Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Thank you, Thomas. Well, good evening, everybody. And welcome to this August 4 meeting of the Planning Board of the City of Boulder, Colorado. I'm your chair tonight, Laura Kaplan. And we'll do a little roll call. To my right, we have Kurt Nordback, planning board member. To my left, planning board member Mark McIntyre. And I believe we have three planning board members online, Mason Roberts, ML Robles, and Max Lord. Absent tonight is our vice chair, Claudia Hanson-Thiem. She is in transit internationally, and we wish her good travels. So the meeting is now called to order. On our agenda tonight, we have one public hearing item, which is the concept plan for the property at 2655 North 63rd Street. We'll get to that in just a few minutes here. And then we will have some matters items later in the agenda, an update on some state laws coming down the pike, and an information item about the vacation of an easement at the St. Julian Hotel. for their expansion. But the first thing that we will do tonight is public participation. And I see we have Vivian Castro-Woldrich online who will lead this for us. So I'm going to go ahead and turn the meeting over to Vivian at this point.

Thank you. Thanks, Thomas, for pulling up the slides. I will read through the guidance for public participation in such meetings and explain a little bit about open comment and the public hearing later. So first of all, just start by sharing that the city has engaged with community members in the past to co-create this vision that I'm sharing tonight for productive, meaningful and inclusive civic conversations. And this vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members, staff and board members, as well as democracy for people of all ages, identities, lived experiences and political perspectives. And if you're interested, you can read more about that vision and process on our website. These are some examples of rules of decorum that are found in the Boulder Revised Code and other guidelines that support this vision. And these will be upheld during this meeting. All remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person. obscenity, racial epithets, and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting or prohibited. And we ask that all participants identify themselves using their first and last name. Next slide, please. If you're joining us online, you can click on the raise hand button to just let us know that you'd like to speak. And we will call on you in the order that the hands are raised. If you're joining by phone, you can raise your hand by using star nine. And this just shows another way to get to that raised hand icon. So the meeting will start with open comment, which is an opportunity for you to share comments with the planning board For anything that you want to share that's not related to the public hearing item, which is about the facility on 63rd Street, that will be later in the meeting following staff and applicant presentation. But if you would like to speak for this open comment portion of the meeting, this would be the time to do so. Again, not related to 63rd. Thomas, anyone in person who would like to speak for open comment, we can start there.

Thank you, Vivian. Do we have anybody here in person that would like to speak to open comment this evening? You can step up to the podium and give your three minutes, please.

Lynn, you'll need to turn your microphone on.

The city is crashing economically. And where's everybody? I hear them complaining all the time. And none of them are here at the planning board, are they? Where it all happens, right? Where every single development that comes on here gets subsidies. Subsidy after subsidy.

Why do you do this? Why? You know?

You think it's a joke? You wait until this council election this November. You're going to get frigging slammed. You're going to be out of here. We've had it. With all these boards being stacked from, you know, this mentality in this community, stop. Stop it before this whole economy crashes in this town, as it is federally anyway. $400 million. The council wants from me $400 a year in addition to my $300 that I'm paying for the library district, in addition to my transportation maintenance fee, in addition to the development, the downtown development alliance thing that's going to take money from the fucking school district. How do you sleep at night? How do any of you sleep? This is so revolting. Stop. Stop funding, stop building wealth inequity as it destroys everyone's lives, including in Gaza and in Palestine. Shame on you.

Thank you for being with us this evening. Could you please turn the microphone back off so that we don't have any feedback issues in the room? I don't believe we have any further public speakers here in person.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Great. We can move to online. Sonia, I don't have your last name, but if you can just please start by introducing yourself. Please go ahead. You have three minutes.

Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. My name is Sonia McKell. I'm with Xcel Energy.

Hi, Sonia. If you're here to speak about the Excel project, that will be later in our agenda. Right now, we're at open comment, which is about anything you want to talk about that's planning board related that is not the Excel energy project.

Correct. I won't be speaking. I'm just listening in.

Oh, OK. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Sonia.

Great. Well, yes. Thank you for being here. And no other hands raised. So over to you, Chair.

Thank you so much, Vivian. Okay, so the next item on our agenda, item two, that was public participation is complete and that is closed. Item three, approval of minutes. We have no minutes tonight. Item four, call-ups. We have no call-up items tonight, which brings us to our public hearing item. And for anyone who may be joining us online and is not familiar with how our public hearings go, We start with a staff presentation, followed by Q&A with the board. Then the applicants will have a chance to give a presentation, followed by Q&A with the board. And then there will be a public hearing, where anyone from the public will have three minutes to speak about this project if you would like to, followed by board deliberation. This is a concept review. So tonight, we're hearing an early concept and giving some feedback to the applicant and to staff. But we are not making any decisions tonight on this Excel project on 63rd Street. And with that, I will hand it off to staff. Deshauna, did you have?

Yes, thank you. I just wanted to remind the chair that this would be the opportunity to ask if any board members have any matter to disclose pertaining to the public hearing item.

Thank you so much, Deshauna. Deshauna is from our city attorney's office, and she keeps us walking on the straight and narrow path. So do any board members have any disclosures to make, any conflicts of interest that you would like to disclose tonight? Oh, Mark.

I think we're all customers of Excel. Beyond that, I'm a frequent, monthly customer of Excel for multiple accounts. Beyond that, I don't have any conflicts of interest.

So thank you for that mark I think that doesn't technically qualify as a conflict of interest, since it doesn't there's nothing that we do tonight will benefit you your family your associates in any way other than every resident of boulder will benefit from this project.

Anybody else have any disclosures to make.

Seeing none I will turn it over to Alex for our staff presentation.

Thank you. Good evening, everybody. My name's Alex Pichaz. I'm a senior city planner here to present the concept plan for 2633 North 63rd Street for the upgrade and redevelopment of the existing Xcel Energy Service Operations Center. So in this presentation, I'll touch on the purpose of the concept plan, the public notification process, the planning context, and a summary of the proposed project and key issues. The purpose of the concept plan is to review the general development plan and provide the applicant comments from the public, city staff, and the planning board early in the process to inform the future site review application. There's no formal action taken on a concept plan, meaning it's neither approved nor denied, and a concept plan is required in this case because the project is greater than five acres and over 100,000 square feet of floor area. Public notice was mailed to property owners within 600 feet and a sign was posted on the property. No public comments were received. The site is approximately 14 acres located along 63rd Street and Stazio Drive between the Stazio ball fields, which are a city owned public park. The site has yet to be annexed into the city and it's currently under the jurisdiction of unincorporated Boulder County. The property is required to be annexed into the city prior to the site review. Here's a Google Earth image to give you a sense of the existing conditions. You can see the large service center operations building, fleet garages, accessory structures, and outdoor storage areas. Here's a street view image of the northeast corner of the site looking along 63rd Street at the main building. Here's another street view image from the southwest corner of the site looking north near the bend in Stazio Drive, showing the existing outdoor storage area. The surrounding area is a mix of industrial and public park uses accessed by 63rd Street, which connects between Valmont Drive and Arapahoe Avenue to the south. South Boulder Creek and a railroad spur separate the area along 63rd Street from the Flatirons Industrial Park to the west. To the north of the site along 63rd Street is the Via Mobility Services headquarters. To the south along 63rd Street is the Western Disposal Transfer Station and the BVSD Transportation Center. Western Disposal also has their operations center, which takes access from Butte Mill Road to the northwest. The property is not within a designated floodplain or regulatory wetland area. South Boulder Creek with its associated floodplain and wetlands are located to the west across Stazio Drive and the railroad right of way. The Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan designates the site as a general industrial area which has uses that consist of more intensive manufacturing that may include outdoor storage and warehouses. The site is within the East Boulder Sub-Community Plan, however, it is not specifically identified as an area of change and is not subject to any specific policies outlined in the plan. According to the Sub-Community Plan, East Boulder is the only sub-community in the city with land designated for general industrial use. As other areas of the sub-community evolve to more mixed-use environments, the value of industrial lands and how they continue to contribute to the city becomes more precious. sub-community plan seeks to preserve general industrial areas for primarily industrial manufacturing flex and supporting service uses here's a comparison of the proposed map in the upcoming comprehensive plan update on the left is the current bvcp future land use designation map and on the right is the recommended future land use designation map The comp plan update will clean up the mapping layers and change some of the future land use designations in the area, but it keeps the existing industrial designation for the site. Since the BVCP update has not been adopted yet, only the current future land use map applies at this time. Since the property is yet to be annexed into the city, it is not yet subject to city zoning and is shown as a county enclave on the city's zoning map. It's currently zoned General Industrial under County Zoning, and upon annexation, it will be zoned Industrial General, which is consistent with adjacent properties to the north. There are no new transportation connections identified in the Transportation Master Plan. There are existing on-street bike lanes along 63rd Street and a multi-use path along a portion of Stazio Drive. There is a multi-use path connection that crosses South Boulder Creek and the railroad tracks from the Flatirons Industrial Park that connects the Gerald Stazio multi-use path to the South Boulder Creek path. At the time of future annexation, the applicant will be required to dedicate right-of-way and a public access easement along 63rd Street, and they'll also be required to provide detached sidewalks with planting strips along 63rd Street. A detached sidewalk and planting strip will also be required along the frontage of Stazio Drive. There's no right-of-way dedication associated with Stazio Drive since it's already located on city-owned property. The site is located more than a mile from the closest bus stop to the west on 55th Street near Valmont, which is served by the 208 route. And it's nearly one mile from the nearest bus stop to the south at 63rd and Arapaho, which is served by the jump route. The redevelopment proposal will maintain the existing use as Xcel Energy's Operations Center, and the project is proposed to be completed in two phases. The primary uses include a service center building used for office and warehouse purposes, a fleet vehicle service garage, and outdoor storage yards. Additional accessory structures including covered parking canopies, a fuel island, and miscellaneous outbuildings are also included. Phase one includes the construction of the new service center building, shown as building B. That's approximately 55,000 square feet. The old service center building will be demolished after the new one is complete. Construction of the detention ponds and storage yard improvements will also occur in phase one. Sorry. Phase two is the construction of a new fleet garage that's approximately 33,000 square feet, shown as building A, and the demolition of the old fleet garage after the new one is complete. At this time, the applicant has not proposed any modifications to code standards through the site review process. And in the industrial general zone, outdoor storage requires a use review to ensure potential impacts are mitigated. In this case, we're primarily looking at the visual impacts to the site. or visual impacts from the site to adjacent properties. The proposed screening will be reviewed more closely through the site and use review process. Shown here are the character sketches provided to the proposed service center. And I'll discuss staff recommendations regarding the site review criteria later in the presentation. And these will be shared again in the applicant's presentation. And here are the character sketches that were provided for the proposed fleet garage. So the project requires an annexation and initial zoning application. The size of the site requires a site review and the proposed outdoor storage requires a use review. Both reviews can be processed concurrently with the annexation application. Upon approval of the land use reviews, technical document review is required prior to the building permit review, which is our standard development review process. The key issues for discussion by the board are number one, is the project consistent with the comp plan? Number two, does the board have feedback regarding the site review criteria? Number three, any other key issues identified by the board? So overall, staff finds the project to be consistent with the BVCP. Staff recommends additional consideration be given to the following policies through the site review process. Since the site is located adjacent to the Stazio ball fields, enhanced buffers can be provided to mitigate the visual impacts of the site on the park. The use review requirements for outdoor storage also aligns with the goal of minimizing conflicting uses and ensuring compatibility of adjacent land uses. Understanding the need for an open operating area, consideration should be given to energy usage and reducing urban heat island effects from excessive pavement on the site. While the operating characteristics of the site require the facility to be secured and not open to the public, building entries for employees and authorized visitors to the site, or sorry, building entries for employees and authorized visitors to the buildings should offer a well-defined entry and be visible from the public realm and enhance the streetscape. My notes were a little off there, my bad. Consideration should be given to the open space for employee break areas on the site and buffers around the property that are used to mitigate impacts to adjacent properties and enhance natural habitats. Opportunities on the site exist for the restoration of native ecosystems by creating well-designed open space areas that incorporate native plants that are beneficial to pollinator species. So staff recommends additional consideration be given to sections 9, 2, 14, H, 2, and 3 of the site review criteria. The site design should include ground level usable open space for employees and authorized visitors. The site currently provides a picnic table in the front yard landscape area. Further consideration should be given to how employees will use the site while on their breaks. The project is required to provide 10 to 20% open space on site based on the proposed building height. Consideration must be given to the design of the site to ensure that vehicular circulation and parking areas make efficient use of the land and minimize the amount of pavement. The site interfaces with the public realm along 63rd Street to the east and Stazio Drive to the south. The buildings currently have several blank walls along the most visible public-facing facades. An additional design consideration must be given to the street-facing facades of each building. The building design criteria requires a variety of building forms and heights, including in-plane changes and simple detailing to facades to create visual interest. While public access will be restricted to the site, well-defined building entries are required for authorized visitors. So as mentioned previously, there's no formal action taken this evening. The council may call up the item for a council hearing if they want to to provide feedback. If it's not called up by city council, the applicant may proceed with the development review applications. Planning board and city council hearings will be required for annexation review, while the site review and use review applications will be decided by staff subject to a planning board call up. And that concludes my presentation. Happy to take any questions.

Thank you, Alex. Very informative. Questions from board members for staff? Go ahead, Kurt.

I just have a couple. Thank you, Alex, for that presentation. First of all, you mentioned the open space requirement. What of the industrial uses count as open space? I'm thinking particularly of the outdoor storage. Does that get counted as open space?

No, outdoor storage is not considered open space. It's more looking at landscape buffers in this case. versus like a residential project that would have usable open space for tenants this is more of the industrial uses are separate and there's open space provided around the perimeter alex do you have a diagram that can show us where the open space is my impression was that most or all of it is outside the perimeter fence is that true uh yeah so here's the proposed site plan um I mean, given the context of the site, they need it to be used for operations and circulation and stuff like that. So in this case, like parking lot landscaping would count as open space. The perimeter areas of the site is basically what they're providing as open space.

Okay. Thank you. And then one other question. I saw that they are planning to pipe the ditch. Do we have standards about that or requirements or anything like that?

Yeah, those would be subject to approval by the ditch company and also the DCS regulates kind of how those things happen, those engineering standards in the DCS.

Okay, but we don't have any broader requirement about when you can or can't pipe?

No, it's primarily up to the ditch company. The zoning code doesn't speak to ditches.

OK, thank you.

I think those are my questions for now. Thank you. And if I could just colloquy on that about the ditch, it's already partially piped. Is that true?

Yeah, I believe so.

I think I saw that on the 63rd Street side of the site, that it's at least partially undergrounded.

Yeah. I think if I go back to this first one, you might be able to see it here. Yeah, so I guess this front part in front of the main building is open, and then it looks like it's undergrounded under these two access points to the south.

Okay, thank you. ML, I see your hand up online.

Thank you. Great presentation. Thank you for that. I have a couple of questions, clarifying questions. Is the proposed storage still going to be gravel storage? I believe that's what's there now.

The outdoor storage?

Yes.

Yeah, outdoor storage will remain. You can kind of see it's similar to what's being shown here in the existing conditions. There's this part to the north that's this little triangular area, and then to the west, there's going to be a detention pond in the area in the northwest corner around where my mouse is.

Okay, so it's not any other kind of storage. It's still the same thing as gravel.

I'll let the applicant. Yeah, I'll let the applicant speak to the surface conditions that are proposed.

Oh, no, I'm asking about what's being stored. It's still gravel?

Oh, no, it's equipment for Excel. So I guess, yeah, you can see like transformers and telephone poles and stuff like that.

Oh, okay. Yeah, just in existing conditions says what's stored is gravel. But in fact, it's also equipment. Okay.

I think that the ground cover, the surface is going to be gravel.

Oh, so they're not storing gravel?

Correct.

Oh, okay. The fence. Is this Tell me about the fence. Right now there's an existing 10 foot wire fence around the property. Tell me what the new, what is, I thought seven foot was our maximum allowed fence and just talk about the fence for a bit.

So the site was developed in like the 70s originally, and it's under county jurisdiction. And so the existing fence is kind of like what you see here is chain link fence, looks like barbed wire on the top. For the applicant's proposal, we haven't seen any fence details yet, but outdoor storage can be screened through fencing or landscaping or berms. And we'll work with them through the site review and use review process to make sure it's adequate.

Okay, so we don't know the height or the material at this point?

No, and I would also add that fence height can be modified through the site review process.

Right, as can most things. Have any adverse impacts to the ball fields been identified?

Not that I'm aware of, and parks didn't provide any indication that there's any adverse impacts.

Is this actually this existing condition photo? Is this actually a photo from the ball field?

This is a Google Street View image, and it's from the back corner here, kind of in the southwest, looking north towards this storage yard.

Okay, so it kind of is. The fields are right behind it. Okay.

yeah and given that it's like storage it's not like manufacturing uses i don't believe there's like construction like dust and vibrations and odors and stuff like that it's just used for storage um and these other two questions might be for the applicant but i'll put them out there are the proposed buildings scale similar to what exists it looks like what's being proposed

But what's existing is mostly one-story building? Is that correct? And what's being proposed are two-story buildings?

Yeah, I'll let the applicant speak to those.

Okay. And covered parking? Do you know if those are proposed to be affordable take on the roof?

HAB-Jacques Juilland, That's a good one for the applicant again. HAB-Jacques Juilland, Okay, I can get to the site plan, though. It looks like they are showing HAB-Jacques Juilland, The number eight and kind of these gray areas are HAB-Masyn Moyer, Right, they're showing.

Yeah. And it's in the narrative as well. I just was wondering if these are going to be because they do have a significant number of EV charging. HAB-Masyn Moyer, In their parking. I just was curious as to whether they were putting in portable tapes there. I will ask those to the applicant and Those are all my questions. Thank you very much.

Thank you, ML. Who else has questions on the board? I see Mason has a hand up.

My question is more of a process question. When the annexation comes back- Mason, could you lean into your mic?

You're coming in a little soft.

Let me check my audio.

Is that better?

Yes, thank you.

I turned up the audio in the room too, so that should help.

Yeah, great. So my question is a process question. When the annexation comes back to us, should we expect it to include a fiscal impact analysis of the annexation?

I don't believe that's typical for the annexation process. Yeah. Yeah. So, sorry. We'll also include, we'll have staff feedback on like fees for plant investment fees, PIFs and utility connections, stuff like that, but not a broader fiscal analysis.

Okay. And that's what's required of Colorado law since it exceeds 10 acres. I think I saw that in the packet.

Oh yeah. An annexation impact report.

Yeah.

Yeah, and since we haven't received an annexation application, I can't really comment too much on what's going to be provided, but that's one of the application requirements.

Okay, great. Yeah, if it could be shared with us in the packet, that would be awesome.

Yeah, that'll be part of it.

Great, thank you.

Thank you, Mason. Max?

Yeah, in terms of... Interfacing with the public realm, I know that staff is recommending enhanced screening along the southern and eastern edges, basically 63rd Street and I believe the fields. Would the landscaping and the treescape qualify as screening or is there something else in particular that staff was looking for, something more robust?

Yeah, so the screening is required for outdoor storage to mitigate the visual impact of outdoor storage on adjacent properties. So that can be achieved through fencing, landscaping, or berms. We haven't seen screening details yet from the applicant, but the fencing and screening requirements of the development code will apply, or will apply, excuse me.

Okay, because I'm looking at the top view of the project, and it seems like there's intended trees. But I guess I hear what you're saying, that the architectural details don't necessarily have that landscaping involved. And then I know, I think you may have even already answered this today, and we've been through this before, but the detention pond does count as open space, right?

It depends. It kind of depends on how steep it is, if it counts as open space. So we'll have to review that through the site review process.

All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Max. Mark, did you have any questions?

I do. Thank you. Is the site currently connected to city water and sewer?

I believe it is. I'll let the applicant speak to that.

Okay. I have a whole bunch of questions. So if you just want to say applicant, I got it. Okay. So that one's for the applicant. Okay. The current and proposed percentage of gravel versus pavement. Do you have any idea of the ratio?

Not at this time. I mean, this is very high-level conceptual. Those are site review details, I would say.

Okay. The right-of-way dedication... calls for adherence to the DCS with a six foot sidewalk and an eight foot planting strip. So it goes sidewalk, planting strip, street. Aren't we moving away from the planting strip separating the sidewalk from the street in terms of both maintenance, water use, etc.? And Would an eight or 10 foot multi-use path adjacent to the street possibly be a better design for that particular feature?

So I guess to get to your first part about the dedication, right now the right-of-way in front of the site is 50 feet or 60 feet is the standard right-of-way width that the city requires. I think currently the DCS requires detached sidewalks with a planting strip, so that's kind of the current code standard that we're working with. And I don't know if a multi use path would be appropriate in this area, just because it would just be the. Only in front of the the one site it's not connecting to another multi use path and it's not called out for in the transportation master plan.

So. I spent some time with the current BVCP today, and as always, sometimes you can start doing word searches and get lost in things. But as I read it in BVCP Policy 1.17, Section E, We require, to varying degrees, community benefit to help us reach our goals. So in this concept, I know this is a concept review, I know it's early, but do you have an idea of what Excel is proposing for community benefit to help us reach our current BVCP goals?

So I think 1.17 is annexation, and community benefit is usually worked out through the annexation process, and we're not there yet. We're just looking at the concept plan right now. So we haven't had those discussions yet as staff or with the applicant.

Okay. In the... meetings you've had, has anyone floated the idea of a land swap moving the Excel site to the south and moving the ball fields one through four north? They're approximately the same amount of square footage and Anyway, it seems like there's a lot of efficiency to be gained by putting the ball fields together and having the Excel site farther to the south. Was that ever discussed in any of your?

No, that hasn't been discussed. That's kind of beyond the scope of this concept plan review.

Okay, I think that's it.

Okay, thank you, Mark. You asked all of my questions, so thank you for that. Anybody want another bite of the apple, or should we move on to the applicant presentation? Just checking for hands online. Okay, I think we are ready to invite the applicant to come up and give us your presentation, followed by, I'm sure, some very interesting board questions.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Mallory Mooney, and I'm with Norris Design, representing the applicant, Xcel Energy.

Mallory, if you could, like, yeah, just, like, get that up there and lean in. It's funny, it's not very loud over here.

There's so many things on this desk. How's that? Better? All right. Next slide, please. Oh, okay. All right. Xcel Energy is also known as the Public Service Company of Colorado. And we're joined tonight by other members of the design and consultant groups, including Ronan Design Group. They are our design lead. Anderson and Hastings is our civil engineer. Barker Rinker Seacat is the architect. And not with us tonight, but a very critical member, is our geotechnical engineer, which is Tara Kahn. So we are here, as you all know, to discuss a conceptual plan. for an already operational service center that Xcel Energy owns. This site is located on the far eastern edge of the city. And as Alex mentioned, it's an enclave within Boulder County. Got a little island here. And then it's adjacent to the Gerald Stasio ball fields, the Legette Reservoir. And then we would definitely like to thank staff so far for their assistance and guidance in this process. Next slide, please. As you've seen, but this puts it into the context of a timeline, here's where we are in the process. We did start with an annexation feasibility study and a pre-application meeting, so to speak, at the beginning of the year with staff, where they helped us to determine the next and best path forward, starting with the concept review, as we're here tonight to get your feedback. The future process steps are the annexation and initial zoning, and then the site review and use review, both of those processes are public processes as well. Next slide, please. So dialing in a little bit, the site is located at 2655 63rd Street. Again, in Boulder County, it's zoned general industrial. And with the future annexation and initial zoning application, we're not proposing to change the use or expand the site at all. So the city equivalent is industrial general. And then with that, we would also have a site review and use review to follow. Next slide, please. So dialing a little bit more into what is existing now, you can see this site was built over 50 years ago. It was developed in the early 1970s. A lot of the technology has become outdated and the site is in need of renovation. It currently has a service center, which is that northeast corner white building that's a bit larger. And then it has a fleet garage. That's the building to the west. There are a number of outbuildings and accessory buildings as well. There is a storage yard to the far west, as you've seen, and then a little bit of a storage yard to the north. It's important to note that this is a secure site. It's not publicly accessible and it's not accessible without Xcel Energy's authorization. As a result, it's currently surrounded by an eight foot tall chain link fence that has about a foot of barbed wire on top of it. Not the most aesthetic, but it is secure. The site does have four points of access currently. There are three points of access along 63rd And then there's one point of access to the south off of Stazio Drive. All of these access points are gated and secure as well, so any vehicles coming in or out need to have Xcel Energy's authorization. Next slide, please. So now getting a little bit more into the details of what we are proposing. It is early days, so we are still working through the design, and we welcome any feedback that you all have for us tonight. This site would remain secure. We are proposing a 10-foot tall perimeter fence, and to the board member's point, this is a little bit outside of what's allowed by the city standards currently. However, we would be seeking a modification for that, and we would look into having some sort of no-climb material so that additional height would negate the need for barbed wire, razor wire, those kind of things. So the project does seek to replace the outdated service center and then the outdated fleet garage. So on this image here, the fleet garage is building A to the north, and then the service center is building B down to the south. It would also improve the onsite storage in the two storage yards. That is a gravel surfacing, to answer the question that was asked previously. And then it would also improve, you know, public infrastructure. So we are adding a detention pond and then additional landscaping and buffering along 63rd. This site is not currently tied into Boulder City water, but the project proposes that it would tie into Boulder water. So that's part of the annexation and would be proposed with that application. It does not use any more water than the current site is using. These upgrades would improve the water main, improve the water, add a couple of new water taps. But again, no additional water use because there's no expansion of the use itself. It's more of improvements to the use for efficiency. Additionally, this project does propose surface and covered parking. We have 81 standard parking stalls. 39 proposed EV parking stalls. We are still working through our energy modeling there, so where those stalls get placed on site is to be determined, but that's part of our design that we're working through. And then there are some longer stalls proposed for trucks and deliveries. We have 24 proposed 32-foot-long stalls and 17 proposed 60-foot-long stalls. In addition to these improvements, the site is able to meet the 10% requirement for activated open space. And to Alex's point, in order to qualify for open space, the area needs to be activated. So we're, again, still working through the design here, but we are thinking about some walking paths around the detention pond and along that eastern edge of the property. Picnic tables, benches, things that staff and Xcel Energy guests can use. throughout their workday. There are a couple of potential variances or modifications that we wanted to discuss with you all and get your feedback on. The first of which that I mentioned is that 10 foot tall perimeter fence, seven feet is what is allowed. But given the critical nature of site security and some of the issues that Xcel Energy has had with their existing chain link fence, We believe that a higher quality material that is no climb would still allow, that additional height would still allow for site security without having to use razor wire or some of these other less aesthetic security measures. The other item that we would need to address is the current engineering code allows for two access points to and from a site. We are proposing three. The site currently has four, if you remember, So we would remove one of the access points along 63rd and have only two access points there. And then we would keep the access point along Stasio Drive, but we would shift it a little bit further to the east so it works a little bit better for site circulation. So one of the questions asked earlier were, what are the benefits of this project? The reason Excel is pursuing the project, in addition to renovating outdated materials or outdated buildings that need improvement, This project improves service reliability for all Excel customers in the area. The site itself, it would improve their operational efficiency. It also improves workforce safety. Some of the things on site now, although Excel works to have all of their staff be safe, there are improvements that are needed for safety. And this also enhances the emergency preparedness that Excel can offer when there are emergencies in the future. Next slide, please. So looking a little bit more into the phasing of this project. As Alex mentioned, phase one would build the new service center. That's building B. It would also do all of the site improvements that are needed. So the detention pond, the storage yard, all of that landscape buffering along the eastern edge, that would all go in with phase one. And then once that service center is built, they would demolish the existing service center, which you can kind of see it. It's the yellow that's behind building a, that's the outline of it currently. So they would then once that's demolished, then they can begin phase two, building that fleet garage. The fleet garage would also, um, again, go in in that phase. And once it's built, then the existing fleet garage would be torn down and that remaining covered parking and surface parking would be installed.

I'm just going to do a time check here. Alex, how many minutes was this presentation scheduled for?

15 minutes.

15, OK. You've got about six more minutes.

I'm very close to being done. OK, next slide, please. So looking into the landscape and open space code compliance, as mentioned previously, we do meet, or I'm sorry, this was not mentioned previously, but we do meet the requirements for open space in terms of the 10% requirement across the site. Our early calculations show that we can actually exceed that requirement quite a bit by about 28,000 square feet. So we are looking to utilize that to the best of our ability. What you see in green, light green and dark green does account, or I'm sorry, just the dark green accounts for that open space requirement. And then the light green accounts for the buffer requirements. So we did calculate it separately there. Site screening would be achieved through a combination of landscaping and that no-climb proposed fence that I mentioned earlier. And then plant materials would comply with all applicable city regulations, including the use of native and water-wise species. If we switch to the next slide there you'll see some character images of the planting materials that we're considering all climate resistant low maintenance species locally adapted and species that do have low water use, also known as water wise species. Next slide please. Looking into the architectural details a little bit more, we tried to align building A and building B so you could see renderings based on where they are on an aerial view of the site. So something to note is that materials and building design are part of Xcel Energy's approved designs. Simple designs do add to the uniformity across different sites, and as a public utility provider, Excel Energy does have a fiduciary responsibility to keep costs low. Simple buildings that are uniform across multiple sites help them do that. Next slide, please. So we do have some renderings here of the service center. You've seen these previously. And in the next slide, we have some renderings of the fleet garage. If you notice, these are all very natural colors. We are proposing Shades of gray and brown here on this project. And then the next slide to get into the details of those elevations a little bit more. Obviously, these are very simple buildings. These are architecturally speaking a little more geared for an industrial zone, right? However, in order to bring these down to the human scale, there are variations in color and material. Textured materials are being used. doing our best to provide some window groupings and plane changes, really just to bring it back to a human scale, and then being able to screen around the perimeter of the site to cover those storage areas and some of the other items that staff has mentioned. Height for these buildings is proposed at 35 feet at the parapet, which is in line with code. No variances or modifications proposed there. And then if you go to the next slide, these are elevations of the fleet garage. And one more slide to get into the materials a little bit. They do include concrete and cement panels, vertical metal panels, and then louvered screens for additional screening of some operational equipment. So moving on to the final slide, we thank you all so much for your time this evening, and we look forward to any feedback that you have for us.

Thank you so much for that presentation. And thank you for your comment about how this is early in the process, and you welcome our feedback.

We do.

But this is not the time for feedback yet. This is the time for questions from the board for the applicant. And I know we had some carryover questions, but who would like to go first? Mark, go right ahead.

Will you? Does this site currently or in the future? Have retail or commercial customers actually visit the site? No, none.

Not to my knowledge. And that is not planned or proposed.

Okay. You said the site is currently not connected to city water. How about city sewer?

I'm going to invite our civil engineer to answer that question.

I'm Jim Hastings, Anderson and Hastings engineers. And Mallory, I'm sorry, you're not correct. They are connected to city water. There's a meter on Stasio, a two-inch domestic water meter, and then a inch and a half irrigation meter also serves the property. And the sewer, you know, it's an old facility. The sewer... exits the kind of goes right underneath where we're proposing the detention pond and connects to a sewer in status.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

My apologies for getting that wrong earlier.

No problem. Um, I I think that's it for me for applicant questions.

Thank you, Mark. ML, you have your hand up.

I do have my hand up. Thank you so much for your presentation. And I have some follow-up questions from the staff. Talk a little bit about the fence. You talk about a material fence.

non-climbable or something is this give me an idea of what you're meaning because this is going to be basically the entire perimeter up to 10 feet sure sure so there there's a number of different types of no climb fences that are out there um there are fences that have really small vertical slats where you you know they're an inch or so apart with horizontal slats There are other CBU type material fences that have more of what you would see for like a sound wall if you were traveling down a busy road. Can you explain what CBU is? CBU, it's a type of concrete form. We haven't determined the material yet. There are options out there, though, and those would go through site review and be part of the conversation. We just haven't determined those materials yet, unfortunately.

So I'm understanding that they're visually opaque. In other words, you can't right now, you can see through everything, right? Because it's chain link, but the material you're proposing is visually not transparent. Is that correct?

It could go either way. So they do make no climb fences that are similar to chain link in terms of opacity. You know, it's kind of like a grid system, vertical instead of at a horizontal. So you have little squares instead of diagonals or little diamonds. So that's one option. And then if we did go with a CBU material, that concrete material, then that would be entirely opaque.

Okay. Thank you for that. I asked this to staff. I'm not sure if you've gotten any, have any adverse impact to the ball fields been identified?

None that we have heard. And to my knowledge, Xcel Energy has not received complaints, but that's just to my knowledge. So we did not receive any sort of public feedback or any comments from City Parks Department related to the ball fields or the impacts there. And it is important to note that this facility is already operational at the ballpark. So I think I would think we would have heard it.

I have gone out there to those ball fields rarely, so I'm not exactly sure what the exchange between the two properties might or might not be. Thank you for your answer. And then again, regard to the covered parking, any thought about those covered structures having photovoltaics?

We have not determined that yet. We're still working through our energy modeling, but that's a great idea. And I think that that's definitely worth looking into.

Okay.

Great.

Those are my questions. I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, ML.

Kurt, are you ready? Yeah, thank you. I just have a couple of other questions. Talk to me about the access points. So currently there are four access points. You're proposing three here. Why do you feel that both of the access points on 63rd are needed?

So really related to site operations and the amount of deliveries that Excel has at this service center throughout the day and the amount of trucks that are entering and leaving the service center, we felt that the current traffic operations may not need all three access points, but we would still need the two access points on 63rd.

Because of the possibility of queuing of trucks then?

Just due to the volume, vehicular volume of traffic that goes in and out of these sites. And, oh, yeah, so the Is it the north location is in only? Yeah, so it would change the way the site operates. So north entrance off 63rd would be entrance only, and then the southern position would be egress only, so exit only.

Oh, okay. Great. Thank you. And my other question is about the general layout of the site. So currently on the west side, there's this, I guess, city-owned kind of slightly wild area between the west, your west boundary, west property line and Stasio Drive.

did you give any consideration to putting more of your open space adjacent to that to kind of create a larger effective area there so un you know we aren't able to do any sort of improvements off-site but we do have unless that's that's not owned by us the storage yard does exist in that location so we are proposing more landscape buffering along that area um but unfortunately given the way the site needed to circulate, we needed to keep that area as the storage yard.

Okay. And what about the detention pond, unfortunately, is also detached from that kind of swampy area there. Curt Brown, Did did you look at the possibility of having the detention pond on the south end of the site, instead of the north end. Curt Brown, Is the great gotcha yeah it's it's due to grading in the low point of the site yeah that makes sense Okay, those are my only questions, thank you, thank you Kurt will go to mason next and then Max if you have anything.

Great. Thank you for your presentation. Can we go to the slide that has phase one and phase two? Yeah. And I'm sorry if I just missed this in your presentation, but I just want to make sure I fully understand the reasoning and the timing for phase one and phase two. Do you mind just speaking to it?

Sure. So Excel operations do need to continue while construction is ongoing, to my knowledge. And so the existing service center would still have staff. It would still be servicing the community. When building B is built, that's the new service center, the original service center would be demolished. Same thing with the fleet garage. Fleet garage needs to remain operational until that new building A is completed, and then the existing fleet garage could be demolished.

And what's the expected timing on those?

So it kind of depends on when we get through entitlements. We are still developing these plans as has been mentioned. And so it would be once we have building permits and all approvals, it would be a typical construction project, I'd say, 12 to 18 months.

I can chime in, too, for the phases. Usually, we allow for a three-year period for phase one to be completed, followed by three years for phase two, unless requested to be modified.

And we are not proposing any modifications to that timing or vesting period.

Great. And I think, yeah, that's all my questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mason. Max, I think you were indicating you don't have any questions. Is that right?

That's correct. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. I just have one for the applicant and one for staff. So for staff, this will go through site review and use review. Is that at a staff level with planning board call-up or will that come back to planning board automatically?

Yeah, staff level with planning board call-up unless there's a request for a height modification.

Okay. So we won't necessarily see this except as a call-up. All right, thank you. And then can you talk to me a little bit about how the employees use this site? Are these folks who have a nine to five, five days a week? Are these folks who are coming in and out of the site? You know, I'm sure you have a variety of folks who do different things, but can you talk about that a little bit?

So, sure. I am not an employee of Xcel Energy, so I'm not entirely familiar with the site operations, but I believe we have Sonia on the call who can speak to site operations. Sonia, are you online?

I'll need to give her promoted access. Just one moment.

Okay. Or we have someone in the room. Nick?

Nicholas Cole, Boulder Area Manager. Thank you for listening to our presentation today. So I'm one of the employees that is housed out of our service center. So we have a various amount of different employees. So we do have designers that are nine to five, myself and the community relations team. We also have engineers. And then we also on the backside have our linemen that come through to get equipment that they need for different service. So we have a plethora of Excel employees that house out of the service center. So just depends, but we have pretty much everyone on staff that works for Excel to a certain degree houses out of the service center to some impact.

Thank you. Thank you. I think that answers my question. Mark, did you have a colloquy?

Yeah. The linemen... given the situation, might be there at any time of day, 24-7, is that correct? Like if you have an emergency, power outage, et cetera?

Yeah, if we have any emergencies, what they'll do, they'll come to the service center and grab equipment that they need and then go about to the area that needs it. So it's basically not just our location where we work, but it's where we house a lot of our equipment that our guys need in the field. Great, thank you. No worries.

Can I also follow up on that? That raises to me the question of lighting. Do you currently have like large scale lighting there?

You mean outside of the service center?

Well, like in the yard or just in the parking lot or whatever, like streetlights and such. Yes.

I guess from my perspective, I'm there during the daytime. So normally it's always bright when I'm there. I try not to be at the service center too late, but it is bright when I'm there and I haven't heard anything outside of that.

So yeah. Okay. Thank you.

No worries.

Okay. And then for folks who are online and couldn't hear what happened in the room, I think our engineer said yes, there is parking lot lighting. Yes, thank you. Okay. Any other questions about the use of this site or any other colloquies looking online? Yes, Kurt.

I just had one other question, which is usually or commonly when we get an annexation, the annexation is happening because people want to attach to city water sewer. If you're already on city water sewer, I'm just wondering why you want to do the annexation at all.

So that was something that we discussed with staff during that annexation feasibility study and pre application in order to make the site improvements and get the necessary building permits that are needed for the improvements annexation is being required by excel energy.

There's also an out of- I'm sorry.

Annexation is being required by the city for Xcel Energy.

That's correct. So there's an out of city utility agreement from, I believe it's 1971. And again, it has the common language in it that says, A, when we ask you to annex, you annex. But if you want to make changes to the property, then if you're eligible, then you would go ahead and complete the annexation process.

Okay.

That makes sense. And that was probably already in the memo and I missed it. Thank you.

So basically, Charles, if I'm understanding, significant redevelopment of any enclave will require annexation. Okay, thank you. And Max, I see your hand up.

Yeah, hey, I just wanted to hop in on that conversation earlier. I had my assumptions, but since we're going into uses of the building, on the southern side of the fleet garage with the bays, you know, you have windows immediately above them. Is that a completely open floor or is there a second story here?

For the fleet garage specifically?

Yeah.

The fleet garage is one story. So to house the taller trucks and operations.

That's kind of what I thought. Just in regards to like building form, et cetera, trying to be mindful of what works operationally, but also architecturally. Thank you.

Absolutely. And then the service center is a two-story building.

Thank you. I mean, we don't have the height of that fleet garage, do we?

It, give me one moment, I can tell you.

Okay, I've been, oh, there it is, thank you. Do we have that one? I've been flipping back and forth.

It was submitted.

I'm not sure we have that in our pack.

With the concept plan.

I believe it's in the attachments, like towards the end of the packet. You should have.

Looking back down. Oh, there it is. Okay. I've got it. I'll be able to answer my own questions from there.

Thank you. 33 feet at the parapet for the fleet garage, 35 at the parapet for the service center.

Thank you.

And did I understand correctly, the fleet garage, those upper story windows are just for light. There's not like two stories and that's a separate office space or something. That's just correct.

Lighting.

Okay.

And that was the nature of my question. If that was a full service bay for the.

Yeah. Yeah. So we're on the fleet garage right now. The, to answer your question first, the windows are for light and for, um, building aesthetic and appearance. In terms of the service center, the service center does have a second level of operations and offices. But the fleet garage is just one level tall trucks.

Did that answer your question, Max?

Yes, it did. Yeah.

Okay, thank you. All right. Last call for questions. Great. Then we will go to the public hearing. Thank you so much to the applicant team. Thank you. Very informative. Thank you. So I will turn it back over to staff to take public comment on this hearing item.

Thank you. And this is your opportunity to speak if you'd like to speak to the public hearing that is on the agenda this evening. We'll start with in-person participants. So if there's anybody in the room that would like to speak to the public hearing, please go ahead and step up to the podium and you'll have three minutes to speak. And then we will move to any folks who are online.

How come I come in for the last word and I'm always the first word, Lynn Siegel? Like, where is everybody, once again, speaking out against Xcel Energy? $23 million a year we're losing as citizens in this community. Absolutely not. No annexation for Xcel Energy. We're going to do our own energy. Boulder Power & Light. We already got completely screwed on this with Sam Weaver and Bobby Yates and Alice Jackson. And that's not going to hold. We're for energy sovereignty in this community. We don't need these things coming through. No annexation. Of course not. Nothing for them. I'd love to hire them all when we have Boulder Power and Light. They sound like a really good team and they've got excellent skills. But Xcel Energy, they just work for the wrong company. So no, absolutely not. and nothing to promote them. I had to rush over here because I had to do my vacuuming before 5 o'clock, exactly up to the minute, for time of use, and for all of their public service power outages. And now all the raising rates that people don't know what they're getting into with time of use. And that's going to affect our bottom line for the economic analysis for the city of Boulder, for our sales tax revenue, as Xcel Energy is stealing all our funds from the resident consumers. So absolutely not. No way. Don't do it. And free Palestine.

Thank you for joining us tonight, Lynn. And now we will move to our online participants. If there's anybody online that would like to speak to the public hearing, this is your opportunity to do so. And you can just let us know you would like to speak by raising your hand. And seeing none online, I'm going to pass it back to you, Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Thomas. And thank you, Lynn. And I want to apologize. I think I did not read into the record the name of this item. So this is our concept plan review and comment for a proposal to expand the existing Xcel energy service and operations facility at 2655 North 63rd Street. The project will require annexation, site review, and use review applications. The concept plan is reviewed under case number LUR 2026-00026. And I apologize for not reading that into the record at the beginning of the item. All right, we are now at the time for board member comments. I said earlier we would be deliberating, but we're not actually deciding anything or approving or denying. We are just individually commenting on this concept plan. And with that in mind, which board member would like to kick it off for us? Max Lord.

Sure, I'll go first. I feel like we have to do the obligatory, this is a concept review and acknowledge the difficulty of the applicant, because there's only so much I can put into it when we're still hearing. But I think a lot of the feedback that's been said is relevant and important. I'm excited to hear that there's the opportunity for more open space and how that can be achieved. I also have A lot of empathy with the industrial use of the land. For instance, in-gate and out-gate on the road, the dump is just south of that. I'm very grateful that there's an in and an out. Otherwise, I would have to do a three-point turn with a trailer every time I drove in. I understand why it needs to be the way that it is. But increasing the open space along the edges so that, you know, the parks aren't interacting with these storage spaces with these hot parking lots, I think would be a very valuable use of space. As far as like the architectural detail, I think if there's sufficient space. barrier visual barrier between them, it becomes less relevant. But still, I think just as a board, we're typically looking for more complex building forms than gray boxes. It doesn't always need to come in the form of varieties of fight. There's other ways to achieve architectural drama, you know, with varied reveals on the windows, etc. You know, you can have a beautiful brick building that's still a rectangle as long as it's got some sort of detail. But yeah, I would hope to find something better than this. But at the same time, I'm going to bookend this with what I began with. I understand that this is a concept review and that there's always so much that can go into architectural at the beginning. Yeah, that's me.

Thank you, Max. Who is next? Kurt.

Thanks uh I appreciate those comments Max uh since you were talking about the architectural character I thought I would follow up I'm actually I'm usually quite a stickler about the architectural character I think that having good uh ground level pedestrian um character is really important in a building I think that if there's any place in Boulder where that is less necessary it's here this is an extremely industrial area. It is very, it is, it is not exactly pedestrian friendly. It's all very large scale land uses, including Stasio and certainly the recycling area via and the Excel facility on the other side. And so I feel that Well, I disagree to some extent with the comments that staff made. Staff said the buildings currently have several blank walls along the most visible public-facing facades. A variety of building forms and heights are required. I feel that the applicant is already, in the renderings that we've seen, is already meeting the requirements The requirements of the code decide review criteria and so on to to that extent, and so, in this case, I feel that. It is not appropriate to require additional articulation or significant changes to the administration details and that sort of thing it just it feels like overkill for this very industrial area and very, very industrial project. A couple of other comments. I can support the variance, I guess it is, or the variation to the standards on the accesses, given that one is in and one is out. That will improve the safety relative to two accesses on 63rd that are both in out so i think that that's fine and i definitely support the the variation to the fence standards i think that this is a place where obviously security matters and again the character of the area um does not for, you know, something that is a four foot picket fence or that sort of thing. I think a taller and more industrial feeling fence is appropriate. The last thing I will say is ML brought up the question, and I guess Mark also, the photovoltaic. I think you guys are Excel, right? And so I think it would be really great from a number of standpoints to have as much photovoltaic here as you can, not just on the parking area, but preferably rooftop also. I think it would be good advertising for the company to be able to say, look, we're putting our money where our mouths are. Basically, we're using our space to generate power for the city of Boulder and everyone else. And I think it would be good to have experience for yourselves with operating, installing, operating, using a photovoltaic system on your buildings. I think that that could be helpful for the company in terms of understanding what the customers are experiencing in that regard. So I would encourage you to do that as much as possible. And I think those are my only comments. So I feel, just to sum up, I feel that this is consistent with the Boulder Valley comp plan and with the site review standards. So thank you.

Thank you, Kurt. ML.

Thank you. So I am just going to reiterate some of the things that have already came up in the questions. I would encourage the project to minimize impervious paving. I know you've got a mix of gravel and asphalt on the site. One of the site review criteria is to minimize the amount of paved area. So I would encourage that, since it looks like most of the site is covered with either impervious, i.e., gravel or impervious material. Excuse me. Reverse that. Anyway. So that first comment is about the paving itself. Getting to the 10-foot fence, I understand that currently there's an eight-foot chain link fence with about two feet of barbed wire. My concern with the 10-foot fence is not so much its height, but would be its transparency. Whatever we have to say about changing fence, the good news is that it's visually transparent when you drive by it or at a distance looking at it. So you don't have this big mass on the side. If the fence was more like a wall and you could not see through it, I think you would change the character of what is out there. It's all very open and very visually accessible. And so just be careful when you design that fence that it doesn't create an unintended consequence of creating a big bulk and a mass on the monolithic plane on the site. Third point, yes, I did mention the PV covered parking. And I would ditto to what Kurt had to say. right, energy supplier. I think renewable energy on site would be a great thing to see coming from Excel. And lastly, speaking about the buildings, I think the industrial buildings are fine and appropriate. I would not try to make these other than what they are. However, I would encourage the industrial components be celebrated. And it sounds like you've got a really good Amy Nunez- architectural team barker and Christine cat and I think they would know how to do that so good luck with this project, as you move forward.

Thank you ml. Amy Nunez- marker mason. Amy Nunez- who's ready. Amy Nunez- mason.

mason. Curt Brown, yeah I agree with a lot of comments and i'm not gonna belabor the point I am more in curtain emails boat about the architecture. comments and the PBE comments. The only maybe new thing that I can add to the conversation is I am interested in those details of the annex agreement and the cost benefit analysis or the impact analysis, I think it's actually called, and the community benefit that goes along with it. I think it was mentioned in the presentation that having Better response from Excel is community benefits. I don't know if I would see it exactly that way. I see that more as the responsibility of the company operating as utility. So I'm looking for something a little bit more there. And I think that's all I have.

Thank you, Mason. Mark.

My fellow planning board members are going to roll their eyes when I say, well, At concept review, there's this tension, because they've heard this many, many times, between spending a bunch of money and coming with something that the board can really look at and analyze, or not spending a whole lot of money and coming with something that's relatively simple, and then we get to kind of project onto it positively or negatively. So in the spectrum of concept reviews, I find this one to be edging towards the light side of things. And because of that, I appreciate other board members' comments that, hey, these are industrial buildings. We don't need them to be fancy. But I would contend that good, interesting design does not have to be expensive. Some simple features in the buildings that have been discussed, but whether it's the way you finish the top of the building. I'm not an architect, so I'm not going to tell you what it is, but I think that by the nature of Excel being a public utility and being the public utility for the city of Boulder, there is a little bigger burden beyond just what's in the code to, and there is a fiduciary responsibility, I understand, to be cost effective. There's also a fiduciary responsibility to adhere to the Excel mission statement, and I think Excel strives to be innovative, provide leadership, and I think you can do that in site design and in architectural design. And I think we've expressed the desire for Excel to show the kind of sustainability values and leadership that Excel touted as we've had different battles and discussions over the years in the city. So I'm encouraging you that this is concept review. And in site review, when you come back for site review and use review and annexation, that there are objective numerical requirements and there are subjective requirements. And that your site review application, you can do yourself a favor by really coming back with the kind of sustainability features and design features that make us say, wow, this is a great application. And you've extended yourself and gone beyond the objective and numerical requirements of the site review. Now, I may be getting myself in trouble by telling you to go beyond what's objectively required, but I'm encouraging you to think about that as Excel's position in our community. I also... we have solar, we have possibilities for wind, we have all sorts of sustainability features that you can come to this with. And I think that careful design of your detention pond, of permeable versus impermeable spaces, all can be features that will help you get across the annexation and site review goals. And then the final thing is, gosh, talk to Parks and Rec and see if We couldn't flip this with our other ball fields and put the ball fields together and give you guys a site. I think that's something worth considering. That's my comments.

Thank you, Mark.

And I will try to be brief. So I did visit the site and appreciated the setting that's there. My two major concerns are around the fence and around shade structures on the site. So I have no problems with having a 10-foot tall fence and having it be not climbable. I appreciate the security concerns on the site. If you did make it a concrete wall, I worry that you would deal with graffiti like some of the other sites around you. There's that one up on the hill that looks like it's been abandoned for a long time and it's quite thoroughly tagged. So it seems like there's some active graffiti artists in the neighborhood. I don't have strong feelings about a visual permeability, but I think your fence should be attractive because this is going to be the main thing that people see about your site is this perimeter fence. um and most of your buildings will be will be tucked behind that and there will be some landscaping there so i would love to see it come back with a very attractive uh fence design and um and then the other thing i noticed as i was driving around was some of your employees uh taking a break in the shade of one of their trucks because there wasn't a lot of shade on the site and so i would encourage you to think really hard about i love that you do have the perimeter landscaping but it seems like most of the employees I can't speak for people who are there, but I imagine that a lot of them are going to be inside of the fence for most of their workday. And so if you had shade structures, you know, one per building, a nice picnic area attached to each building that is shaded, and then maybe one, at least one per storage yard where people can take a break, check their cell phone, not having to hide in the shade of a truck. That would be quite a nice feature, I think, for your employees. And we do look with OpenSpace for it to be usable. And I think having some usable shade structures on site is a much better benefit for your employees than having walking paths, although those are nice too. But I just don't see a whole lot of folks going out and taking a short walk on their lunch break as opposed to just wanting some nice shade on the site. Then I will also say that when this comes back for annexation, we do look for community benefit, and most of the time we're looking for a housing benefit, and that's obviously not appropriate for this site. So I would encourage you to be creative and work with staff to think about what kind of community benefit you can provide in exchange for the benefits of annexation that might not be housing, but that might be something the city would really value. And I'm honestly not that concerned about the architecture. Usually I am a stickler for the architectural criteria in the code. I think you do have a lot of variation in height and facades as I looked at your elevations. That's enough for me. Like I said, I think people are mostly going to see your fence. So I would put more attention there. And those are my comments. Anything else from any members of the board? All right. So with that said, we now offer the applicant. Is there anything that you want to tell us or ask us? And you don't have to thank us. Everybody's appreciative. We appreciate you. You appreciate us. But is there any questions that you have? Okay. Well, thank you so much. Hope this was valuable for you. It's valuable for us. Have a great night. So we're going to move on on our agenda. And then do people... Do folks on the board need a quick break? We are going to take a planned break sometime around 8.30 to accommodate a staff request. So do people need a break now, or should we push on for another hour? I hear one vote for push on. So we'll just keep going. So the next item on our agenda, we are done with our public hearing items. We are moving on to matters from the planning staff. Okay. I think, I think we are going to take like a one to two minute break while staff rearrange themselves and while board members fill up on water and such. So let's, let's, let's be generous here. Let's say it's a three minute break. We're going to come back at eight 32, eight 32. Okay. I think we don't quite have everybody back, but we do have a quorum. So I'm going to go ahead and read the title of this agenda item. so we are now on item 6a this is a state law update the purpose of this item is to introduce the planning board to several code changes that will be reviewed by the board over the next two years in response to state legislation and state funding this item will also provide an overview and summary of recently adopted city ordinances in reaction to state bills on land use This item is for informational purposes only, and it does not require planning board action at this time. So we are going to get educated about these state law updates and perhaps give some initial commentary, but no action by the board. So with that, I would like to hand it off to Carl Geiler and others from the planning team to give us the presentation.

Thank you, Chair. Good evening, board members. I'm Carl Giler with Planning and Development Services. As the chair noted, we're going to be talking about some relatively recently passed state legislation that relates to land use. I know the board is quite familiar with a number of bills that have passed in the last few years, but there's some new ones that have come up and some ones that we've been working on. for over a year now that we wanted to give an update to the board. Before we get started, though, I wanted to introduce a new city planner who's on our staff, Eliza Blood. She's going to be working on some of these projects and will be presenting to you tonight. I'm also joined by Lisa Hood, who's working on this as well. And joining us online is Sloan Walbert, if there's any questions for Housing and Human Services. So as noted, the purpose of tonight is to just introduce these upcoming changes that we're working on. There's no action needed tonight. This is an informational item. We will have some key issues that will help frame the discussion at the end of the presentation. So just as a refresher.

I'm sorry, Carl. Do you want us to discuss item by item, bill by bill, or wait until the end of the presentation?

I think we were thinking about running through the whole presentation and then jump into it.

Okay. Thank you.

Cool. So just as a refresher of what we've been working on the last few years related to state bills, just going to touch on some of the ordinances that have been passed in reaction to state legislation. So you'll remember the residential growth management bill that was passed that basically made growth management systems not legal according to the bill. Then we have accessory dwelling units was passed, which required that ADUs be allowed more pervasively in all zoning districts where detached dwelling units are allowed, among other details that were addressed in the ordinance. We did a lot of work on occupancy reform. We passed an ordinance before the state bill, similar to the ADU, but then the state then passed a bill that said that you couldn't regulate the number of people in a building based on familial relations and that. So we had to bring an ordinance for that. Then moving some out of housing is the wild and urban interface code. The state passed a bill related to the WUI type regulation. So that helped inform the changes that we brought forward last year and earlier this year, actually, too. Minimum parking requirements were addressed by a state bill, which we brought forward. Natural medicine was a little over a year ago where we brought an ordinance before the planning board. Small cell updates have been addressed in a number of ordinances like the omnibus and another ordinance before that. What we're really going to focus on tonight are these three pieces of state legislation, which we're going to all talk about them throughout the presentation. The focus is the State Affordable Housing Fund or what we've been calling Proposition 123 for fast track reviews. There's the Housing and Transit Oriented Communities Bill, which we call the TOC Bill. And then there's the Housing Opportunities Made Easier or HOME Act, which is actually passed earlier this year. So it's relatively fresh in our review of it. So there are some common themes throughout these bills. A lot of these bills have been passed by the state to basically remove local land use zoning barriers to housing principally. And a lot of the bills that I was just going over really focused on technical requirements like where and how many ADUs you're allowed to have or how many people can occupy a unit or regulating the number of residential permits. In this case, the state has been moving more towards addressing process and procedures and discretion as part of their housing bills. You'll see these icons that relate to the first one being allowing more residential projects through administrative review at the staff level without call-up or public hearing requirements. has that icon next to it when it comes up in a bill, replacing subjective standards with objective standards, more black and white requirements, decreasing the level of discretion and adding predictability to development review that's shown with that particular icon. And then also looking at quicker review timelines. Again, all this to try to remove barriers to housing. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Lisa, who's going to talk about Proposition 123.

All right. Hi, everybody. Strapping for a lot of state bill slides. So Proposition 123 is actually, if you'll remember, in 2022, voters in Colorado passed a ballot initiative that created a state affordable housing fund. And the funding from that is available for nonprofits, community land trusts, developers, and local governments. There's a number of different funding streams. It comes through two different departments in the state, but they all support a variety of affordable housing initiatives. One of the requirements for eligibility for that funding is that the project must be located in a jurisdiction that's made an affordable housing commitment. So that's committing to a certain number of affordable housing units being created in that jurisdiction per year. It's a 3% increase per year. So to give you an idea, Boulder's commitment for the first three-year cycle was about 300 units or 600 units, sorry. The second three-year funding cycle will begin next year, and there's an additional requirement for that that the jurisdictions where funding is or where that are eligible for funding, have to have a fast track review process where applications are approved within 90 days. So that's an additional requirement beyond just the first three year cycle for that funding. And then every three years, the city must demonstrate that we've met that affordable housing unit count that increase of 3% per year. So I'm going to focus in this part of the presentation on the fast track review requirement because that's the part that requires land use code changes. So the projects that can get this type of funding and that would need to have the fast track review are housing projects where at least half of the units are affordable. The way the state defines affordable, is that either the rent or the cost of for sale housing can't be more than 30 percent of the monthly income for households earning less than 60 percent of the area median income for rentals and less than 120 percent for for sale. So we looked back in the last couple of years at projects that have been approved that you all may remember if you were on the board when they came through. Five projects would have met this threshold in the last five years. One of the ones that you'll have seen out and about is Raleigh Flats near Val Mountain 28th. So we expect that the number of projects that this fast track review would apply to is probably going to be about one to two a year. So it's not a huge number. It's not every application that you're going to see. It is limited to affordable housing to support that. It also doesn't apply to every application type, but for these projects, they might have multiple applications, which all have their own individual 90-day timeline limit. So the application types that the state interprets the legislation and proposition to have Our site plans, development plans, building permits, variances, various types of use approvals, planned unit development or PUD approvals, even construction or engineering documents, which we would call tech docs, technical documents, and then as well as modifications of any of those types of plans. So any of those applications would be required to be approved within 90 days for these projects that meet that affordable housing threshold. So you might be wondering, how does a 90-day timeline compare to what our typical review timelines are for these various type of applications? There's a wide range of typical review timelines for different applications from a landmark alteration certificate taking an average are a median of nine days. Variants, 34 days. Minor modification, that's a small minor change to a site review or a PUD. That takes 46 days. Right now, the average new construction building permits is taking about 63 days. And then the applications that you're probably more familiar with seeing come through your packets are use reviews, the average before we made process simplification changes, or the median, sorry, was 200 days. Site review median is 277 days. And then technical document, I said those engineering documents are about 238 days. So you might see where the problem is. The number of days for these applications is significantly higher than 90. So we have been spending the last few months identifying where there are opportunities for time savings because it is really important to make the changes to meet that fast track review requirement because not only would the city not be eligible for the funds from that state affordable housing fund but also any of those projects that are located within the city would not be eligible for the funding so not only would the city give up that money for the city but also for projects within the city so to give you an idea and sloan is online and can give more detail about this but in that first three-year cycle we've gotten directly into the city, $10 million for projects in the city and also directly to the city, and then additional money that was spread regionally and statewide for other initiatives. So it's supporting a lot of important affordable housing initiatives to get this funding, and the requirement is to be able to approve applications within 90 days. So what can we do? You'll have seen in the memo, there are a couple of proposed changes for these affordable housing projects that would require a land use code change. The first is removing planning board call up for these types of projects or the applications that would have a call up. As well as removing the automatic planning board hearing for projects like site reviews with height modifications that automatically go to planning board. I'll explain more why these have been kind of where we've highlighted opportunities for time savings. But I also want to say that the state definition of affordable housing in order to comply with with the eligibility for funding, we have to meet at least that definition of affordable housing, but we can go past it. So if we wanted to extend the changes to projects that, say, had 40% affordable units or didn't quite meet that 50% threshold or had different area median income limits, as long as we're meeting the minimum of the state, we can go past that if we want to. But those are the two code changes that we think will save a significant amount of time. That is not to say that that is the only change that we would need to make. There's also a number of administrative changes, process changes that we'll need to make that don't require a code change, but just things like tracking the timelines, how are we doing completeness checks and pre-application conferences with people, And how do we track extensions, which there is an option for extensions in the bill when there's kind of back and forth between applicants. So there's also this whole administrative implementation process side in addition to the code changes. Um, I just kind of wanted to visually explain these two different things that were highlighting the call up and the automatic public hearing. So if we took an example of a site review, um, if it's a site review, that's three stories fits under the high limit, um, that you guys would just see that as a call up. Um, if it's something that's requesting a height modification, that's when you are automatically, um, you're going to see that application. It doesn't, we don't ask you whether you want to call it up. It's just automatically going to come for a public hearing. But in both circumstances, it starts with staff analysis. We would still use the same site review criteria. But in a call-up situation, the staff makes the decision, then writes a call-up memo. You all have the opportunity in your agenda to decide whether or not to call it up. If it's not called up, then the staff decision is final. Still have done all of that same site review criteria analysis. If it is called up, then we transition into a similar process to what the automatic public hearing is. And because of the, I know you guys are meeting a lot, but it's still very challenging to get something on an agenda. So anecdotally, it's at least four to eight weeks to get something on the agenda. Right now, we're scheduling out to October for projects. So just that waiting time for the public hearing does add significance. time to the process and then once planning board has made a decision then City Council can call up any planning board decision so that's also adding time while it waits through the City Council call-up opportunity I looked at the last two years of all of the applications that you all have reviewed and the typical time for the three different processes over the last two years keep in mind there's a range these are this is a median number but For a project that is not called up the median right now is about 200 days the lowest that we've seen in the last two years, two years is 80 days, so there are some that without the call up that would comply with the 90 days. If something is called up, the median in the last two years has been 521 days, so that's over a year and a half. And then the automatic public hearing is sort of in the middle at about 300 days from the day that applicants submit their application to when it's a final decision. The state is not the only entity that's been focused on process simplification and speeding up timelines. You'll remember that many of our ordinances in the last few years have dealt with either simplifying the code, simplifying processes, trying to tackle this issue. And specifically, we had a process simplification ordinance that you all recommended approval of and city council passed in the summer of 2024. And this is really actually quite instructive for us to look back at that ordinance because it had very similar changes where we were addressing issues related to call-ups and automatic planning board public hearings. So we can look at what happened to those timelines once we made those changes where we eliminated call-ups for certain applications and eliminated the automatic planning board public hearing. So in the five years before process simplification ordinance, you were looking at about 30 call-ups per year, deciding whether to call that up. That's been reduced by almost half. Now in the last two years, you've seen 16 per year. The percent of applications that have been called up by planning board has increased from 3% to 9%, but again, it's out of a smaller sample size. But what's really interesting in digging into these is if you look at the three applications that were called up in 2024 to 2026. and look at the day that if they had not been called up versus their final approval date, it added a median of 93 days to the process, the fact that it got called up. So obviously the call-up is not complying with the 90-day process requirement because we would have to go from start to finish for the 90 days. So that's why call-up has been identified throughout several years as an issue related for timeliness of applications today. and why we're targeting it here again. And then related to the automatic planning board public hearings, this is most often how you would see this is a height modification request, as I said. But we also used to have use reviews that automatically came for planning board public hearing. We removed those with the process simplification changes. And I'll talk a little bit more about the changes to use review. But 12 of the 17 site reviews or site review amendments that you've seen in the last two years have included a height modification request. So it is a fairly common inclusion in site review is to have a height modification request. Again, the proposed change would be not to change the application type. There would still be the same site review criteria applied and used to evaluate. It would just be that the staff decision would be final and it wouldn't come for call-up or for public hearing. However, we are anticipating that this would still have the opportunity for appeal, so either an applicant or neighbors could appeal the approval or denial of the site review application, and then it would come for public hearing. The state has interpreted that appeals are not subject to the 90-day, so essentially the application would be pulled out of the 90-day timeline once it is appealed. We're envisioning that this would work very similarly to the minor use review process that was created in the process simplification ordinance where neighbors within 600 feet would still get notice of the application. They'd be able to view the plans online, things like that, review, talk to the planner, ask any questions. There just would not be the automatic planning board public hearing or the call-up. So I mentioned the minor use review and the reason I want to explain that is that also is very instructive to look at how that changed process timelines because it had the same goal that we have here with the Prop 123 changes. So I won't go through each step of this flowchart, but just visually, this is a typical use review approval and how it goes through the process and the various points that can add certain amounts of time to the process. When we made that change in 2024, the minor use review skipped the call-up so that staff decision was final, but there was still the potential appeal and neighbors are still noticed. And so this is the minor use review that we've provided an opportunity for for the last two years. I think we had 18 minor use reviews in the last two years, but I have stats just on the first year in how having that minor use review option has changed our approval times. So like I said, the days to approval before the process simplification changes, the median was 200 days. It was reduced to 72 days. So the minor use reviews are over four months shorter for approval. And then it's even more interesting when you look at just the city's time, because there is a lot of time in any application where applicants are revising plans or getting some other documents that they need to include in their application. So there's kind of this back and forth and waiting game for applicants. So if we look at the time that the application is purely in the city's court where the city can be reviewing it, it went from 156 days to just 15. So what this has told us is that the call-up and automatic public hearing requirement is a significant requirement. time add to the overall process. And this has been very successful with use reviews in reducing approval times. So again, we will still have procedural changes, administrative changes that we will need to make in order to meet that 90 day requirement and maintain the eligibility for this important affordable housing funding. But we do think that in order to make that timing, we do need to make these land use code changes that call up and the automatic planning board public hearing changes in order to realistically be able to meet those requirements. And that is the end of my part of the presentation.

Thank you, Lisa. Switching gears to the housing and transit oriented communities bill or the TOC bill. I'll preface this, this is a somewhat complex bill. So I'll try to walk you through it to better understand. TOC in a nutshell, the scope is basically aimed at municipalities with more than 4,000 residents and have more than 75 acres of what they call transit areas. And this is really like focused on metropolitan areas in Colorado. The goals are to increase opportunities to construct housing near transit and as well as increasing housing production and inappropriate zoning capacity buffers, as it states. In a nutshell, what this bill is trying to accomplish is that the Denver metro area, like much of the United States, was built to accommodate the automobile. Much of the development after World War II really went into suburban-type development. So Denver as a city compared... to a lot of American cities is very auto oriented. So that's why we see a lot of the struggles along transit corridors to get ridership. But it's also opportunities to get housing. And there's a great need for housing in Colorado. So concentrating housing along transit corridors is the main aim of this bill. So it passed in 2024, and it's very lengthy. You've probably gone through it. You'll notice that it creates a housing opportunity goal, which I'll talk about, which is a number of units that you have to aim for in the community to comply with the bill. there are some outs in the bill like if there's insufficient water supply i'm not going to go into those details since we have our public works staff that's done projections for boulder and we can meet you know the housing goals of this particular bill it also requires some affordable housing and displacement mitigation strategies so i'll talk about it a little bit later that there's a report that's due the state where in addition to reporting to them where we are on the spectrum of whether we're gonna meet this or not we do have to present to them what we're doing to get more affordable housing and to avoid displacement and there's a lot of things that we're actively doing already that we could state so I'm just gonna go through a step-by-step to kind of paint the picture of how this works First, I'm just going to show you this. If you look to the left, that's a graphic of bus routes that come into Boulder. You can see it comes in on 36, goes up the diagonal, and there's a couple routes that go to Louisville and Lafayette. You can see a lot of lines in Boulder. This was what presented to us right before the bill passed. And they actually mapped out bus routes that would qualify as transit corridors. And it was interesting to look at it because a lot of we actually have enough density in Boulder that we have relatively successful bus routes. And so does Denver. But then a lot of the metro area doesn't have the density that supports these bus routes. So like a lot of the most impacted communities from this bill are Denver and Boulder. So it does impact, obviously, like Louisville and Lafayette with a couple bus lines. But just wanted to show that. So when we get down to the fine green details, it says you have to determine a transit area. And that's basically the area within Boulder that's within the blue lines on that map. So it's basically properties that are within a quarter mile of a bus service that has frequency every 15 minutes for at least an eight hour period on weekdays in RTD, but it's per the RTD system optimization plan. So this doesn't necessarily reflect reality, especially since COVID and their funding cuts and everything. They basically wrote the bill as a snapshot of the optimization plan in 2019. So what they were aiming towards, like this is the best this network could ever function. Those are the routes that qualify. So that's how we did this map for the transit area. And then in that transit area, you figure out the acreage. And then you have to basically calculate 40 dwelling units per acre out of that acreage. And when you do that, that gives you your housing opportunity goal. So every community that's under this will each have its own housing opportunity goal or what we call the HOG. So I'll talk about that a little bit later. And then to meet the hog, there's transit centers that would need to be designated within the transit area. And those are the zones that you're allowed to use to count potential units to get to that hog. So I'll keep walking you through this. this is like basically the difference between the transit area and transit center so again the transit area is that larger area that's 40 dwelling units per acre used to determine the hog that's a quarter mile from the corridor within that blue line but the bill basically says that only zoning districts that allow more than 15 dwelling units per acre can be used to count the number of dwelling units to meet that hog. So really the intent of the bill is to get people to up zone along corridors, get more housing, try to increase transit usage. It does offer some flexibility. So when you look at transit centers, those ones that are in color are the zones that we've identified that allow more than 15 dwelling units per acre. It does allow you to count units an additional quarter mile outside of the transit area to factor into that calculation. It allows an average unit size per the American Housing Survey because you have to like divide by the typical size of a unit to figure out how many units. So it can't be gamed to get more units by saying, oh, we're just going to do 120 square foot unit. It doesn't allow you to do that. The other thing about it is that in order to count the units per the zone, it can only use properties that are less than five acres that don't have discretionary review. So this is where, again, where it's touching on process. Or if there's a public hearing or discretionary review or subjective standards, you cannot count those units into this calculation. It does allow properties that are greater than five acres to be able to go through site review. If they're bigger than five acres, then you can count those numbers. So as you can see, it's been very complex. We've been working on this for well over a year now, and there's so many moving parts. There's so many zones that we have to look at to figure this out. But I will say that we have passed some ordinances in the last few years that have greatly helped us move towards meeting that hog. So I just wanted to mention the zoning for affordable housing and the family-friendly vibrant communities or neighborhoods bills or ordinances that were passed actually helped us quite a bit to get close to the hog that we've calculated. So getting to where we are, this is where we are right now. Our estimate for Boulder based on the transit area is 123,000 units. So just to put that in perspective, the city of Boulder only now has 48,000 dwelling units. But one thing I want to make really clear is that this number is totally aspirational. They say at the state and within the bill that it's really a number to work towards. It basically says that your zoning can't stand in the way of enabling this potential number of units. It does not in any way say that this many housing units has to be produced. So it's an aspirational number that we work towards. So if we find through our analysis that the hog is met, there'd be no further action with the state. They would call us a transit-oriented community. So we're doing a lot of in-depth detail right now. And what we're finding, the current snapshot, and it kind of goes up and down, it fluctuates with every little change that we look at, we're around like 112,000. So we're falling short of that hog, but that's not bad in the scheme of things. But we're falling short. I think in the memo we said we had more that was a snapshot of that time So it's been moving around We are planning to meet with the Department of local affairs with the state because they do courtesy reviews of our data and they have their own Methodology that they use that we have to put our numbers into to calculate this so we've been using that again very complex We do have to submit a report to DOLA per the bill by the end of 2026 to show our level of compliance. So let's say we don't meet the hog. What are our options to move forward with compliance with this? So we've looked at a number of different things. The first thing that kind of rises to the top in our analysis is removing the call-up. for form-based code reviews. The reason we mentioned that is that if we, based on the numbers that we've seen, just removing the call-up from the form-based code reviews would get us to 124,000 on the hog, just that alone. And the reason we're putting it at the top is that the original intent of form-based code based on best practices and other communities is to not have discretion, to not have public hearings, and to have objective standards that are either met or not met. And then that is supposed to have streamlined reviews and have very specific standards without discretion. And that was the original intent that we argued 10 years ago when we were bringing that ordinance through. The planning board and the city council at that time did not support removing that discretion, so they kept the call up and the public hearings in there. But this would be an opportunity to kind of return to the original intent of form-based code. What we mentioned in the memo is that we completely acknowledge that there are some areas of the form-based code that need to be tightened up. We could actually start working on those as part of an ordinance to remove the call-up if we tightened up those regs. So that's just an option to consider. If we weren't to do that, there's some other options, but we'd have to look into these a lot more too. Designating transit centers, which means we'd have to make a bunch of zones. Anything less than five acres would become buy-right, which raises some other concerns also. Removing the site and user view requirement for residential and the industrial zones is an option. And one thing that the state has brought up in their courtesy reviews with us is the restrictions that we've added in recent years on ground floor residential in, in retails like areas or business areas that that subtracts a number of units. So we may have to look at pulling back on some of those regulations and considering that, you know, we'd be making some more prop projects by right. We're also looking at maybe creating more objective by right site and and building design standards like form-based code that we might have to apply to buy right projects just to kind of make sure we're not getting worst case scenario projects of parking in the front or garage doors facing the street, you know, things like that, like higher quality building materials, building that in as buy right requirements. So that's something that we're also looking at. So yeah, It's very complex. There's a lot of moving parts. Happy to answer any questions on this. Ultimately, what the state says is that you would have to be compliant with the TOC bill by the end of next year. So we're supposed to report to them by the end of this year of where we are, and then we have next year to make the changes. So that's the TOC. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Eliza to talk about the HOME Act.

Okay, good evening, everyone. I'm here this evening to speak with you about the Housing Opportunities Made Easier Act, also known as the HOME Act, that was passed in March of 2026. This bill was formerly known as the Yigbee Act, And the goal or purpose of the HOME Act is to increase affordable housing on underutilized land by increasing zoning flexibility and by streamlining approvals for qualifying developments. In this case, this bill defines underutilized land as land that has not historically been used for residential purposes. And subject jurisdictions must begin to fulfill the expectations of this bill by December 31, 2027, with the goal of reaching full compliance of the bill by June 30, 2028. These deadlines provide time to plan and implement the necessary code amendments needed to comply with the Act. The HOME Act defines land that is subject to these standards as qualifying properties. Qualifying properties are no larger than five acres, and they are owned by one of the following entities listed on the screen, including schools and school districts, state colleges and universities, boards of cooperative services, housing authorities, local or regional transportation authorities, or housing nonprofits and nonprofits with housing affiliation. These eligibility requirements define where housing stock can be built, limiting the bill's application to smaller properties owned by public agencies and housing-focused organizations. In addition to the qualifying property criteria, the HOME Act identifies several exemptions that determine where these development provisions do not apply. I'll highlight a few key exemptions and their implications in Boulder. So to start, properties with large-scale industrial operations are exempt. In Boulder, this includes zoning districts like the industrial manufacturing and general industrial zoning districts. Another exemption applies to historic properties. Landmark properties located outside of historic districts are exempt. This bill also exempts certain recent subdivisions, specifically recently subdivided parcels that are adjacent to a qualifying property that are five acres or less are exempt. And lastly, properties located within Boulder's airport influence zones are exempt. These are just a few of the multiple exemptions tied to this bill, but they provide a representative sample of the bill's eligibility criteria. Another key provision of the HOME Act establishes maximum building height for qualifying housing developments. Specifically, local governments cannot deny a housing project based on building height if it does not exceed three stories, 38 feet, or the height of similar neighboring residential developments, whichever allows the greatest building height in said project. In addition to building height, the HOME Act also limits how local governments can regulate density and site design standards. Density or the number of dwelling units in a qualifying development cannot be restricted in these new housing projects. Additionally, site design standards referred to as form and bulk standards in Boulder should match that of other neighboring multiunit developments in the jurisdiction. A few examples of these site design standards include things like structure setbacks, lot coverage or open space, and solar access standards. The key takeaway from this information is that the HOME Act requires qualifying developments to be reviewed under standards that are comparable to other multiunit residential projects in the jurisdiction. Qualifying properties are also meant to support childcare and recreational social or educational services. If zoning allows or conditionally allows onsite childcare and recreational social or educational service uses, those same uses must also be allowed as part of residential developments on a qualifying property. In this case, we are interpreting the recreational, social, or educational service concept to include the following uses listed on this slide here. These are all existing uses in Title IX and they range from from things like instructional facilities to outdoor recreation or entertainment to community gardens. While the bill expands opportunities for community-serving uses on qualifying properties, further analysis is needed to determine which existing use classifications and permissions align with the bill's intent. Another important aspect of this bill is that it advocates for quicker development timelines by subjecting qualifying housing projects to administrative approval or administrative review. Administrative review requires staff to make decisions based solely on objective criteria rather than undergoing site review procedures that can require planning board or council call up or public hearing. By submitting projects to administrative review, these projects become less expensive and do not take as long to reach final approval. So here's a map mapping where we expect some of the qualifying properties to exist in Boulder. As you can see, the HOME Act is only relevant for certain areas of the city. And I should add that this map is still under development. It requires further analysis to ensure completeness and accuracy. But overall, as you can see, the goal of the HOME Act aligns with the city's goal to support community housing needs by increasing housing stock across the city. Lastly, we want to highlight the sections of Title IX that we anticipate needing an update to implement the HOME Act. These updates include revisions to procedures, use permissions, height and intensity standards, and key definitions. Because the bill has a longer implementation timeline, these code revisions do not need to be finalized at this stage, allowing time for continued analysis and refinement. I'm now going to pass it back to Carl to take us through the final steps of these three bills. Thank you.

Thanks, Eliza. So just in conclusion, I'm going to talk about the timeline. So the way Proposition 123 is written, it does say that a fast track review process should be in place by 2027. So that one's on a quicker timeline. So that's what the planning board would see the soonest. So right now we have a public hearing scheduled for September 1st before the board with some code changes relative to the call up and public hearings for Proposition 123. The TOC gives a little bit more time as I was talking about. We're still meeting with the state to go over the data. There's been a lot of back and forth and a lot of tweaking. There's a possibility that we might David Ensign, Be able to tweak the data to the point where it makes sense that it meets the to see already, but it all depends on on their cursory review and that'll inform the report that we have to submit by the end of this year. David Ensign, But if there are changes that are necessary, what we will be working on this next year and we'd be scheduling a time with planning board. go over those changes and then as eliza talked about with the home act there's a little bit more time on that one since it's just passed so it really wants you to be working actively on this by the end of 2027 but it says by june 2028 the home act changes should be completed So that completes our presentation. I know that's a lot of material, so we're happy to answer questions. These are the key issue questions that we put in the memo to help frame the discussion, and we're ready to answer your questions.

Thank you so much, Carl, Lisa, and Eliza. Really appreciate that. A lot of information, but very necessary and useful. Looking at the time, we're at about 8.20. Is this a good time for us to go ahead and take a break? yeah or if you want to talk for a while whatever you guys which is better like i i could use a stretch break like i'm get the blood flowing again so why don't we go ahead and take a 15 minute break and we'll we'll say we'll come back at 8 30 that's a 12 minute break so 8 30 we'll be back Okay, it is now 830. So let's all come back together. We have our three board members who are in the room. One of our staff members is going to take a little bit of an extended break, but she'll be back soon. So we're going to go ahead and get started. And once we see our board members online, I see Mason. Do we have ML and Max? Hello, ML. Well, that is five of us. So let's go ahead and come back together. And my suggestion is going to be that we just take this bill by bill and we ask any questions and perhaps express if we have any burning thoughts, concerns, or suggestions that now's a good time to talk about it before staff start drafting some ordinances for us to bring back, given that some of these will come back sooner than others. I do want to just begin by making an observation, naming what may be the elephant in the room for some of us, which is that all of these bills are aimed at increasing housing supply in large part by increasing efficiency, efficiency of review processes in particular, which would mean not us, right? Like our process provides value in many ways, but efficiency is definitely not one of them. We slow things down. And the way that I see it, the primary benefits that are provided by discretionary review processes are In addition to potentially some flexibility that is not what you get with a black and white kind of check the box standard. But for me, it's more about the transparency and the accountability that is provided by having a public process in addition to the staff process, right? It's checks and balances to make sure the system is functioning well and in the public eye with transparency. So one of my overarching comments is going to be how do we maintain a level of transparency and accountability if we are eliminating discretionary reviews in many cases. So how do we still have that accountability to the public? So I'm just going to put that out there as my opening thought and go for questions and comments from other board members, starting with which bill shall we start with? The Proposition 123? And maybe staff, Carl, could you pull up, is there like a summary slide of the kinds of changes you are considering because of Proposition 123 or in order to meet it? Okay.

I think this kind of summarizes the approach, obviously.

So the main change that we're looking at is basically cutting out call-ups and automatic planning.

Yeah, for the most part. Like if you remember minor use review, it'd be making more applications like minor use review where there's no call-up, no public hearing, but there would be that appeal process still built into it.

Yeah, and this is specifically for affordable housing projects that are over 50% affordable housing?

That's correct.

Okay. And you gave us some numbers that, like, in the past couple years, we're only getting a couple of those a year.

Yeah, it'd be like a handful, yeah, like five.

Okay. Mark, you had a question.

I just wanted to announce that Max is having Wi-Fi issues, and he's been – He's been kicked out of the panel, but he can't – so he's watching and can't comment. Now, as soon as – I don't know if you can promote him from – or if – okay. Max, we're going to get you back in here.

Yep, I'm back. Thank you very much.

All right.

Wonderful. Welcome back, Max. Okay. So we're starting with proposition one, two, three, and it's time for questions and comments. Yeah.

I've been watching along. I was just no longer a panelist, so I couldn't, but I'm back.

Great. Okay. Then I won't attempt to catch anybody up. All right. Who has questions or comments? So we'll start with Mark and then ML.

In this case, I keep going back to we've had fewer call-ups since we've changed our call-up procedure to planning board members, et cetera. And I almost don't want to say this into the microphone, but we still have the ability for one individual, even though it takes two planning board members, for one individual to call up a project. is my understanding, we can still have just one neighbor call up a project.

I think the wording in the code does still say two people. I'd have to go back there. There's, I think there's certain parts of the code that still say one for weird reasons. And then there's most of them, I think, say two. Yeah.

Regardless, let's just, let's say it's two neighbors. It seems like even two is a very low threshold. Now, I haven't, I've only experienced one call up by a neighbor, but, or by a concerned, it doesn't have to be a neighbor, just a concerned resident. So anyway, it seems like that would be something that we would want to work on. as a method of, is that, I don't know if that would be considered as helping us achieve our numerical score or whatever.

Yeah. I mean, I think there wouldn't be a need to prepare like call up memos and go through that whole process and preparation. So that's where there's some time saving where you wouldn't have that with, with an appeal. It's just notification. Like neighbors would still get public notice of these projects and they would be informed of their ability to appeal. But that would be done in our normal public noticing process. OK.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mark. ML.

Thank you. Hi, Carl. And thank you for Carl. And let me see. There were three of you. Anyway, thank you for the staff for all the various presentations. So on this one, two, three, I have a question and then I have a comment. Can we do both? Are we doing both now, Laura?

Yeah, I think we can mix questions and comments for the sake of efficiency. Let's do that.

Perfect. So on the call of data that you presented around proposition one, two, three, Was that only for affordable housing at 50% projects? No, that was for all call-ups. And the reduction of the call-up, removal of the call-up, would that be only for affordable housing of 50% or more?

Correct. And like I said, we could change what, like if we want to include additional affordable housing projects, but we have to include at least the ones that have 50% affordable housing units.

Got it. Okay. So that was my question. Now the comment, and I took the staff recommendations out of, you know, from the packet. I'm not sure that they look the same as the ones that were in your presentation. But my understanding of this particular proposition and one of the recommendations is to include affordable housing units on site that were less than 50% affordable. Is that correct?

It was a question that I would be curious the planning board's opinion on of whether we should expand it or just keep the state's definition of affordable housing. Housing and Human Services was also interested in whether the planning board would be interested in expanding that. In the memo, I had mentioned that there were five areas. projects in the last five years that would meet that 50%. But there were four, I think, either four or five additional projects in those last five years that didn't quite meet the 50% threshold, but still included on-site affordable housing. So the question in the memo was whether planning board would be interested in expanding that definition of affordable housing to include basically be more expansive than what the state's definition is.

So are the projects that have gone through the affordable housing projects, the on-site, the projects that have provided on-site affordable housing, have they all been BHP or a housing nonprofit?

That's a great question for Sloan, who's online.

Hi, Sloan. Hi. So I'm Sloan Walbert. I'm the Inclusionary Housing Program Manager in Housing. So the answer to that is no. So one example was the Spine Road development. They are... They're providing the units on site to meet inclusionary housing. And so I think they're slightly more than 25% affordable. And what's a little interesting is they have received Prop 123 money, but they wouldn't necessarily, unless you had a different process, they wouldn't meet the expedited review requirements.

Because we don't have one in place for this specific criteria.

Well, they're under 50%. Yeah, because they're under 50%. Yeah.

Right. So Steph's thinking about reducing that 50%. What are you thinking would be a fair and, I guess, useful number? How far, how small a percent would trigger this which is a big, right, going from, I can't see the numbers, but going from, you know, the something significantly longer than 90-day process.

Yeah, so it's not a huge... Yeah, I don't think we have a recommendation necessarily for the percentage. I don't... There's not a huge number of projects that can provide affordable units on-site or opt to do that. So I don't think that it would open up a floodgate of applications, but it would give them the opportunity to develop quicker and which is the intent of this is providing... affordable housing quicker and cheaper.

So you don't see some of the market rate developers flipping into providing on-site affordable if they could do it for like 5% or 10% and save themselves a bunch of time.

I don't, but that might be an unintended consequence.

A loophole. Well, I think we need to be very aware of the loopholes that happen as a consequence. We give away a lot of stuff, and the loopholes are identified and taken advantage of pretty quickly. So that would be the thing that I would caution, is if you are seriously looking at that particular recommendation, the consideration is how low an onsite affordable component would make a project eligible. And I don't know how you would figure that out, but I think the state went with 50% for maybe a valid reason. And so going below that, I think might open the door to unintended consequences.

Yeah, just one more thing to clarify on that. The expedited review applies to the application at hand. So if there was a building permit or an affordable unit, regardless of how much is in the entire development, say they only provide 25% affordable, but the building permit is for an affordable unit, they would be eligible for expedited review. But the site review, everything that sort of looks at the site as a whole, would not meet that 50% requirement.

Do we get many that are just a single unit?

Well, that was just an example. But yes, I mean, we have, you know, let's say an annexation that's 40% affordable. So the units that are not affordable would meet our standard timeline. The building permits for units that are affordable would have an expedited review. I see. But they're still able to somewhat take advantage of it.

Right, right. So it's nuanced. And I guess that's all I would caution is that we, I don't think we want to accidentally open up a door for too low of a number where the benefit would be worth trying to get that benefit and not that much affordable housing as a result. So anyway, that's my... point on that particular one. Thank you.

And Mel, did you have more for this one? 123?

No, I for number one, for 123. As well as our 123 questions don't for the first question, proposition 123. That's my only question. Thank you.

Okay, great. Thank you. Who's next? Kurt?

Thanks for this discussion. I would definitely support considering, at least looking into reducing the threshold below the 50%. I think that ML actually framed it well. It would be trading an expedited process for getting some additional on-site affordable housing, which is what we say that we want. So, you know, if we got an additional 5% in exchange for going to a faster process, I think that that is, to me, that seems like a good trade-off. I also want to address Mark's point about the appeal, even though that is not a change I think that would be required in order to meet the requirements of Prop 123. But I still have always been a little leery about that appeal process. It seems to me that the appropriate appeal mechanism is for if a if a citizen or group of citizens are concerned about a project they the appropriate uh process is for them to talk to the members of whatever body is the appealing body whether it be planning board or council And if they can convince, you know, whatever the requisite number of members of that body of their point, then it gets appealed that it provides a little bit of a buffer. I think that I think is appropriate just to address the fact that we know that the delays and potential delays or a big barrier to developing more housing and more affordable housing in the city. And just in order to respect the property owners' property rights and so on. So that's my input on that. And I will leave that for now.

Thank you, Kurt. Who else would like to comment? Mason, Max, Mark? I have a couple comments, so I'll go ahead and go and then I'll check again. So I do have a question. So if we went to a different threshold that's less than 50% affordable, are those projects eligible for funding under this act or not?

Sloan may know the answer to that because the Spine Road development that you just mentioned isn't, yeah, it doesn't meet the 50% for Fast Track, but they still got funding, right, Sloan?

Yeah, the funding piece is completely separate from the expedited review piece. They would submit an application that would be completely independent of these portions of the proposition.

But we do have to meet that. We have to have the fast track review requirement for at least projects that meet that 50% in order for projects that even don't meet the 50% to get the funding. Does that make sense?

Okay, so the decision of which projects get funding is just a decision about that pot of money that's independent. But for anyone in Boulder to even be eligible for that pot of money, we have to have this fast track process. Right. Okay. Yes. All right. I think I understand that. Thank you. Thanks. So... I'm basically okay with going to staff level reviews for affordable housing projects of any level. I agree with Kurt's suggestion or comment that we're really trying to incentivize developers to build affordable housing. And so if some of them find it worthwhile to build onsite affordable housing in order to get access to this fast track process, I'm okay with that. But I want to make sure that the fast track process meets our values and meets our goals. And so to that end, number one, I think we have to make very sure that the buy-write criteria or the staff administrative review criteria are doing the job as intended. And so to do that, I do think we want to have some kind of retrospective after the first year or two to look back and say, are we getting the results that we want? Are there any code tweaks that we need to make? The form-based code, I think, is a great example of a code that is extremely well-intentioned and well-written in many ways, and it has some loopholes that need to be closed. And we identified those because we did a site review, right? I'm not suggesting we should put projects through site review, but there should be some kind of retrospective independent of the fast-track process to say, are we getting the results that we want? I do think the transparency function is really important. And right now, I would not have any idea, and I'm on planning board, how to look and see what projects are going on in the city and where are they in the permit process. And I think the city's website should be updated so that it's quite easy to see These 10 projects are undergoing review, and here's where they are in the stages, and here's how you can look them up and see the plans, right? And whether it's in your neighborhood or not, whether you got notified about it or not. I think that that transparency function is really important, and I do think we want to take a close look at the appeals process and make sure that if there are projects that people have serious concerns about, that there is some recourse that is not an automatic planning board hearing and is not a call-up process. So I think we can do it. I think we can get there. I don't think planning board is essential to get there, but I think we can serve a function in helping figure out if we are there or not and how to close any gaps. And I think that is my comments. Anybody else? Anything else on one, two, three, or shall we move on to the next one? Oh, Mason. Mason, thank you.

Sorry, just one quick question. I think if I recall correctly from the presentation that Um, I think it was the home build that, uh, buildings, uh, no greater than three stories would be, uh, by right. How does that impact things like, um, shadow analysis, uh, things of that nature?

Hey, Mason, we're going through them one by one, and this was just on prop one, two, three. Can we save that till we get to the home act?

Yeah, yes.

Okay, all right. We'll get there soon. Anything else on 123? Seeing none, let's move on to the transit oriented communities bill. Can we get kind of a summary slide on the actions for that one? All right, this one's way more complex. Questions, comments from the board? Who wants to go first? Kurt?

Yeah, this one's complicated. I would definitely support removing the call up for the form based code. I think that, as you said, that is more in the spirit of what the form based code is. should be, even though our form-based code is not really form-based code because it still has use tables underneath it. But that's a detail. But yeah, removing the call-up, I think, would be appropriate, especially if we can make sure that we're getting what we want out of the form-based code in general. I do have a question. about determining the housing capacity so say we have a zone that allows 27 dwelling units per acre whatever by right but say 40 50 whatever dwelling units per acre through site review with a height modification what is Which number gets used for the calculation? Is it the lower number, the by right number?

Yeah, a lot of the data that we've been working on has gone with a conservative figure. So like three stories, not assuming a height modification and how much FAR you can get in that. But there are some opportunities of where we can put a fourth story on. And that's some of the details that we need to work out with the state. because they do allow units on properties that are greater than five acres to be included. So for instance, like the BR zone, the business regional zone, we often do see four story buildings get built and they can be residential and they could be four stories and maximize the FAR. So if it's over five acres, we're asking the state if four stories can be factored in. Um, they've kind of pushed back because we also have the retail on the ground floor requirements. So like that 30 feet along major seats, but that's pretty negligible on some of these larger sites. Cause it's only like a small piece. So we're going back to them saying, we still think, you know, you could get a lot of ground floor residential there and it could be four story, but those are the things that we have to work out. But on most sites, I say we're kind of erring on conservative figures.

Okay, well, where I'm really going with that is I would support getting rid, allowing five stories in appropriate zones, allowing five stories by right. Still with the community benefit requirement, the existing community benefit requirement, but eliminating the planning board approval part of it, basically the site review part of it, because for one thing, most of the time with those we approve those and it it adds a lot of additional process and uncertainty and um and i think that it would it seems like if I understand this, which I probably don't, because it's very complicated. But it seems like it might get us closer to our goal there. And it just seems like a good thing anyhow. That's the charter height limit currently. As Laura has pointed out many times, we have zero zones where we allow to 55 feet by right. There should be zones where we allow to 55 feet by right. The developers have already priced in the community benefit. I think it's not only appropriate but necessary that we retain that, but it can still be by right. So I would strongly urge us to consider that. Um, I would also support allowing more, um, residential on the ground floors in BRNBC. Um, I mean, partly for these reasons, but also because, you know, we have more retail than we can fill it seems. Um, and, um, And, oh, but I do also, you mentioned the possibility of adding some design-related requirements for by-right projects, like requiring parking behind buildings, prohibiting parking in front of the buildings, and requiring that entries be on the streets and so on. And I would support some of those changes. that really would move us a little more towards kind of a form-based paradigm anyhow, which I think is great. I think that it's more expeditious, it's more efficient for staff, it's more efficient for the developer. I also feel that our current highly discretionary process is inequitable. We get the same few set of developers coming through doing most of the projects. And I think a big part of the reason is that it's incredibly intimidating to go through our processes currently. And if you have some, you know, all startup person who isn't kind of in the in crowd and wants to do a project, man, the barrier to entry is enormous. And I would love to see us try to reduce that by making things less discretionary and more cut and dried. Yeah, I think those are my only comments on 1313. Thanks.

Thank you, Kurt. Who's next on this one? Mark.

I appreciate this kind of tight list here. So just going down the list, I would support removing call-ups for form-based code reviews after modification to our current form-based code. That whole episode with the project at 55th and Arapahoe, uh, highlighted some deficiencies in the code, but I agree with Kurt and everyone else so far that the whole concept behind form-based code is, gee, we hope to have good projects, uh, that adhere to the code and are not discretionary that allow for creativity and allow for innovation and allow for good design. And, um, so that, that would be, um, I think eliminating, changing it enough that we don't have some of the failures and moving to a, removing form-based code from the review track. Remove site and use review requirements for residential and industrial zones. Now, this is where BVCP map designations an overlay to zones, to me, raises a question. So we just adopted something that I advocated for, which was allowing residential in the industrial designation in the BVCP map. And the way that that was adopted in talking to council members and other planning board members was part of that was it was listed as a secondary use. And then there was down in the wording below, careful two sentences that I've been trying to find, but I don't have it here with me tonight, that basically said, in certain instances, with review, this would be allowed. So if what you're proposing there is remove site and use review from the resident residential industrial zones, then then suddenly, that the whole controversy around what I what was put forth is like, it just blows up and and it's just

wide open and there wasn't any there is no discretions am i reading that correctly that that would just that would change our bvcp map designation and just it's it's wide open uh not necessarily what it means is that right now to do residential and industrial zones there's a conditional use application that's required which is a staff level review already there's already So that's why we put it up there that if you took out the site review and the automatic use review, there's still an administrative process already there that could review these. We might have to tighten it up a little bit, but it would basically still follow the same process. you know, criteria for where residential could go, either the one 16th contiguity or the, or the one six contiguity or like where a land use plan says you can put residential, that would still be in the code.

Carl, would it be fair to say that the discretion would be at the staff level rather than being at the planning board or the council? So there's still discretion involved, but it's, it would be staff administering it.

That's right. Um, I just know that, again, there were a lot of conversations about the proposed change that has been adopted by planning board and council to the BBCP. And to eliminate that discretion entirely. Anyway, I think would run counter to what a lot of people thought they were adopting in the this next round, this next draft of the BBCP. Okay. Um, and I agree with Kurt that the, uh, that moving towards, uh, a by right set of building design standards, uh, would be, uh, would be great. And it's essentially like a mini form based code that, yeah. Um, and I think that, um, if we applied that also to our ADUs and our ADU requirements, and we started having, you know, what other cities have adopted, which is standard plan sets and so forth that people could adopt, if that would help us get to our housing numbers and stuff. Anyway, I think that other communities have done that, and I would encourage us to do that. That's it.

Thank you, Mark. Max, I see your hand. I just want to make one comment before we get to you, which is, just as a reminder, these are changes that could help us meet this particular bill, which is a requirement of state law. But it sounds like staff is going to be discussing with the state, if we look at the math a little bit differently, do we maybe already meet these requirements? And so I think the discussion we're having tonight is, if we don't already meet the requirements, which of these things might be good things to adopt or which are good things to adopt anyway.

Exactly.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Max.

Yeah, that was very helpful, Laura. Thank you. And honestly, I don't need to be too long-winded because I think Kurt and Mark already did a really great job. I just wanted to second what Kurt was saying about buy-write. This has been coming up a lot in housing advisory. This comes up a lot in my professional career that when we have too many discretionary processes, you essentially need sophisticated legal team in order to navigate them. It raises the price of development and thus raises the price of housing, which I don't think any of us really want. So just wanted to second, like tap into this for a second and be like, I agree with all of what's being said about the buy, right? And I also very much appreciate Mark's comments in regards to the BVCP and industrial land use, but that's it.

Thank you, Max. Mason or ML on this one? ML.

Thank you, Laura. So on this one, I have, yeah, so the point of this is to meet the hog. If we need to go further to meet the hog than what's already being done, I would advocate for the top two options. I have no objections to either of those. On the last three, removing the discretionary reviews for residential and industrial, well, I think this board and the staff knows my position about residential and industrial to begin with. We've seen housing proposed in industrial where it just is not really appropriate. I would not support, I would not go down that road if we didn't have to. I think it opens up too many loopholes for housing to happen in places that are actually harming our industrial use. The remove the ground floor, I think that that one, The whole point of having mixed use is, I think, is a component of the desire to have 15-minute neighborhoods, to have walkability, to have complete neighborhoods at the kind of personal scale. So I would not. I know that there's a lot of pushback from the development community to not have ground floor commercial and just have residential be the full building. But I think that the long-term planning goal to have complete neighborhoods outweighs the near-term I'm inability to figure out the market, although some people have figured out the market, so I would not I would not encourage pursuit of that one, I think we have a bigger goal for the city that we need to keep in mind. And this last one. New by right site and building design standards, you know my suggestion would be let's just fix the issues with the form based code. and use this as the default for buy-write projects. I think to add complexity and another sort of building design standard process might not be necessary. If we just get form-based code right, I think that it could become more applicable to some of these other instances. And those are my comments. Thanks.

Thank you, ML. Mason, anything on this one? And I'm going to go to you first for the next one.

No, I just largely echo the comments of my colleagues. I support those.

OK, thank you, Mason. I have just a couple of comments. And I think for this one, my preference is that we just work with the state and figure out that we've already met it. I do think whether or not that is true, we need to fix the form-based code. And I am okay with removing call-up for form-based code if we are getting the results that we want. So I go back to my other comments of let's fix the code and then let's do a retrospective in a year or two and see are we getting the results we want. We should keep checking in. And then with regard to other ways to try to meet the hog, I really like Kurt's suggestion of making some zones in the city 55 feet by right. But I think to do that, we need to have the by right standards reflect what's in the site review right now. Because I think the whole purpose of site review and the way I've explained this to people is... site review ensures that the most impactful projects have to meet a higher standard, right? It's more than just the by-right standard. And we happen to be the folks who administer that for the most part here at Planning Board when there's a height modification. I'm okay with it not being us for a five-story building if we are still getting those... uh, greater design standards that we see in the, in the site review. So if that's what you mean by at city discretion, add new by right site and building design standards, like kind of make it match up with some of the good things that are in the site review standards already. I am for it, right? Like cut out the middleman. But again, I go back to, let's have a website where people can see all the development that's happening, can track where it is in development, look at the plans that there is some kind of appeal process. We have transparency, we have accountability. but we don't have the glacial pace of planning review for every project. And that's where I'm at on those. I don't really love the other suggestions here. I think that they may be going a bit too far to try to meet this particular code standard and I wouldn't jump into any of those. Okay. Last one. Let's look at the home act. Mason, do you want to lead us off on this one?

Sure, just a really simple question. When you mentioned the anything three stories below, I immediately thought about some of our code around things like shadow, view, et cetera. I would assume all that goes out the window, right?

To answer your question, the wording in the bill is a little bit ambiguous, to be honest. It talks about standards that apply to... buildings that are like multi-unit have to match other areas of the city where you have multi-unit development, but it doesn't say where. So like we kind of regulate them differently in different parts of the city. But generally I think the way we're interpreting it is that like, if there's a solar access problem, regulation that's typically in a multi-unit area, we would apply that. But obviously, if it's next to a low density area where there's lower buildings, we wouldn't want the shadowing to fall on them. So I think we would apply that where it abuts a lower intensity use. But that's something that we haven't met with the state to talk about this bill yet because it's so fresh. That's one of the questions we have for them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mason. Other questions, comments from the board? Mark.

So the BVCP has been so prevalent as of late, right? So my question is, is this school-owned land Does this apply? Are counties affected by this particular law?

Do you know the answer to that? I don't know off the top of my head whether counties are, if this applies to them or not. I'd have to look at the bill.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, it brought up the whole, whether or not it would have applied to Twin Lakes, but that was a project where we, you know, the school district wanted to build affordable housing and we killed it. We being Boulder County. killed it. But anyway, this trying to comply with this makes me wonder about that in relation to the whole rural designation Kerfuffle that is ongoing in regard to the BBC P. Okay Finally, the only other comment is for all of these there have been council members as of late that have been calling for a holistic review of title 9 and Given this set of state laws and trying to come into compliance. Is this an opportunity for? And again, I want to say, we've done a lot of really great work, as you've pointed out, reforming our Title IX. And people talk about a 10-page Title IX and stuff, and I don't believe that. But anyway, you guys have done great work. So this is not a dig at all. I'm just wondering, is now with this particular set of three statutes that we have to come into compliance with, Is this the time to, and is this the impetus to do this holistic review of Title IX that some counselors have been advocating for?

We are working on that. It's not a work program priority at present, but we are in the stages of trying to scope what types of changes might happen to Title IX just to help frame it when we come back to planning board and then talk to council. I think right now we're looking at going to council like next February because I think it'll probably become a work program priority next year. Um, but we're just trying to figure out we're working internally just to kind of figure out what are the parts of the code that are like antiquated and need to be updated and we can highlight those. Um, but also looking at other areas where it's addressing things like this. So we're in that scoping phase right now, but we don't really have definitive lists of, of what it would entail. Yeah.

And just building on my comment, I just want to say that I think our responsiveness to new state laws have improved our code. And again, your guys' hard work in bringing forth a number of reforms. You know, when I look at this set of potential changes and stuff, anyway, we're well set up to comply with this, these different statutes, one way or the other, whether we do a holistic reform or just continue to modify, but I think that it's a kudos to you guys for a lot of that hard work.

Thank you, Mark. May I interject? Yes, Deshauna. I'd like to follow up on your question about the county. The definition of local government for the Home Act does include counties as well as tribal units of government.

Encouraging.

Thank you for that speedy code check. Thank you, Deshauna. All right, M.L. ?

Yes, thank you. So overall, I think that this legislature has the greatest potential to increase housing. And I also appreciate that it comes with some limits, like the height limits and some of these other limits. The question, and I know you staff have not been to meet with the state on this particular on this particular piece of legislation. What I wonder about is would there be a way to ... It seems like all of the entities that they identified, school districts and city and counties and affordable housing providers, et cetera, were very precise and specific. So what I'm wondering about is talking about underused land as one of its approaches. And I am curious about the, since we removed the parking minimums, there's a lot of underused land out there that are parking lots. It's not public land. But is there any way or has any conversation come up where there's a segue and potentially a by right way to repurpose that underused acres of parking, underused parking in our cities? This is a question.

Yeah, I think when those parking changes went through and even with the state bill, I think part of the state bill was for that purpose as well, not just for parking. It was to open up land for more housing and more development opportunities. So we certainly do get... pre-apps and interest now on certain lots where there's parkings no longer required by the code where they can use that land for something else. So people are already, you know, looking at it for what they might be able to do. But our code doesn't necessarily speak to that. Then they just have a lot more flexibility now to, you know, build other things on their properties where they're good for. Yeah.

Would there be any advantage to those properties being included in the Home Act?

I think it's something we'd have to look at because the contexts are going to be different across the city. There's, you know, a parking lot could be in one part of town that's like a low density residential and another parking could be in a mixed use area with larger buildings. So the context is completely different.

Different than say schools or any of the other?

Yeah, that's, that's what I'm thinking.

Oh, okay. Well, I just think that that is, um, this particular act, I think has the greatest capacity to provide housing. And I think coupled with all of this available underused, not available, underused land, which is the language that the, that the legislature uses, um, there might be some synergy there between them. And should the conversation arise, I think it would be a good one to have. And that's my only comment. Thank you so much.

Thank you, ML. Anyone else want to get in on this one? Kurt.

Thanks. I just have a couple of questions. Well, the first question is, is this slide Is this specific to the Home Act or is this generally... Oh, it is.

It is, yeah.

Oh, okay. I missed it. Okay, great. Interesting. Okay. Why are... So this is just for my own edification, really. Why are state colleges and universities included in the Home Act? Because those are state chartered entities and so they can do what they want.

Yeah, we actually had this discussion today. I'm glad you asked that. So for the most part, any state, college, or university properties, when they have an academic purpose, can be exempt from the city land use code to accomplish housing for their students or buildings for classes, things like that. But there are possibilities where they might own a property, but they don't use it. for an academic person purpose. They actually, maybe they build the housing for non-students, like just regular residents or seniors. Then this is where the Home Act would come in, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I see. So they don't sort of trump us, trump the city when it comes to those kinds of properties? Correct. Okay. Interesting. That's good to know. The other question is you had a map that showed where some of these might occur. And again, I was confused by that because... The homework talks about allowing these things based on ownership. And so, you know, BHP could buy a property anywhere or the... rtd could buy a property anywhere or whatever right and then this would apply so i don't understand how the map are you just saying this is where some of these properties currently are yes yeah this is where some of them are and we have to continue to do further analysis okay we just wanted to give the board a sense of what how many properties this might entail okay it's not like on every street corner you know yeah yeah okay so that's why you also in the memo you talked about looking at which zoning districts qualifying parcels exist in and so you're saying just ones that happen to currently be owned by these yeah great okay those are my only questions thanks thank you kurt any other board members

Seeing no hands up, I just have one question. So Prop 123 had a definition of affordability. Does the Home Act have a definition of affordability?

It does not have a definition of affordability, and it does not directly say that qualifying housing projects all need to be affordable. However, the intent of the bill is to increase affordable housing.

What does it say? Do you have the bill language that talks about what?

It says affordable housing a lot in the bill, but it's all in the whereas section, where they're setting up the intents. When it gets into the actual requirements part, it doesn't have a mandate for minimum affordability. It just says housing. So our interpretation of it at this point is that it's any type of housing in these areas. They're just trying to increase housing capacity. Where it could become affordable housing is those properties where BHP might be in partnership with a school or a church to build a project. That would be affordable housing. But the bill itself does not have a minimum affordable housing requirement.

So it basically would allow market rate housing on any of these properties and the city. I'm sorry, I'm a little slow tonight. Can you remind us what exactly does this bill do? So on qualifying properties, the city has to allow housing development with no limits to density.

Yeah, so there are a lot of standards that have to match neighboring multi-unit development standards in terms of site design standards and density. And the same goes for building height as well. But these properties only exist on like parcels of land that are smaller than five acres and are owned by the entities we listed.

I think I'm hearing that we don't really have a lot of discretion, like this is required by the state by this bill, and you're just showing us tonight that things are going to change to enable for these particular lots it says you know that there would have to be an administrative review so staff level so it, it could resemble an apartment building elsewhere but a three story one not like a four story one. unless there's a taller building that it's next to, it could go taller. For the most part, it just kind of sets up general setbacks and coverage and FAR would have to be like another multi-unit development or a typical one in the city. And in that box, we couldn't say how many units So it could theoretically be in a low density residential zone and they might throw, you know, 30 or 40 units in there. And we can't deny it based on the language in the bill.

So if like Fairview High School wanted to convert one of their athletic fields into housing, it could be a multi-unit housing project on that field. Okay, but we don't have a lot of discretion on this is what I'm hearing. You're not asking us like, do you like it? How should we do it?

Yeah, not a lot of discretion here.

Okay. All right. Those were my questions on that one. Anybody else on any of these three bills? Going once, going twice. All right. Thank you so much.

I have some general questions.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, ML. I didn't see your hand. Please go ahead.

I was struggling to get it up. For the last point, do I have any other key issues? Some of the information that you gave us along with the legislation, I just have questions about. One of them is the Habitat for Humanity money that's given to Ponderosa, it was 70,000 per home. What percent of the cost does that cover?

I'm sorry, I'm just given the lateness of the hour. And so that's, that's not directly a comment on these bills. Can I ask you to take that offline with staff? Oh, would that be all right?

Okay, that's okay.

I'm looking for specific comments on these three bills.

Okay, I was answering the fourth question, which is any other thoughts?

Anything else on these three bills? Okay. No. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Okay. I want to thank Lisa and Eliza and Carl. Thank you so much for that presentation.

Yeah. Thank you for your feedback. It was really good feedback.

All right. So we're coming down the homestretch tonight and we have just one more item on our agenda, which is an information item. I don't even know if there's anyone here from staff to talk about it or present anything, but I want to note that in the packet, there was an information item, a city council memo, about city council will have an introduction first reading in consideration of a motion to order published by title only ordinance 8753 vacating and authorizing the city manager to execute a deed of vacation for a portion of an access easement generally located at 900 Walnut Street. This is item 6B on our agenda. And my understanding is Charles, this is just in our packet for information purposes.

Correct. It's informational only. It's the vacation of three square feet of a public access easement to accommodate a structural beam for the St. Julian Conference Center. So it's a pretty insignificant vacation. They're also rededicating an additional three square feet to offset it. So it's kind of a more of a technical process than anything.

And as I recall, this is a support beam that's in that passageway that goes sort of underneath and between the buildings. Yep. Okay. All right. And if people have questions about that, who should they direct it to?

Julie Defoe and her contact information is in the memo. Okay.

Thank you so much.

In the interest of pedantry, I have to point out that it's one, it's radius one foot and therefore it's pi square feet.

I'll take that under advisement.

Thank you, Kirk. So 3.14 something, something, something square feet. I have memorized pi to two significant digits. Okay. All right. Any other matters from the planning board, planning director, or city attorney's office?

Nothing from staff tonight other than just a quick calendar check.

Okay. We'll do the calendar check in just a minute. Great. Anything from the city attorney's office?

no though i am prepared to respond to any matters from the board thank you mark you have a matter from the board please go right ahead uh as i sent i hope i sent my email earlier okay all right uh yeah my question is um uh i have been asked by i I've been asked, what role do you know of, what role planning board would play in a DDA? I said, I don't know. I've never, I've thought about the DDA, but I've never thought about a planning board role. And someone made me aware that in state law, that there is a role, or making the claim that there is a role for planning board. So I'd like some clarification on that.

I think Tashana can field that. Okay.

So as I understood your question through email, it was kind of a two-part question. Is there a role for planning board in the formation of the DDA or the function of the DDA? And so as to the formation of the DDA, no, there is no role for planning board. However, as to the function there is in that the state law that you are referring to is CRS 31-25-807. and I'm gonna read from my notes to be very specific here. State law indicates that the planning board will be consulted about the function of the DDA in that before the plan of development for the DDA is sent to city council, it must be reviewed by the planning board, and the planning board may make recommendations to council about what the plan of development should say and do, but the council has not obligated to suggest that. So there is a, recommendation to be made that is as specific as state law gets. Given where we are with the DDA, I really cannot provide any additional details about the future.

Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mark and Deshauna. I was not aware of that either. Appreciate you daylighting that, Mark. So before we get to the calendar check, I just want to note that at the last agenda setting meeting, we talked about the fact that the Cherryvale annexation is going to council in a couple of weeks. And planning board has one meeting before that, just two days before that. And I made the comment that it would be great if we could get our notes from that meeting, our minutes from that meeting to review and approve at our next planning board meeting. So I'm just going to put a plug in for that request if possible. And with that said, we need to do a calendar check. So over to you, Thomas or Charles.

Okay, great.

Yeah, thanks everyone for responding to the poll that we sent out. We have discussed kind of among staff and what we're planning on doing is starting the September 15th meeting at 4 p.m. And then adding a September 29th meeting.

And so that would mean on the 15th, we'll do the CIP at 4 o'clock, and then we'll have the public hearing for the Naropa project at 2130 Arapaho. So that's a site review and a rezoning. And then we would move 2750 Broadway, the concept plan for the Boulder Medical Center, to the 29th. We just have such a tremendous backlog because of all the comp plan hearings. And we have some folks that are obviously trying to get things done before the election, so.

Am I hearing, I'm sorry, am I hearing that we have a meeting on the 15th that's at 4 and then we have another meeting, the next meeting would be on the 29th? We don't have a meeting on the 22nd?

The next meeting would be on the 22nd. Our department calendar is current for these changes.

Okay, so. And remind me, calendar-wise, August 18th is when we move the BDCP to? Is that correct?

Yes. Yes, that's correct.

I will be absent that day, just FYI.

Sorry to hear that, ML. Mark, you had your mic on.

Only the meeting that starts, which is at 4 o'clock, which is September 18th? 15th. 15th. So that's an extra two hours from 4 to 6. And it's not that we're planning on getting done two hours earlier. It's that the two hours are extra two hours.

As long as it takes you guys to get through the CIP. Right.

We never fail to go long. So, yeah.

This is hopefully an alternative to going to 1 a.m. not in conjunction with going to 1 a.m.

Exactly.

Well, I want to check in with our board members that do have, you know, 9 to 5 jobs. So, Mason, Max, will this pose a hardship for you? Will you have to miss out on some of our CIP discussion if we start at 4 p.m.?

bold of you to assume that I only work nine to five. Those are banker's hours, Laura. No, no. I mean, the first of, I think September is going to be the only Tuesday that I haven't basically allotted time for planning board. Like I build my week around availability for planning board.

But could you do a 4 p.m. start?

Yeah, yeah, I could do a 3 p.m. start if I had to. I move my, like, Tuesdays, oftentimes, like, what is my Sunday these days? I work through the weekends now.

Ah, gotcha. Okay, thank you for that flexibility, Max. How about you, Mason?

For the love of the game.

Don't hate the playa, hate the game. Mason, would you be able to join us at 4? I hate to cut out people who have, you know, job responsibilities.

Yeah, I think it should be fine September 1st.

Yeah.

September 15th is the early start, not September 1st. I was thinking 1st. Yeah, 15th is fine.

Okay. All right. Thank you both for your flexibility. Does anybody have an issue with that September 29th adding that 5th Tuesday? That's not a day that we normally meet, 5th Tuesdays.

And it's a concept plan, so it's not like there's going to be any decisions made that night.

Yeah. Everybody okay with that? That's the concept plan for the Boulder Medical Center redevelopment on North Broadway. Okay. All right. Thank you for that calendar check.

Thank you guys for your flexibility. Really appreciate it.

Okay. Is there anything else before we adjourn? Seeing none, we are adjourned. Thank you, everybody.

Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.