to make comments, you can unmute.

Yeah, are you able to hear me?

Yes.

All right, good. I had a question, I guess a couple, two questions, and I wanted to say thank you to the applicants for addressing a lot of the comments from last round. One is specifically, has anybody looked into the water infrastructure and how that's gonna play a role in terms of, does the current system have a capacity for the added intake and outtake of the water for that many rooms, that many people showering and laundry, et cetera? Maybe I'll pause and I can ask my second question after that.

Thank you, Dan. Colton, do you want to jump in?

I can just add, it was noted earlier, but the water utility for this site, which is Mid Valley Metro District, has provided a will serve letter for this application, which ensures the capacity for the water utility to serve this commercial use.

All right, great. Thank you so much. My second question, being a resident of Stokers Village, I appreciate that you've been taking measures to try to mitigate any kind of bleed over, whether that's traffic or people into our neighborhood. I was just curious if you'd be considering any other types of modifications along that border to the south. For for the you know, the access road into so first village, you know, maybe some type of more robust barriers to kind of mitigate people walking over into the neighborhood into the private park, etc. A concrete barrier or something similar or something that's a little bit more substantial than just brush or sorry, you know, shrubbery that may or may not take with our dry conditions here in Colorado.

Thank you, Dan Carlton applicant. I'll let the applicant answer that but maybe we continue with public comment okay yeah Dan we're gonna come back to that let everybody comment and then we'll kind of refer back to that before we get into Commissioner comments if there's anybody in the audience who'd like to talk come on up

I'm actually, I'm coming into this a little bit behind. No worries. Name, please. I'm going to. No worries. My name's Alan Stiers. I live at 80 Arapahoe. Thank you, Alan. One street over from the proposed development. Okay. We already have one bad neighbor, city market. Okay. The trash, the traffic, the just untidiness of the back of that building is despicable. City of Basalt does nothing to help. Zero. Okay. That's not my question. I just want to bring that up. Anyway, what I'm questioning, well, first I'd like to ask, is there a plan that shows the traffic flow? Is that something we can have to hold and look at?

I think it's in the public record with the minutes from today.

So we do have that available for us. Can we get a copy of that somewhere?

On the town website, yes.

Okay. Second question about this height variance. And I believe this gentleman here, I don't know what his name is, is absolutely correct. When you record something, it goes with the land. It doesn't go with the property. They will have vested rights to do whatever they want. They can tear it down and build whatever. But with that said, are they requesting a height variation on this even less than what they wanted but still more than what is allowed? Is that what I'm understanding?

My understanding is it fits within the PUD for the site.

Okay, so City Market can build to 34 feet?

That I don't know. James?

No, City Market's locked in to the size that they're...

So they can only build to that height if this goes through?

Without a PUD amendment, they're locked in.

They would have to go back through another PUD and do the whole nine yards, okay. All right. Also, on the lighting, I assume this meets with dark skies?

Town of Basalt does not require dark sky lighting compliance. It's compliance.

100% dark sky lighting.

The Town of Basalt does not require dark sky community lighting standards.

So you do not require dark sky? No. The Town of Basalt does not require dark sky.

We have our own lighting standards, and the applicant has proposed standards that meet the Town of Basalt's lighting standards.

I'm sure they have. I'm sure it's less. Okay, my last question. They're going to, how much is the proposed development gonna cost?

Not in our purview.

Somebody has to have a conceptual estimate.

It's not in our purview, so.

100 million, whatever. My point being, whatever that number is, they're willing to put up $50 worth of signs that say do not access the park for this beautiful building they're gonna build, okay? I think there should be a little more goodwill on their part because they're devaluing all the properties that are adjacent to this. And all they're willing to do is put up a few signs The people that live next to this property have their homes devalued. Right now, they've just lost who knows how much money. Everybody in Silvers Village has lost money because of this new development. We used to have a community area where people could go, watch their movies, enjoy it with their family. Now, we have an area where people are going to come, they're going to do whatever they do, and leave.

Alan, thank you for your comments.

And we get nothing in return, that's a bad neighbor.

Fair enough. Thank you.

Good evening members of the Planning and Zoning Commission and fellow neighbors. My name is Susan Sullivan and I'm a resident of Missouri Heights. I'm standing here tonight along with many of my neighbors to ask this commission to recommend denial of the proposed Marriott residence in redevelopment at the former Movie Land property in Orchard Plaza. We all know change is inevitable and the closure of Movie Land left a void in our community. But the solution to an empty building cannot be unchecked out of scale commercialism that fundamentally ignores this town's long term vision. We can't change all the rules so people can come here and make money. Why do we have rules in the first place? I ask you. Developers not asking for a minor variance. They're asking us to completely tear up our existing community agreements. I want to highlight three major reasons why this proposal fails the town of Basalt. First, the sheer size and scale are entirely incompatible. Existing agreements for this parcel allow for about 15,000 square feet. The developer is asking to build a massive 60,000 plus square foot three story corporate hotel. to add to the element which I understand is part of Marriott to begin with and Hoffman. And they're not 100% full every night. There are plenty of empty beds in this area that we can fill without building a hotel. That's a staggering 400% increase over what was deemed appropriate for this location. This massive footprint will permanently alter our skyline, block views, and challenge the dark sky standards that this valley fights so hard to protect. Second, it completely swaps community development for corporate profit. Community benefit. Community development just rolls off my tongue. previous zoning was intentionally designed for a movie theater a place where families gathered local kids worked Susan can you go a little closer to the microphone please thank you I'll waddle right away from it To add insult to injury, a project of this magnitude is offering just three deed-restricted housing units. A massive commercial driver like Marriott will exacerbate our severe valley-wide workforce housing crisis, not help solve it. Third, the strain of our infrastructure. Our valley's already gridlocked, and their traffic numbers are cast as if they're the only thing being built in this valley. And we know there's at least five proposals sitting out there right now for that same intersection. It'll create a log jam on East Valley Road and Highway 82. Combine that with the increased pressure on our local water supply and infrastructure, the lines at the grocery store, the two-month appointments to get in the doctors. And the math simply doesn't add up for our town's safety and quality of life. We have a rare and beautiful opportunity with a former movie land site. It could be a vibrant community center, a rec facility, or truly meaningful local housing. We must ask ourselves, does a massive corporate hotel align with the 2020 Basalt Master Plan? Does it protect the character of the valley? The answer is an unequivocal no. Please listen to the residents who care deeply about this valley, who sit in traffic to red lights every day. Do not approve these radical changes to our land use height and square footage standards. They were developed for a reason and we as neighbors paid for those. We paid for those because we pay the county and the town. We pay for all of this. Hold the line for our community. Reject this massive Marriott proposal and let's advocate for a future at this site that actually puts Basalt residents first, because guess what? Developers matter, but we matter more.

Thank you, Susan. Just a reminder as you're talking, there's a lot of people who like to speak. If we can be brief and to the point, we'd appreciate that, just so we're not here until 12 o'clock tonight. Thank you.

Good evening, Joe Suena, 205 Riverside Drive, here in Basalt. No questions, just straight comments. For those who may know, I've been here 46 years, all hotel management, currently in your comp set, so I know your numbers. Just so you guys, with their proposing for occupancies, right on board. Revenue, a little optimistic, but that changes daily. total number of employees required to run the hotel right on one or two. Traffic counts, you're right, it's not six o'clock at movie time. It's throughout the morning, throughout the evening, three to six o'clock, it's really busy. The element has 68 parking spaces if you count around shared, you know the bank Formerly capital delhi in front of sunday's you have about a hundred and eighteen spots and they're used all the time Yeah, all right. There's definitely empty times grantee played Pickleball in the middle of parking lot sometimes but they'll fill up and Let's see, parapet walls, reducing the height one foot when we had snow is scary on a mechanical roof. So if you're gonna reduce that, definitely, I'm not sure if it's at town council, if it's PNZ, put up a safety railing somehow, even with the cable, because you're gonna walk right off that wall. I've been in full service hotels, Fort Lauderdale, we have RT units, rooftop mechanical units, where you can see from the beach, you have to screen them, do not put canvas, it's gonna blow open, put a hard wall, give room, 10, 15 years from now we'll be placing that piece of equipment with the crane, so give yourself plenty of room up there. um i'm for it you know i'm the competitor uh for the ladies saying there's plenty of hotel room empty beds i wish you know uh there's nights when we're oversold and you definitely need another place even the little 25 room hotels here We all work together. Many nights, even in June. I mean, we just cranked out major numbers in June. It was 90% occupancy, year-round occupancy is about 76%. So the numbers are right there. That's all I have to say. Good luck.

Thank you.

Good evening with Planning and Zoning. My name is Richard Stettner. I live at 721 Hearthstone Drive. I've lived here for 16 years in both Willits and Old Town. I'm in the hospitality industry. I've run the Limelight Hotels up in Aspen, worked for the Aspen Institute. We have a 98-room hotel up there. We're running over 90% occupancy this summer. We have seen a dramatic shift in business of people coming down to Basalt, Carbondale, and Glenwood because the price point is so high up there. So the occupancy numbers that have been referred to, I believe I'm 100%. We need a more affordable place. The hotel doesn't have a restaurant, so that's going to be more people going into the restaurants that have now opened up in this area. We've had a Whole Foods, we've had a Starbucks, Mezzaluna, other restaurants come and grow here. So we have the ability to handle the increased traffic down here. The design is much better than what you have there now. I'd hate to see that lot end up like the old Clark's Market did across the street here, fenced up with nothing there for many years. So this cleans up the backside of Simi Market, that area. It will be a productive use of that space. Ben Moss, I've known him for years. He and his family have long ties to the valley here, and I think they'll do right by this project. So thank you for considering it. Have a great night.

Thanks, Richard. Thanks, Richard.

Good evening, I'm Kinsey. My name is Carter Johnson. I'm a Sopras Village resident at 97 Cheyenne. My house currently backs up to the city market. So if Basalt's idea of low light is what they have, those are like stadium lights. My house with their latest upgrade has a bright light shining in it all the time You're welcome to come over and try to sleep without a blackout curtain if that's what low light means then that's tragic I'd love to see City Market have to low light their lights and I have a concern that nobody has addressed the sound of all the generators. We're gonna have air conditioning in the summer. We're gonna have heat in the winter. If you've ever gone by some of the hotels, you just hear a constant whirring and loud generators running, and I don't think that is pleasant sound for anybody. We are already in a dense area. If you've gone over to Willits, The cars, people, parking, still an issue with the element or trying to get to any of the restaurants around there. I don't feel we need more of that. We're already so packed in, it's kind of hard to get around. Not even easy getting out of Soper's Village anymore if you try to pull out on Willits Lane. And I just feel like if we should have an emergency, all the people when we had the fire July 4th in 2018 all the people that were here at that time and believe me there's been a lot of development since then it was a backup it was frightening you could not move and there was a wildfire and as fast as the wildfires are moving these days that is another deep concern of mine because I'm still a little shell-shocked from the 2018 fire and I hate to see that happen and us be trapped for real because we have so many more cars now on our roads than we did then and now we're talking so many more I just want to express my concerns and I hope they're addressed thank you

My name is Ted Guy. I live at 165 Swinging Bridge Lane. On the employee generation, they referred to the Durango property as about 60 rooms in 13 people. So El Jubail is going to be 50% larger. Why aren't the numbers of employees 50% larger? So I think they made a mistake there. It should be 19 to 20. So far as the architecture, they took the lipstick off the pig. It's still a pig. Traffic, I think, is one of the worst problems. We are service level F every morning, every night. This will make it much worse. They're asking for 400% increase in FAR. I think you should say no. Three stories is too tall. Everything around there is two stories. This building should be restricted to two stories. The tax numbers, those were 10 year according to what he said. So you're not making one point four million dollars every year you're making one hundred and forty thousand dollars every year. It looked like the roads and one of the maps that was in the packet shows the existing circulation around the eligibility bill in the raft of parking. That's changing drastically. And I think they need to show how that's going to, how they're going to impact all that. Because now all that traffic from the eligibility intersection, if I understand it right, will now go right next to the park, the Sopras Village Park. I thought last meeting Annie Clapper's idea of using, repurposing the movie theater was a fantastic idea. And I think this is a horrible idea. Just say no.

Thanks, Ted.

Hi, my name's Joel, I live in Sopris Village. I've been a resident of the valley for 34 years, so what I'm about to say is probably pretty predictable. The first thing I wanted to address is I think we're conflating demand and need. Yes, we have a great valley, we have nice parks, we have nice people, we have great rivers, great mountain bike trails. Obviously people wanna come here, but that doesn't mean we're obligated to provide hotel rooms for every single person that wants to come visit. At some point, you get to a point of diminishing returns when you're sacrificing the product. I do understand why Marriott and developers wanna build a hotel. They're gonna reap a profit. I also get the numbers from the taxes that basalt is gonna generate a lot of money, the thing that I don't understand is what are we gonna get out of it? I live in Sopra's Village, I'm not gonna get anything. None of these people are gonna get anything, and anybody that lives in the valley is not gonna get anything. What we will get are people and traffic. And I can't remember the last time I stood in Willits and looked around and thought, wow, if we just had more people, this would be great. The second thing I'd like to address is even if there's a hotel in our future, which I hope there's not, we have two international hotels right now. We have Marriott Element, and we have Hoffman, which is a Hilton, and we're talking about a third. Even if we do have to have a third, I'm not sure if the Residence Inn is the right choice. I was down in Glenwood looking at the Residence Inn. On my way there, I passed Walmart. I pulled into the Residence Inn parking lot, which had PetSmart, Target, Big Five Sporting Goods, Lowe's across the parking lot, and Chili's. It wasn't that great of an experience. It's not that special. Basalt is the gem of the valley and deserves something a little more special than a Residence Inn. My third point I'd like to make is the residence inn is an extended stay hotel. And a big part of the demographic that stays there is called project specific workers. What that's gonna mean in our valley is a project specific worker is gonna be a construction crew. And they're gonna come from out of state, which is fine, I'm a construction worker. But what's not fine is the reason developers bring in out of state workers is because the labor rate is lower. And so by approving this hotel and creating essential dormitories for construction workers, you're gonna be sabotaging the wages of your own citizens. Finally, I would like to say that the one thing we have in our advantage one more second. I guess there's a fourth point This is a PUD and I just want to remind everybody what that means if this was zone commercial They could submit for a permit and they'd probably be building there's a PUD in place which means the town council has to approve the change and For everybody here and online, the way to address this is to call the town council and let them know how you feel. Thanks very much. Thank you, Joel.

Hello, my name's Michael Miners. I live in Sulphurs Village. I didn't hear anything in the Good Neighbor Plan that guaranteed us any type of monitoring on our well. It was discussed at the last meeting and seemed to be received well, but even though they made some comment about protecting our water line, they didn't make any kind of mention about our well, which is approximately 300 feet from the parking lot there. There was a monitor well installed with cooperation from the town of Basalt and Rafta when the park and ride was built. And the town agreed to participate in monitoring that quality of that for five years. And since then, that time has lapsed. But I would like, if you're considering approval of this, that the burden for monitoring the quality of our water, the safety of our water, be transferred over to these developers. You know, another big thing that's going on there with the El Jebel intersection reconstruction is there's a new park and ride being built which is about triple the size of the one that's in place now and beneath that is a giant underwater retention center for stormwater drainage and I think it's important that the hotel coordinate with them so that there is additional consideration for the drainage from the hotel parking lot and the roof structures to be incorporated into that system so it's not just running down the road to the next dry well in city market or wherever uh... one thing i would also note with the parking while it may be close to meeting your requirement uh... the developer stated that these rooms can sleep six people and as the last speaker just noted many of those will be construction workers So I have to think that there'll be a minimum, if there's a six person occupancy, there'll be a minimum of three vehicles per room. And so when it comes to parking and traffic, I think these estimates, whether they're based on manuals or whatever, are grossly low. There's gonna be more vehicles, more traffic than, even though it meets code requirement or close, it's not realistic. Now, whether the developer or their traffic engineer has any local experience or not, maybe that's beside the point because it's all data. But if you live here and you try to get from the Emma Road to El Jebel from 3 o'clock to 7 o'clock, you know how long it's going to take. And likewise in the morning, if you get on at the roundabout at Willits, it's bumper-to-bumper gridlock until you get past the second light and basalt. So, you know, it's all a matter of perspective, I guess. But for me, I don't get it, you know. The Roaring Fork Valley is a very special place, always has been. And every one of these proposals that comes forward and seeks more and more compromise is slowly turning this into any other boulevard in any major city so i would ask you in your position your recommendation is no compromise if you choose to approve it approve it by what's in the code and on the books we don't need lesser product and finally thank you thank you thank you i'll be back

Hi, my name is Emily Suter. I live in Missouri Heights. I was here last time and was behooved by a lot of the discussion to look at the Basalt Master Plan. And there are little, some nuggets here that just don't jive with this particular development. One of them that popped out at me was talking about all the different areas in Basalt that you guys were including in your master plan. The Crown Mountain area says development of new recreational facilities with Crown Mountain Park is currently limited by traffic congestion at the El Jebel Road Highway 82 intersection. This is not going to make any, this is not going to help. It also says the town would prefer that new facilities be located close to the El Jebel Road Highway 82 intersection to encourage users to access bus service. So I beseech you as the members of BESALT to follow up on that. Let's pursue that. This is like the perfect spot. There's no other options. So how can we pursue and be creative and be proactive in figuring out what to do with that lot as a town, as opposed to coming up and approving the first thing that shows up? I think there's a lot more room for creativity for you. Another little tidbit I did is I did a search on the Basalt Master Plan, and Hotel came up 33 times and each time it was related to Clark's Market. Housing came up 183 times. That should give you a sense of what your master plan has defined as priorities for this town. It's not a hotel. Thank you.

Thanks Emily.

My name is Brian Hippona. I live in Sopas Village off of Cheyenne Avenue. And as a realtor and neighbor to the proposed development right on Cheyenne, the location of the current site plan will be a dramatic and significant loss in property values for all the adjacent neighbors as well as Sopas Village due to loss of privacy, noise, traffic, light pollution, aesthetics views, and safety. What does the applicant propose to do? With the good family plan, it needs to really address the immediate neighbors right along Cheyenne, who can see, visualize, hear all the construction, all hours of the night, and do something about it. Mainly, I propose the applicant working with Holy Cross. to bury our power lines. Right now, Holy Cross has an easement when our trees are blocking or obstructing their lines, they can go in and cut down, and that gives a clear view to where the hotel will be. Also, I'm not sure, I haven't seen the landscaping plan, if there's rows of trees along that sidewalk. the bike path what I propose that the applicant plan a row of 30 to 40 foot trees all along that adjacent bike path to shield from you know ongoing hotel occupants and for us to be able to see into them because our bedroom window is looking right at right at the hotel and if they can to update the current fencing because I know we can go up to eight feet make them taller with noise dampening you know to again protect and preserve at least what we have thank you as i'm not seeing anybody else again oh sorry

my name is Megan Chester I've been in the valley for 35 years and I don't have any questions on the project I just wanted to give my two cents and align with a lot of the other people here about how we really feel like the focus of the direction of this valley is really misaligned with what the community needs and wants and And just to provide more income for developers because people want to come here should not be our focus at all. And I do agree there's other there's a lot of other opportunities that could benefit the community with that property whether it's senior housing, community center. I mean, I'd even see, I'd rather see a storage unit than something that's just gonna bring more people that just is stressing our infrastructure. You know, we all know Ohio 82, the buses you can't even ride. They're stand up only. It's so crowded. I mean, I haven't seen a sheriff up in Missouri Heights in I don't know how long, because they're so busy. There's so much going on. We just don't have the infrastructure to encourage more people to come and not contribute but to stress our valley. So I just ask that you refocus on what we should be doing in this valley and not approve something like another hotel that we as a community do not need. The outsiders might need it but we in the community do not need it. So that's my two cents.

Thank you Megan.

Years back, I worked for a builder, and we built all those units over there. That was when Bob Ritchie, you remember that guy? Yeah, Bob Ritchie was the backer on all that. Originally, they came in with this master plan that was just unbelievable. The density was just crazy. It got shot down 10 times. Ted Guy was the architect on the project. It got shot down more times than not. These guys walk in with a plan. And the only thing I've seen so far that they've really shown me is they've got this chart that says how much money you guys are all going to get. That's really what it seems like we're talking here. It's about how much money they can put back in. It's not about us. It's not about what's going to make it better for us, because this isn't going to make it better. It will not make it better. And you guys see tax revenues. And the only reason you have those tax revenues is because you annexed land all the way down through various means to get to city market. So you could have those tax resources. Now you're going a step farther. Then you'll go another step farther. We may not have a vote on this, but all I know is you're taking the first plan that comes across your desk, they're throwing out numbers, you're going to get $11 million over 10 years and all this stuff, and that's what I think you're seeing. You're seeing stars in the sky, but you're not seeing what the impact's going to be at the end of the day. Please deny this plan, go back, re-figure what's going to be the best for everybody. For the village of Soper's village, for the people of Basalt, and by the way, that's not Basalt, that's El Jebel. Basalt is here, okay? So please, don't approve it, because the first thing that comes across your desk is never the best thing.

Thank you, Alan.

My name is David Johnson. I live on Cheyenne in Soper's Village. I invite all of you to go behind the strip mall that's right there, behind the nail salon and further down towards City Market. Take a look at that meandering path that was part of the proposal of the City Market, whoever the developer was at that time. created. It's all weeds now. It gets mowed once a year. They knock down the weeds. Also, the trees that were planted back there when they first did it, half of them have died. Also, if you look at the uh... the back of the businesses there it's a lot of it is just storage there's uh... stuff everywhere we've called assault try to get more come over there and look at everything we finally got somebody probably assault uh... to discourage the parking in the fire lanes behind that area they did replant some stuff and they did make make it so soft car if the cars do pull in there and park they can't get out but please turn this project down it's just not worth it for the community thank you thank you david

Seeing that there's no more movement up, we will close the public hearing at seven.

What's that? Sorry, online.

Is there people that?

Yeah, if you'd like to make comments online, please raise your hand.

Ma'am, do you want to come up?

It doesn't look like we have anybody raising their hands.

There's a lady behind you.

There's a lady behind you, Jim. I'll put it online. Okay. Fair enough. Seeing as there's no one online, no one here that wishes to make any more comments, we will close the public hearing at 7.24. There were a couple of questions raised. Normally, we would go into commissioner comments. Carlton, you want to address anything?

Yeah. I can answer a couple of the questions that were brought up during public comment. The first one I'll address Mr. Miner's comment regarding well monitoring. Although I did not address it in my staff memo and I apologize for that, staff has included a comment as a part of the draft conditions that was included as part of the staff memo. I will read this verbatim. The applicant shall provide a draft well monitoring agreement for review by the town attorney and Soper's Village HOA within 180 days of this approval and before building permit issuance. Here the staff has suggested in this draft comment that the applicant negotiate the conditions of a well monitoring agreement based on the previous well monitoring agreement mediated by the town attorney between the Sopers Village HOA and the applicant. So I thought I would address that. There was one additional question that I think I can address regarding planting of landscaping elements. Just for the reference of everybody in this room and listening online. Planning and Zoning Commission had an open site visit at 5 o'clock this evening where we Walked the site and addressed some of the constraints the physical constraints that exist on site There's a 50-foot utility easement that exists between the Soper's village HOA And where the building would be proposed approximately So there would be some constraints due to underground utilities as to what could be planted the applicant has provided a landscaping plan and the level or the height and the root base of those plantings meet the needs of respecting that easement. So that's how I can address that at this time. That's all that I have right now. Anything that you'd like to address?

Yeah, sounds good. Thank you very much. I'd just like to address a couple of the comments that came up here. Currently, we're requesting 40% of what C3 zoning is and limiting ourselves to that amount at 0.8 FAR versus the two limit in C3. I'm going to just go through a couple of these quickly to try and be as judicious with time as we can. We do have onsite water treatment to address stormwater before it leaves the site built into our plan. In terms of demand for the hotel and the people that we accommodate, it's not just project business. It's a number of people who service the towns that we also build our hotels in. That could be forest firefighters, CDOT, food delivery drivers. Of course, there's a big leisure component. There's families that do wanna come here that are gonna come here. and they're either gonna stay in a hotel or they're gonna stay in a short-term rental, right? And a short-term rental takes housing supply out of the community and we provide an alternative where short-term rentals are not getting more demand, which tends to help with the housing. Of course, I'd like to also emphasize that our revenue projections are not meant to sort of provide anything other than show the community impact in addition to what we're already putting into the project. It takes a lot of capital invested to build this. That's a huge risk to John and I. We're not a large corporation. Marriott's a franchise. We franchise that brand. Our company is five people in total, including John and myself. We started this firm in our kitchen tables in 2021. We're not a large corporation coming in to ruin anyone's town Construction noise we don't do construction at night. We don't have a generator planned for the hotel and as Carlton mentioned were Certainly amenable to addressing a water all agreement to make to satisfy that That ask I think that that's everything. Did I miss anything that you would like me to address? I think you got it. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to open it up now for commissioner comments. I'm going to start over here this time.

Jen, we'll start with you. I just want to remind the room first that we're just an advisory board to town council. We're not elected officials. We don't get paid. And if you guys feel passionate about any issue, Get out there and let people know. Vote. Talk to your elected officials. Write letters. Come to town council meetings and talk to it. It does make a difference.

And the follow up with that is, and we don't know what we're going to do next, but if it does get approved, you're going to have another go in front of council. They're the ones who make the final decision, not us. So you're going to have another chance to influence them. And they will see all your comments and the notes and everything else. So thank you for that. And let me bring it back to what we're doing. Yes, Carlton.

I'll make one self-serving note here. If you do care about land use in the Mid-Valley, care about land use in the town of Basalt, we're hosting an open house with regard to our land use code changes tomorrow from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Basalt Regional Library. Love to see you there.

To the business of it. Ben, any comments at this point?

Yeah, I got several. I want to bring up a few things here that I do not believe the applicant has satisfied in this application based on what we continued yesterday or the last meeting. see there has been no attempt to adjust any of the traffic movements in or out of this shopping plaza we talked about the conditions that are out there in the existing state and how challenging they are there are no improvements outside of this lot 2a which could potentially produce or satisfy in a multitude of ways the ability for traffic to move in and out, pedestrians to move in and out of this area. As far as it relates to protecting the water line and the easement that we mentioned in the last meeting, you've placed an EV charger right in the dead center of their water easement. While that's easy to move, I think it, again, speaks to what we as a town are saying is important here and the attention to detail that we want as a town to have our infrastructure respected. i still don't understand and i think i agree here with uh commissioner uh the don't worry about my last name as to as to the legalese here as to what runs with land and what runs with the application this property has prescriptive protections in place and know the applicant here has said that the 2a parcel is 34 feet from finished floor to top of roof but we measure it from the mid height of that roof that is also a second a two-story building and not a three-story building and and the character of this neighborhood from City Market North is is two-story in nature and I think that that's really something that's critical here as as commonality between these buildings as it relates to the the infrastructure as well I CONTINUE TO ASK MYSELF, WHAT ARE WE GETTING AS IMPROVEMENTS AS A RESULT OF THIS APPLICATION TO THIS TOWN AND OUTSIDE OF $1.4 MILLION TO THE HOUSING FUND? IS THAT TWO HOUSES OVER TEN YEARS? I DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE WE ARE BEING PROVIDED AS A PART OF THIS APPLICATION.

Thank you, Ben. Mr. Overketter.

uh i guess my comments will kind of fall in line with my questions and just as the land sits today this is not allowed and i guess we're basically just opening it up to c3 zoning with all these variances that are tied to the land and is that truly what we want to do with this land but for us to decide or for council so just concerned with how this is i guess being potentially passed through if there was variances on the project but not on the pd or the annexation or the pud excuse me i could probably feel a little more comfortable with it but it seems uh striking why we're doing it this way so problem

in the packet was goals and objectives of the master plan and so I just went through them goals provide housing that services residents cross no promote promote the development of innovative diverse housing types no place value and mixed-use work live work no create balance economy sustainable economic growth no promote affordable living and diversity housing types no encourage projects mixed-use live work concepts no incorporate distinctive unique architectural landscape no strong support workforce housing no so that's eight um ensure the development projects approved recommend approval walkability access to services and parks so that's a yes promote housing development to have bicycle and pedestrian orientation and encourage housing development at high connective areas i gave that a yes and ensure new commercial development through town is complementary to towns commercial centers that's definitely a yes but so it's eight to three um as far as what we town benefits from this development you know it's it's not adding uh it's not adding much to the mix um and then at the risk of beating the dead horse the traffic you know if it's 92 rooms and the place is empty during the day they said there's 13 trips leaving at peak time in the morning that's not you know realistic at all if people don't scheme between eight and ten there's a lot more cars than that going to the road so um yeah it's uh It's not that it's a bad thing and it would get used, but what is it bringing to the community? I'm sorry. This is our discussion. The last thing I said was that it's not a bad project. It would probably be used, but I question what it brings to our community.

Okay, I have some comments to make. First off, my first comment is I miss movie land. I see Ben Moss is on the participants list as online listening. And I wanted to thank him for running it. As long as he did, but now we got to drive to Rifle to see movies and that kind of blows. I mean you can go to the ISIS, but that's neither here nor there. It's private property and they can do with it what they wish. And also the extra affordable housing unit is actually a really good thing. You know, I ran the numbers myself and there are, because they could really only have to do one unit and they could do cash and lieu for the other, the fractional. So they're doing more than double that and I think That's more than a lot of people do, so I think...

It's a backstory. It's 457 square feet.

I'm just talking about a point. Our code says how you generate the numbers. I know it's a big building, but still, they're doing it by the way the code we wrote says to do it.

Where we started is different from where we are now.

Yeah, but we can, changing the code is a different thing. Anyway, so I wanted to applaud them for that. My next comment is, and I wish Ted Guy were still here, because about 20 years ago, Ted Guy brought a building in front of us, and I said, that building got hit with an ugly stick. And it was the ugliest thing I've ever seen. And this building is more than that. And I'm sorry to say, I've been involved in hospitality for 25 years. It's a stinker. It really is. I know what type of building it is. It's a strip mall kind of motel. It's like the hotels out by DIA. But it even is not really up to that. And I really hope, and this is not a design review board, so we have no teeth in this matter. But as an architect who was involved in hospitality for that long, it just feels terrible. It's the second building you see when you're coming into Basalt from the West. And I hope that it could be better than that. enough of that um but my main my main problem with this building is really the site plan and i think that the site plan is such that it's just a a car oriented building And we ask for a lot more than that. Our master plan says promote housing development to have a bicycle and pedestrian orientation. And it also says incorporate distinctive and unique architectural landscape design in notably highly visible or gateway locations. This building does none of that stuff. And to add these things, um would you know it's site plan stuff so it's not like we're asking you to add building or expensive things to the building i think that this the pedestrian parts of this are just an afterthought there's you know there's one basically one sidewalk doesn't even go down part of the street so getting from this building to the park and ride or the BRT stop, you have to walk across parking lots. I've stayed in hotels at DIA that were death dealing because of that. and we we could get better we can do better than that um because doing so would would would allow this building to fit into a lot of the the problems that are being talked about namely traffic we're steps away from bus rapid transit in a park and ride The building could do a whole lot, not very expensively, to incorporate into that and decrease trips. I guarantee you every maid is going to come on the bus and you don't want to see maids get hit by cars in a parking lot. Fixing that would not be that hard to do. With a hotel like this and a transit system like we have, which is one of the best in the state, a person could fly into the airport, take the BRT to this hotel, stay there, go into Aspen, ski, do whatever the tourist things they do, and never need a car at all. And it could be marketed that way, it could be, doing such a thing like that would fit a lot of the goals of the town. And it doesn't, and it could do that relatively easily without a lot of expense. I know this is a three star hotel, and as such, there's not a lot of amenities you can add to stay within that. But still, I think that would be a major, addition to the town and that's what our master plan asks for. It asks for something exceptional and this building could be exceptional by not doing a whole awful lot to it. My next comment, this is an internal design thing. Again, that's my hospitality hat. The internal procession of the building is god-awful. It is just awful. From the parking lot, you can't see the entry doors. The procession through the lobby is terrible, but it's none of our purview, really. It's not any of our concern. But you guys could do a lot better with that. I mean, it is your hotel. let's see if i got anything else here um no that's mostly mostly at my i think this project could be a lot lot more with not a lot of extra expense um where to start i think

Well, I don't think that this project is there yet, ready for any kind of approval. I don't think the idea of a hotel is bad off the bat. I mean, as much as we may not want other people in the valley, and I totally hear everybody on the traffic and the construction. Our friends and neighbors who are business owners might disagree. I also think with ski co now made Snowmass is part of the base icon pass so you don't have to pay any extra to go to Snowmass and I I think we are gonna get a surge of visitors from that this winter and I think it's gonna be people who are gonna look to stay down Valley because they're gonna be you know people from the French they're not gonna be paying $2,000 a night at the Nell and So, you know, but that said I don't I don't know I don't think this this project is ready yet I guess You know, one of my fears is I wouldn't want to see this property just languish like somebody had mentioned the Clark's market the old Clark's market property across the street and you know, I mean I it is owned by a person who engaged the developers and to do a hotel, so I don't, as much as we might like to see other uses, I don't see that happening unless somebody starts a nonprofit and raises the money to buy this property from the current owner. And I had one other point I was going to make in there about the usage of the property. Oh yeah. Just that I think somebody mentioned this last meeting to like you know kind of be careful what you wish for like you know as long as that property crosses street language now it's like you know overpriced small things marketed towards second homeowners which I don't think serves the town at all. So yeah I just think this property is a bit of a conundrum at the moment. So.

Bob yeah my comments mirror a lot of the other commissioners I do feel the location does seem appropriate for a for a hotel in this type of hotel I feel very similar to Commissioner Leavitt that it just doesn't seem to address the objectives of the master plan by having a hotel there and so close to mass transit have great concerns about the traffic issue and that the numbers don't seem to work and we need to keep in mind that um you know aspen one is building workforce housing community housing that will be accessing highway 82 at the same intersection which is only going to make that intersection that much more crowded and if we had to rank we're not here to rank but that's a higher priority to this community is to have places for our workers and our important people to live at and raise their families at and so we have to keep in mind that that intersection is is changing and this is only going to exasperate the amount of traffic at that intersection um I agree that two-story seems more appropriate than three-story at this location, but it may not be financially feasible for the developers. And also, I guess my last comment, it's by allowing such a change, I know this is a PUD and this is not hard zone land, but by allowing such variances, it sets precedence for other locations in the area that I have concerns about.

Not to belabor what's already been said, gentlemen, I actually think, I wasn't here last meeting, so I read notes, I read what you did there, and I saw what you did. And I feel like you're actually putting in good work, and you're listening to us, and you're trying to find common ground within the parameters of what you work with. I think the things you're hearing from us and from the neighborhood is that maybe you gotta be a lot more creative on your end to meet your product with what we want as a community. We've been improving a lot, we've been changing a lot, but I think at this point, we've got issues around housing, we've got issues around traffic. And I don't know Ben from a hole in the wall, but Ben, you ran a great business for all this time. And I'm sure the movie business did not pay great, especially in the last 10 or 20 years, but there's gotta be a give and take between what the community wants and needs and bringing this forward. Personally, I think your project, what you put forward, I think would be successful. I just don't think it's what we want right now. How we could get to that point, I don't know. It's not necessarily our purview. It's for you to kind of meet the master plan, the things we're saying, so we can get to be a good partnership. And that would be awesome because I don't think, as I think three or four of us or more have said, it's not a bad starting point, but we're not there by any means. So just to kind of emphasize that end of things, those are my comments for right now.

I have a question of staff.

Yes.

In the application, you give us three choices. Recommend approval with conditions, recommend approval with amended conditions,

recommend denial could we ask them to come back with a modified plan yeah I noted that at the beginning so those are the recommendations should you recommend to town council but you can also suggest a continuation or recommend that you know the applicant go back to to work with staff I don't know if there's a better way to word that James or if that's appropriate

just to continue the public hearing to a date certain and then our choice is that the applicants choice it's your choice as the Commission Alan I see your hand but we're gonna kick at this point we've kind of closed the public hearing so we're just gonna go in our little bubble and and I have no idea what the Crawfords are going to do. I can't speculate on that.

I think we have two options in front of us to continue this to a date certain because they've had a lot of input from us or recommend denial because I don't see a lot of strong, positive vibes at the moment from us. So how does everyone else feel about those two options?

But the denial of an applicant could still come back in the future with a revised project, right?

Let's talk to staff about those two options.

And it would be recommending a denial to town council, who's the decision maker on this application. Would that preclude them from coming back? We generally don't. It would not preclude them from coming back. It would preclude them from coming back with this specific application as this would be the single time that Planning and Zoning is seeing this and having a vote on it. Staff would strongly recommend that if the Planning and Zoning Commission feels that there are merits to this application, that they direct the applicant back to work with staff and continue to a date certain.

Let's just talk that through for a second. So if we get a long-term, a long-stay hotel application in front of us with lots of bells and whistles, gift wrapping and bows, are we inclined to embrace it or would we still like to see a different use on that property?

Well, it's private property, so we really can't recommend that.

Yeah, but I think that would help me decide whether or not we deny or whether we let them come back with upgraded application. Does that make sense?

I would propose- The private property piece, as much as it is, they own a piece of land that has a PUD amendment that states what they're allowed to do on it. And they're asking to completely throw that in the trash and do something else.

So if we come back, we get a read from attorneys, too, about your question about how that works.

I think the prescriptions that are on that plat are what I'm having the biggest challenge with. And altering that prescription is...

Since we're just a referral, I would just go deny and give them their chance in front of counsel. Like, they put a lot of work in, and it's... That was my question, right?

So if it comes back as a hotel with all kinds of other things, you're still inclined to deny it.

I think if it meets closer to the prescriptions, maybe not the prescription of the use, but the prescriptions of the other elements that have been set forth on this plot as it relates to form, function, traffic, and community benefit, then it meets more characters that I'm potentially interested in. I don't necessarily think a hotel wouldn't be a service to our community, but how it fits in with the character and the ability for us to open this lot up to future exposure from a legal perspective is where my hurdle is right now.

I'm inclined to agree with Ben and give them another shot at this. We can still say no. I agree. But I think they've done a fair amount of research and there is a certain amount of efficacy for a low end hotel. And so I'd like to see that worked on.

But go back to master plan, right? Is that what will best serve the goals of the master plan? Not that it's a bad thing, but is that the best we can do?

And I'm thinking if we do continue, like from, you know, this was only from June 16th to now, I mean, I would think like six months down the road or something. You know, we say another two weeks, it's not going to change that much between now and then.

My other concern is if we ask them to go back, they spend more time, we come back, do it again, then it finally gets to council for some reason, a lot of the public is going to get worn out and not show up and allow people, allow the public to get in front of the people who make the decisions and hash it out up there. The comments are always there.

Yeah, but it's not as much as they know. Gold Run was talked about. That was in process for a couple of years, and it was a major... contention in the town and it eventually came through with a reasonable project that everyone was happy with.

My experience is our town won't be shy about expressing their opinions at every level.

You also have city center and you know that has changed the characteristic and view line of our town. This application in its current form. does the exact same thing. It changes the view line and character of the entrance to our town.

I would just make a point of information in response to Kyle's point. In recent conversations with the town attorney and just standards of the planning practice, We will require re-noticing should it pass a certain threshold. In the past those discussions have been somewhere in the six to eight week range. So should we push this to six to eight weeks. Everybody who is legally required to be noticed and legal notice in the paper will be sent out again. If it comes back in two weeks, that won't be required, but that's standard practice, and per direction of the town attorney, that's the direction we're going.

Is two weeks sort of what we do?

That's the standard, but I think there could be some discussion. I additionally would maybe consider a comment from the applicant on what kind of time they might need to address the discussion that you guys have had.

I mean, Bill, to your comments, you know, this is a site planning issue. A site planning issue is a major change to the design in its existing form. Major change to the design in its existing form.

The applicant would like to say where they're coming from now?

If I may. Please. We obviously, we would need more than two weeks to come back and address some of these comments. I'm not certain what that time might be and I'm not certain if we have to pick the date right now.

We have to pick a date however it can be continued at a future date. So a good ballpark is a good place to start.

And you just don't show up and we just push it. It doesn't, it's not on you.

Okay, then I think we would probably pick.

Hold on, hold on.

Ladies and gentlemen I appreciate you have comments and that's fine but we're just going to work through this process please. Hopefully yes we want to involve you obviously that's the best way to go forward.

You know I think we would suggest four weeks to come back. I would I would say there's there's a reasonable likelihood depending on what feedback we get. additional feedback we get here on what we need to change that that could push. I'd ask you know there are a couple of comments that we just would would prefer to have clarification on. One would be if it's if there is a preference that we enhance the architecture do you think that there is an ability to add some height with parapets for screening and architectural elements? And I wanna be efficient with everyone's time.

Bill, did you look at the first package just by chance? I know you weren't here, but did you?

I looked at the first package and I read all of the minutes.

So you saw the first rendering. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. I think there's some some place in the middle here that we can get to my my comments on on the exterior of the building. are just for your use because we have no real say about that.

Understood.

And that we're not a design review board. But I'm saying what we as citizens would like to see, and I think everyone else would like to see, but that's up to you guys because you guys hire your architects. And I don't want to be your architect. You have your own. And so that's, you know, it's like for you to hear what we say and look around and come back at us with that. But that's not the main thing for me. For me, the main thing was how the building interacts with the town and all of our infrastructure, including transit.

And those are some of the comments we want to make sure we address. This feedback is incredibly helpful. I also don't want to go too long. Are we looking for more connectivity? Yes. On the walking? Walking, bus, all of it.

You've got a greenway to the north between what was the movie theater and the back of know the two-way building you've got an entire redone park and ride just to the north of that what are we using how are those those items interconnecting we're just sending people across the busy part of the highway yeah also you have you have on the back side of your pro project a bike path that the town of basalt plows all winter long it's the only bike path that gets plowed and it's plowed you know all the way to downtown basalt

So you have a major amenity that you could address even just a little bit.

We love that amenity. I'm asking what in addition to that bike path for pedestrian connectivity to RAFTA we could do that might help to improve the accessibility that we can add into the plan.

This is the first proposal we've had in a long time without any WeCycle mention. So we cycles our local bike sharing program. So people get bikes.

OK.

I would I would note that the town provided an opportunity for referral to we cycle and had several iterations of communication and did not receive a letter or a letter from but that they're asking for an area to address.

So here's here's one idea is like say you're standing in front of the front door under the vestibule of the hotel. Can you find your way to the bus stop? Right now, you can't. You have to kind of walk backwards out the side door, then walk backwards again across the street, and then down just kind of a shitty sidewalk. And I think there could be a nicer, more gracious way that you can just see, by standing there, how to get to the bus stop. You gotta carry your skis no matter how you go. Yeah, it's a ski town, yeah. And so, but that's also all year round, and also at the same time, a good portion of your workforce is coming that way too, so they're going the other way. You could address how people How you market it, how you market this as a product, because you can market it as a product that you could fly into Aspen, get there without having a rental car, and get all around without having a rental car. And it's something where there wouldn't be any cars in your parking lot, which you're already asking for a mixed use reduction. So that serves us and you guys, things like that.

We love that the bus stops there, and that's incredibly helpful feedback. Thank you. The other question I might ask is regarding traffic. What we've done on the access side is widen the drive aisle to make access easier for both fire trucks and access to the site. to speak plainly, I'm not certain how we could adjust traffic and still maintain a hotel here. Is there some specific comments that you might have regarding traffic that you think?

Well, first off, I don't think Kimley Horn is your best resource for that. They're car people. And I think a good, really good landscape architect who has experience in Basalt could help you out a lot with that.

With traffic?

With pedestrian and non-motorized connectivity. You know, non-standard connectivity.

Okay, so if I'm understanding, sorry to interrupt.

That's one of the things I think we're asking for is creativity.

As it relates to the traffic, I do think there are comps that are here on the western slope. that are isolatable for us to be able to understand, while this business isn't operating as a traffic, and you guys are providing a conservative estimate as to the potential of a movie theater in its heyday generating the maximum amount of traffic, as it relates to a c dot access permit all of that will relate to the increase in traffic flow which is what this commission is arguing is that you are increasing traffic flow and by understanding what the existing condition is at the only movie theater within 100 miles from here is operating at right now, you have the ability to understand what those traffic counts are. This building does not operate. This building is generating zero traffic. And we are saying that this building is generating zero traffic, and traffic is already bad. So your application says this property can, in its existing land use, generate whatever the traffic number is that's in that traffic report.

I want to just jump in for a second. I think we can be here for another hour, giving you feedback and suggestions. And I think if we want to do that, we can almost set up a work session at another meeting. Might be more productive than doing it right now, two hours in, knowing that we've got more to go. I might suggest that instead of continuing this. We'd be happy to set that up.

Also, I think staff has a very good understanding of where we're coming from. on this and they could be a really good resource as well.

I would mention that we probably can't do a work session you probably have to do another continued public hearing whatever it happens to be whatever format just it might be a better use of our time than right now may I suggest then a work session nearer term perhaps in two weeks because then it's it's hard when we come back and it it starts to leave people's minds this is a great conversation and this is the feedback that we We weren't able to get all of it right at the last planning commission. And so I'd suggest if it's acceptable that we do work session in two weeks, get the feedback here that we're hoping for. We can even provide some comments and alternatives and then come back after that.

Think of the format of the work session. I think we'd leave it up to staff maybe to how that can be coordinated.

Yeah, because there is an active application and a current public hearing that is still going, you can't really have a work session as part of that. You can continue the public hearing and You know kind of keep it in this format. But you know maybe do more of kind of a tabletop exercise where you still take public comment.

So you're you're saying we do we continue it to a public hearing that functions like a work session.

Yes. Would there be a night that this could be the only thing on the agenda.

Yeah, we could, if you were looking at two weeks, it would probably be the only thing on the agenda on the 21st or also August 4th.

So that's just a suggestion. I do feel like, not that the connectivity is not important, but we're kind of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. There's bigger issues involved here and

would this be the use that i would do in the hotel if you had asked me flat out two weeks ago i would have said no i've come around a little bit to it but i'm still not sold that that's the best use of this property for our town even with improvements and changes i've been trying to decide whether we to vote

tonight or to bring it back. I guess I'm feeling open to bring it back if you'd like the motion.

Would you prefer a vote to deny and have your chance in front of council with this plan or would you prefer to come back?

No, we would absolutely prefer to come back. I mean, the reality is we recognize that this is a iterative process. It's somewhat of a negotiation, right? And look, when we started this almost two years ago now, and Ben started it much longer before us, You know we looked at a variety of uses and didn't come including the Maas family on what to do with this site when it was not working and you know whether it was fast casual restaurants housing isn't allowed in the zoning. There is a number of. processes that we are uses that we evaluated and and came to this because frankly we thought adjacent to the city market was a good place to put this asset in the town and obviously there is demand there's need we know that and so you know of course we believe in the project otherwise it wouldn't be here but we would certainly rather come back and work together figuring out the plan and I and I don't mean to ask for so much guidance but it's it makes it easier for us to address comments if we have things that we can really try to take home with us measuring movie theater counts right or talking about drive circulation I mean these are the things that are certainly important to us I will say you know there are comments that if you know, if you were to tell us tonight, hey guys, come back, but it's gonna have to be a two-story building, I would love to know that, because as you know, it's expensive to build here, and we can't build the two-story building.

I can see you couldn't give us a third unit the last time, too.

That cuts, I understand, come on, that cuts you down by a third.

I'm not saying.

I mean, if you want the prices to be $800 a night, they'll build you two stores. You of all people know that's a very different order of magnitude.

I completely do.

I'm concerned on the traffic, though. Whatever we put there is going to increase traffic. Yes. Like you put out, so if we're going to push back on that, I think we just got really careful of what that direction is, because... I think right now we're spinning our wheels.

Let's just see if we're coming.

I think the motion that we continue this till August 2nd, is that? August 4th. August 4th, yeah.

Do we want to do this to August 4th? Sorry to interrupt. August 4th or to the next one when we still have this refresher in our?

Yeah, I thought we were going to continue it. It's up to you guys first. Two weeks from today.

It's up to two weeks today. I thought this would be the only thing on the agenda.

Either way, either July 21st or August 4th, It'd likely be the only thing on the agenda. 21st.

21st. I'd say 21st. My motion will be to continue to July 21st.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Excellent.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you. Was that unanimous, by the way? It was, yes. It was unanimous. Thank you gentlemen, thank you everybody, appreciate your comments, your patience.

If people are concerned about traffic, stick around for the next project.

Thank you all very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are not done with our meeting. We appreciate that that was a long time.

We're not going to start for another minute or two, but just working with us. awesome welcome back to the P&Z meeting we're gonna move on now to our continued public hearing on the Jadwin Black Mountain final plan application

Yeah, thank you. We do have the applicants here this evening for this continued public hearing. We've got Michael Forrest and Ramsey Fulton, and they can introduce the rest of their team. This is a continued public hearing on the Jadwin Black Mountain Final Plan application to construct 64 dwelling units and 12 short-term rental cabins at 431 Emmer Road. which is located just down valley of the post office on Emma Road, as you can see here on the vicinity map. The property subject to the application is nine acres, contains a single family residence and a mobile home. The applicant receives sketch plan and preliminary plan approvals, as is included in your staff memo. The P&Z reviewed the application at both the sketch and the preliminary plan levels and recommended approval at both of those phases. Final plan review is primarily to ensure consistency with the preliminary plan approvals and to work on hanging items. The proposal, as I noted, is 64 residential units, and it's proposed to be multifamily and townhome units as well as duplexes. And there are 12 short-term rental cabins that are proposed on the west side of the property as well. They are proposing to preserve about four acres of open space on the north edge. And the glamping that was in the sketch plan proposal was removed as part of the sketch plan review. The 64 units, as I noted at the last meeting, 32 are proposed to be deed restricted, with 24 being category units with price and rental caps. And then an additional eight are proposed as RO units. In addition, the council was looking for benefit, additional public benefit at the sketch plan level. So the applicant added a proposal for an additional 20 first tracks units. And as we discussed, those are free market units that are to be available to local residents for the first 90 days of availability. At the last meeting, staff identified a series of discussion items, and we went through those discussion items. They included consistency with the master plan, the affordable housing mitigation, which as noted, it's 35% is proposed as category units. And then an additional 15% are proposed as RO units to get to 50% of the units being category and RO. BOC was supportive of the affordable housing mitigation as well as the livability requirements for the affordable housing. And so that was noted at the last meeting. There were a couple items that were required additional discussion at the last meeting. The first being wildfire mitigation. The town recently adopted new wildfire resiliency code that was required by the state. And the applicants needed to make some adjustments to their landscaping plan to be consistent with that new code. And so the applicants have done that. It is part of their application materials and the applicants can go through that. Other topics included the dog leg. This is the dog leg parcel. At the sketch plan level, it was proposed to have a daycare and the town council chose not to have a daycare there because it's outside the urban growth boundary. And instead the applicant proposed to contribute $700,000 towards community benefits. And that's been carried over into the preliminary plan application and the final plan application. Now the applicant has instead proposed to have a single family house there to replace the existing mobile home that's on the property. This is preferred by the applicant because the property would be a non-conforming property in Picken County if it were to remain in Picken County and not be annexed. And Picken County supports actually the annexation of this property in their comments. that were provided for a single family purpose. The staff understands the need for it to be annexed so that it doesn't become nonconforming. And staff believes that a single family house on the site doesn't constitute urban level development, which is supposed to be in the urban growth boundary. But nonetheless, it's a discussion item for PNZN council to consider. Other topics that required further discussion from the last meeting included the water tap fee waivers. The applicant has requested water tap fee waivers, and that was requested also at the preliminary plan level. At the preliminary plan level, the council did not support the fee waivers from the water tap fees. but the applicants have renewed their request there. That is primarily a council discussion item as is the rest of the fee waivers. They've also requested waivers from the daycare fee as well as the parkland dedication fee. Staff is supportive of the waiver from the parkland dedication fee as they're providing almost four acres of open space. that's going to be publicly accessible. And then they're also requesting a waiver from the daycare fee because they're providing the $700,000 in community benefit contribution as was required at the preliminary plan stage. related to other discussion topics the phasing invested rights as was noted at the last meeting the applicant is proposing to file the first subplat within five years and then have all subplats for the individual buildings filed within a total of seven years after approvals The town's vested rights would then kick in for three years after the subplots, so all the buildings are required to be under construction within a total of 10 years from the approvals. This is a similar proposal on vested rights and phasing to that of parcel five of Sopris Meadows as well as Park Modern that's been fully built out. Staff would like to highlight some other important notes in the conditions of approval. You have in condition 10 a requirement for the applicant to provide the, I'm sorry, condition 12 to provide the affordable housing on a proportional basis to development of the free market housing there's also requirements that the applicant have separated bike trail from Emma Road and do that installation that's a requirement in the conditions and then finally there's another requirement that the applicant will be able to and required to provide the right turn lane at the midland avenue and emma road intersection which is required as part of the traffic improvements in addition to making adjustments to the turning radius at the emma road and slip lane intersection as well to accommodate the development So in total, staff believes that the proposed final plan application is consistent with the preliminary plan approvals. And staff would recommend this evening hearing some comments from the applicants, taking public comments, and then providing commission discussion. If you're comfortable with the conditions of approval, you could make a recommendation to the town council. And so with that, I will stop sharing my screen and turn it over to Ramsey.

Great. Thank you, guys.

It's asking you to promote the panelists. Join this panelist.

OK. Well thank you guys. I know you guys have had a long night of reviewing projects. So and we did run through most of what I'm going to go through last session. So I'm just going to kind of do a brief recap and then we'll move on to other discussions. So last session with you we reviewed the planning process. Let me start. Sorry one second here.

sure why.

Okay. Wanted to jump to the last slide instead of the first slide for some reason. Okay. There we go. So yeah last session with you we reviewed the planning process.

Can you just remind us who you are.

Yeah. I'm Ramsey Fulton. This is Michael Forrest. I'm the architect on the project. He's one of the development partners.

I remember him. I just couldn't remember your name.

Yep. No all good. Thank you. So yeah. So then well starting with our initial review of the draft for the 2020 master plan and how we could make this new development mirror the intentions of the community. followed by years of work with staff and essential services to further mold the vision and adapt to the land's constraints. Then at sketch plan review in 2023, hearing the feedback of community members, BOC, PNZ and council to increase our contribution to the much needed affordable housing, we moved our offering from 35% affordable units to 50% affordable units. Plus the first tracks program, which you've heard about bringing the deed restricted units to 81%. Bringing the proposal to razor sharp margins, but still doable is something we are proud to support. Then last summer in preliminary plan review we addressed outstanding concerns and details of annexation. Bringing us to today where we present to you our final plan application with the consistent design, housing offering and message from prior engagements and our follow through on comments and considerations brought forth. Our proposal summary once again illustrates a development of four multi-family residential buildings with two two-story structures and two three-story structures. With one two-story and one three-story building designed as deed restricted community housing buildings, as well as 12 single standing and duplex townhomes, 12 hospitality rental cabins structures operating as a single hotel with onsite management, as well as an extensive dedication area of open space, lightly touched river access and per the direction of post wildlife and ecological consultants and river hydrologists. We have further addressed the final technical review comments and made adjustments per the evolving requirements adopted by Basalt, including recent fire mitigation code adjustments. Our final summary of public benefits includes 81% of deed restricted housing, 50% category units, and 31 first tracks, four acres of open space and trails, a $700,000 gift to the town for community benefit, Emma Road and Midland Avenue improvements, betterment of public access to the river, provided vitality as envisioned in the master plan through the river cabin hospitality, pedestrian connection to Old Town and a dedication of a permanent easement to the town for a new water well. We now ask for staff to lead a discussion and encourage members of P&Z to entertain a motion for us to proceed to council hearings, paving the way for realizing the 32 affordable residences and 20 first tracks housing offerings to benefit the people of Basalt, supported by a small scale hospitality component and 12 free market homes. Mike will now speak to one item of discussion we would like to be considered to ensure the project has the flexibility to successfully fill the needs once housing becomes available to those who qualify.

Thanks, Ramsey. Hi, everybody. Just wanted to address one thing before we can open up the discussion. It was a comment Kyle brought up at the last meeting regarding the financial stability and capabilities of the site. I guess a couple comments first is as James pointed out we've asked now for a waiver of the parkland fees given our 4 acre dedication of the open space which we felt was a pretty fair trade the daycare fees given our $700,000 gift for daycare and then the water tap fees are just kind of still out there you know we understand and respect you know what we've heard so far and we just want to respectfully punt that until council and continue to ask for the water tap fee waiver i think you know we went back and really just looked at what other type of fees potentially we could ask you know the town to to waive and the truth is it's it's you know right now we believe the project is financially feasible so to ask for things at this point that we might necessarily need just felt like a little bit of overreaching you know if at some point in the future a year from now two years from now the project is not financially feasible we could always come back and ask for things that we're not asking for now but we feel you know confident that we can proceed you know as the plan is now set and the reason for that is We've been running development pro formas from day one. We hired an outside sort of financial analyst to kind of double check our work and be a fresh set of eyes. So we've been running these financial models for a very long time. We've spoken with over 100 different potential buyers of the deed restricted units. Some of that was reflected in the sketch plan process when we went out and secured letters of intent from the fire district, the school district, Aspen Valley Ski Club. But there's a whole list of others that, and quite frankly, now that it's becoming more real, I guess, to people, even more people are reaching out, even in the last couple of weeks. And so we feel pretty confident there. We've also been... you know, working with Alpine Bank, who's our current lender. And we've been continuously keeping them abreast of everything that's going on. We have a loan with them right now. We've been doing appraisals with them as we've been moving along this process. Whether they become our ultimate lender for the construction is still to be determined. But, you know, we have interest from several local lenders who want to finance the project. And then lastly, I would just say we hired really what we thought was the best-in-class team, including Ramsey and his architectural firm, Stephanie, Sopras Engineering, and the list goes on and on. Jody Edwards as our attorney. So this has been going on for quite some time. It's approaching probably five years from the first... who knows um six years even so who's counting but you know we feel confident that you know we can proceed with this current plan you know this is the third application we've seen on this parcel too i know and you've been here for i think all of them right now i've been here for all of them yeah two years before that it started so yeah so hopefully this is uh you know a path to actually making this happen

The difference in approach here was to take the 2020 master plan and say, OK, can we do that? Let's try to do that because that's what the community wants. And so that's the process we've been on.

I'm sorry to interrupt. There's one more thing before I forgot. It was having the ability to change the apartment designation for a category unit. So for example, right now it says, you know, this studio is a category two and this one bedroom is a category three. And as you'll see from our layout right now, you know, we had to kind of pick a path. We've gone back and we've spoken to staff and we've asked for flexibility in that allocation. So it wouldn't change the number of category 2 of category 3, but it might make a 3 bedroom as opposed to a studio or 1 bedroom as opposed to a 2. And that really was a lot of the feedback we got from other. Um, not just staff, but from some other people in the community that have built projects like this, like, that was a point that they ran into issues. And sometimes had to come back to the town because, like, the market just changed and they're just all of a sudden more people showing up for a studio at that category. And, you know, we want to be able to find a home for all these. these units so we've asked for some flexibility there and the way that I think the condition of approval is drafted right now is that we would still have to come back to the town we would go to Bach and we would go to the TRC for approval to change that designation we would not have to go all the way up to Council if I'm saying that right

Yeah. So so long as they're not changing the number of units in any one category. Right.

Correct. Yeah. And the other thing that's going to provide is your tier one that you have are the people that you want to support the most with getting housing in this community. We're more likely to fill the whole project with tier one if we have some flexibilities with If someone from the fire department comes to us and they need a tier three one bedroom and all we have is tier four one bedrooms in that category, then we can really hit your tier one more accurately by having the flexibility to offer those and adjust the formula on the fly. But of course, having the backstop of having staff and the technical review committee make sure that the intentions, the approvals are withheld. That's really the only additional point of discussion that we have other than things you've heard a bunch of times that we've been going through for years and refining it with your help.

That being said, I'll open it up for Commissioner questions. Bob, any questions?

When do you plan to proceed to pull permits if things move forward?

I mean, basically right away. We've already been speaking with James about that in terms of timeline submission. Part of the thought right now is that we would start infrastructure work. Ramsey can probably speak more to that kind of technical aspect, but we released Ramsey a long time ago to start proceeding with construction drawings because we didn't want to get to approval and then have to wait eight months for Ramsey's office to prepare documents. So we're spending the money and the time right now to do it in the contemplation that we'll get approval. And that way, you know, hopefully we can put in for our infrastructure right away.

Yeah, they have been proceeding at risk, which obviously I've expressed to them is at the risk. But we've met with Mitch Miller a bunch of times and been refining things and really working out cost models with GCs. to try to see this thing is ready to go when we take off. Obviously, we still want the flexibility that's baked in there with the approvals because economic cycles and what have you, and it seems reasonable with other developments of this scale. But for all accounts and purposes, the team's ready to go, and our architecture is proceeding right away.

Okay, thank you. That's all I have. Cindy?

Just one quick question. Whatever happened to your neighbor who had felt left out of the process? Has he been on board now in the last five? I just remember somebody telling us, like, nobody ever asked me about these plans, and I live next door to it, and I'm just curious what happened with that.

Is that Stott? During sketch plan review, there was a small component of people. Some were outside of the salt and some were in that had issues with the development. But I think we reconciled most of those and heard them out. And we haven't heard from him since those sketch plan.

But you just did remind me of something, which is Stott next door. Yeah, I think that's probably who he asked for was a lot of trees. to separate it, which now obviously has to change with the new fire code. And we haven't called him to tell him that, which we will do because we're now going back to the drawing board, so to speak, with the whole landscape plan to conform with the new code, which could change again by the time we submit for that permit. So our plan right now is to kind of just keep the drawing we have that Christine updated for this meeting and carry that through approvals. And then obviously if the regulations change again, we'll have to change. And we're obviously trying to balance that with screening and all the things that people want.

that's it yeah yeah I have just a few little questions how confident are you about material selections given your cost constraints and market uncertainty because I do want to say that the buildings themselves are fairly plain and the materials do a lot to pull them together in a better way. I don't know if you heard my comment about the last one, which you're far from that, because these buildings did not get hit with an ugly stick, but still they're playing because they're multifamily and the material selection does a lot to congeal that into an interesting building.

Yeah, I mean, I think to us it's really important the materials reflect the culture of basalt and just the valley in general. And that's how we went about kind of selecting material palette for the exterior. They are rather simple multifamily structures, which helps with the efficiencies of the structural envelope. And we have priced out the siding packages and brick packages, et cetera, and things are tracking forward with those products.

Because when things get squeegee, that's one of the first things to go.

Understood. I mean, I will say this. We've been approached by affordable developers that have come to us and said, once you get the entitlements, we'd like to buy these lots that are the de-restricted housing. And we'll go build them. And we can build cheap. We're not talking to any of those groups. And Bridger Smith, who's not here, is probably the number one champion of this, that we want to control the design. And even the deed-restricted buildings, our idea is not to be cutting costs to make those buildings look less designed or less attractive. We want the whole project to really look good. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know.

Two questions. Number one, the horse trading of category units that we're proposing here. What makes a difference in a studio that's a Cat 2 studio versus a Cat 5 studio? terms of like the finishes or I'm asking you is is it is it a change in finishes is it a change in location are the corny units becoming the cat 5 units how are we saying that 600 square feet is cat 2 versus a cat 5 should you need that tier 1 yeah it's it's really about just meeting the demand right meaning

Once we go to market, the market is going to respond. We've heard comments. I think I might have mentioned this at the last meeting that some people in the Roaring Fork Valley have said they've had trouble, for example, with three bedroom category units at certain categories. So the whole idea here is that we don't want to get stuck in a situation where we have a category three, three bedroom and we have a category two studio and that's sitting and this is sitting. But if we're able to switch the categories, both of those would get bought or rented. So it's really not about like this trying to financial engineer anything. It's really protecting us from a situation where we're stuck and we haven't been able to rent or sell a unit.

But the interior finishes of those units and the function and inclusions of those units are the same.

Yeah, they are the same. And I think if one way to look at it is I'm sure that The financial viability as it's laid out today with how we have the units divvied out between building A and building C or building one and three is the most ideal economic model for category five and category threes, twos, fours, and ROs for the development team. However, they're recognizing that without us changing the finishes of those units or somehow downgrading those, which there is no plan to go that route, We're waiting till they're on market or close to on market to actually make these adjustments So there wouldn't be the opportunity to do that So any change would probably be a slightly less advantageous Development model at that time, but it would be worth it in order to get them filled quickly and off the market and in the tier one categories

But I think I would just say, on the edges, I think what you're pointing at is true. Meaning, let's just say there is a unit that is considered the worst unit. To keep this project financially stable, we'd be foolish to make that, let's say, an RO unit. Because the RO units are there. They're going to be at a higher price. They're going to allow us to provide for the lower category units. i don't think there's right now i mean ramsey has been really driving this from a kind of value engineering perspective lining up plumbing lines and electric lines and trying to make these buildings as efficient as possible to build and then it's like the category designations come after and then we just want that flexibility for stock that's really it

And my second question, is Teddy Street and Hawks Street being designed to the same drive aisle width as the library parking lot and the post office parking lot for any future connection that you showed in the master plan?

That's Stephanie, our sibling. It wasn't just a random person.

I also have two questions. One, I have to ask the question sitting on this side of the desk. I think I know the answer, but why not all the units as first tracks?

Why not all the units? It comes down to the financing. That's really what it is. Alpine Bank and other banks have been very direct when they've told us that even putting that restriction on those free market is a deed restriction. And therefore, it will always be in their mind a deed restricted unit, which is just underwritten differently. There should be some discount theoretically for that, and that's the reason why.

there's really no state funding or light tech funding right and so what's bolstering up this project and making it feasible are the townhomes and the hospitality offering as we've been very transparent about yeah so and from a from a lending standpoint if that holds true I thought I knew the answer I just wanted to hear it some of the you know

non-profit companies in the valley particularly some of the hospital associations that have you know very different income levels within their organization have said for example you know some of the townhomes that we have that are full free market could they purchase those or could somebody in their organization purchase those so to us like of course like that's the first place we'll go so i think they will I think so because there's so much need locally.

I mean, that's what we're hoping for.

Yeah, for sure.

Last question then, the dog leg house. Yes. Are you kicking your tenant out?

Are you building this for them? So it was always a condition in sketch plan. that the family living in the mobile home now has like first priority for the deed restricted units um that was something that town staff proposed from day one we were like great idea so they have like i think they get like first choice actually um so they would move to that okay yeah are there plans as to what how big this house is going to be is it I think there's a maximum size that I'm forgetting right now.

I think you had 3,000, I think 3,000.

Yeah. 3, 4 bedrooms kind of exactly. You know, and as you know, the location of it, I mean, it's not that shielded from the highway. It's, you know, I think it's going to be, you know, a local family kind of purchase. I don't really see it as a second home.

But yeah, how we how we settle on what to do with that really came from staff and picking County and saying guys How do we deal with this and actually subdivide this lot into? The town of assault and really this was the only feasible path after talking to pick the county Fair enough grad ask

Any more questions? We're good? We will open it up for a public hearing at 8.46. I see some people online. If you wish to speak, raise your hand, please. I don't see anybody in the room. Should I give them 10 seconds? Sure. I don't know. Seeing as there are no, nobody raising their hand, no one stepping up, we will close the public hearing at 8.47. And now I'll open it up for Commissioner comments. We'll start on the side, Ben.

I appreciate the willingness to iterate and listen. And just a question for staff here. If this project would be eligible for Prop 123 work, should the Prop 123 been adopted by town, would this property have been eligible for that?

No, because the town has opted in to Prop 123 and we have... uh done the expedited process that is required by uh prop 123. currently the income levels are too high for prop 123 eligibility that the town is currently working with the other jurisdictions in the Valley on a regional needs assessment. And the intent of that is to set it up to be able to get higher income caps for the Prop 123 requirements. So maybe in the future, if those income caps change, there might be some eligibility there.

Thank you. No further comments.

My only comment is kind of just kind of the last time is just the financial feasibility of this. I see you guys are asking for more. Maybe I'm too much trying to help you guys on this. My only other thing would be. would we ever consider letting him pay the 700 grand out of the first three for sale homes you still pay it but it reduces your cap stack at the beginning we still get the money not huge but it's something that's the only thing I'm just concerned it doesn't happen

I mean, the fees and the waivers and all, that's not really our... Not our purview. Purview, we'll let the council decide that. Question, if there's enough staff for you guys, the four acres of dedicated open space, those are all in the wetlands or 100-year floodplain?

The floodplain was changed through a LOMAR, Letter of Map Revision by FEMA, and it was done by the Water... What is it? The... Colorado Water Conservancy District. They were remapping all the floodplain in Eagle County, and so the town's hydrologist reviewed that. Most of the open space is still in the 100-year floodplain, but the applicant is allowed to do a trail to the river as part of that. But it's undevelopable because it's in the floodplain. It's still in the floodplain, yeah.

So I'm just trying to get a handle on the community benefits, especially given our previous conversations tonight. But if it was undevelopable, it's really... Yeah, it's...

that was my question so what was the answer to that is it available or not it's undevelopable in the floodplain okay but people can still go and walk around going through it to the river but as far as the point is that wasn't going to get developed anyway so it's always going to be in that state

Yes, first off, I wanted to say my comment from the whole first round still applies, but that horse has left the barn. I always thought that as the last green field TOD project in the urban growth boundary, it should have been more dense. You know, that's long gone. I do think that we need to pay a little bit more attention to the public access. I think two spots are a little shy. Parking spots are a little shy. And just make sure there's adequate signage for, because on this type of project, the public doesn't even know, unless they come to these meetings, that that's even there. So it would be nice if there was some signage that there is a public trail in there and that there's a public place to park that's more than two spots. Either that or a bike rack that the public can use because all of that stuff is for the residents. So we can actually use this thing we have access to. And my last comment is actually for the town. I ride on that bike path almost every day and um the the bike path that they're going to add is nice but given that i'd say probably half the bikes on that or e-bikes it's too narrow for that so i was i'd like to propose the town considers making that section of emma road um like a bike boulevard so you just ride in the road and then the cars give way to the bikes. You know, it's just a signage thing, really, and you paint it on the street. And then also, when you go off the property, and it's always been like this, you never know where to go. You know, the bike path just sort of kind of just peters out. And there is one, but no one knows where to go. So the town should think of, like,

Signage.

Yeah, signage or one of those green bike crosswalks so you know that you ride your bike across here to the other side. because I keep saying this, but it's against the law for a grown up to ride on the sidewalk. And I don't even know if Basalt's Finest know that, but I don't want to get any crosswise of them. So those are my only comments. Is there any comments?

Yeah, my comment, and I've expressed this concern before, but I'm just not comfortable with a developer reordering the priority of the deed restricted units, you know, who gets them. I think that That can set a bad precedent and I feel like you know we even even though Bach I guess has signed off on this I feel like we came up with those categories one would assume there was some thought that went into them and there's a reason for. for that and so I think You know, I guess that it harkens back to when I lived up in Aspen like 20 years ago and you know, I was in the employee housing lotteries and Developers would be developing things that had a couple units of employee housing available But you can only get it if you were pals with the developer and you knew you had that in you know beforehand so Yeah, I just wish we would be following what we as a town came up with for the priorities. I

Bob, any comments?

Yeah, just appreciate your perseverance through the process and your commitment to supplying much needed affordable housing in this community. And so I applaud the project and look forward to your breaking ground.

don't really have much to add I just echoing Kyle I hope you can make it work unlike Cindy I appreciate where Cindy's coming from I like allowing some flexibility as long as it's within the parameters of what what's out there so I have a different view on that but here we are which is kind of cool that being said wish to entertain a motion

I'll make a motion to recommend approval to the council.

Second.

James, you want to roll call or question? Yeah, we want to say.

Well, I greatly appreciate the 81% deed restricted housing. I still have a hard time with the three story building in the middle of a pasture, as I did through every phase of this. So as I have through every phase of this, I will not be going in favor of this.

We have a first, we have a second.

Would anyone entertain adding something to the $700,000 contribution?

That's the bill's motion.

I think any discussion that has to do with money should be left to council. I just don't think it's our purview to do that.

Your comments will be in the minutes.

Let's do a roll call. Okay. And we will start with Cindy. With me?

Ladies first. I'll vote yes, but I wanna voice my objection with the priority list. I want that noted in the record somewhere.

And Bob? Yes. Bill. Yes. Eric. Yes.

Rob.

No. Kyle.

Yes.

And Ben.

Yes. Motion passes. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good night.

You guys are almost there.

Going forward, James, is it once or twice in front of council?

Twice. Well, it's an ordinance, so they've got two readings and there might be an introduction. Starting next week? No, starting the 28th.

Thank you. Thank you.

I know they're leaving, but it's been a long meeting, so I'm just going to jump in. Any commissioner comments or staff updates at this point?

staff update as was noted earlier in the meeting there's a open house on the code amendments at the library tomorrow night from 4 to 6 p.m. so staff will post the agenda so any PNZ members can attend which code amendments are those about it's the rewrite of the entire land use code to make it more workable which we had meetings on right Yeah, yeah. You guys reviewed the 50% draft, and there's several members of the PNZ actually on the kind of steering committee, Bill and Ben, and so you'll see them again, though, as part of the code amendment process.

With that being said, we'd love to have you.

I have a quick question for everyone, anyone in the room. I saw a geotech rig out in front of City Market drilling. I already asked James about this. Does anyone know what that's about? Because you know that triangle parcel where there's grass?

Yeah, the fuel center? Yeah. Isn't that what was plotted as a fuel center?

There was an application some years back for potential for a gas station there, but it didn't go anywhere so Yeah Yes, if someone's paying for for Epworth Pollock to drill like that then Something's happening

You don't think it has anything to do with the reception?

No.

No, it's too far away.

The attack would be way too far away.

Yeah, it's too far away.

It's on the up valley side, I'm saying.

That's correct.

Yeah, right across the street from the bank.

Are they breaking ground on the 1A parcel or the...

No, they've got a couple more years on their vested rights, and so they haven't submitted any permits.

Oh, I saw some equipment being over there.

Which one is that?

It's the one next to Colorado Bank, Bank of Colorado.

The one that Lipkin Warner wants to build?

Yeah.

Oh, did that actually get approved?

Yeah, it received approval, but they've got three years of vested rights, and they're about a year into the vested rights.

It was one of those ones that we only saw once, right? Yes, we saw once.

James, weren't the Mosses one of the original developers of Orchard Plaza?

They were the original developer.

I saw Josh here. So they've been around a while.

Is Josh the gentleman who, the hotelier that spoke?

No, the white haired guy. He was a white haired guy wearing tennis shoes.

Old guy didn't speak, left early. Big time real estate guy.

Aspen.

And I think that's it. First half comment.

Motion to adjourn?

We have a motion to adjourn. Do we have a second? All in favor?

Aye.

The meeting is adjourned at 9 p.m.

Almost on the dot.

Yeah, 7.50. I'm right on time.

Eric, it was a good meeting. It could have gone really bad.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you Thank you. Thank you.