Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome back to this weekly meeting of the community planning and housing committee with Denver City Council. Your community planning and housing committee starts now.

Alright. We're on there. Today is 03/24/2026. Councilmember Romero Campbell's birthday is tomorrow. I'm there oriented in space and time. I'm Sarah Brady, councilmember at large, chair of this committee, and we'll start with council introductions to my left.

Flora Alvidrez with Lucky District seven. Good afternoon. Amanda Sanwell, Northwest Denver District one.

And Jamie Torres, West Denver District three.

And I'm just pausing to see if we have anyone online. Madam Pro Tem might be online, so give me her a moment. Not yet. Okay. Hopefully, she's celebrating her birthday, although I doubt it. Alright. So we're we have an early start today because we've got three action items, and it looks like our first two are both mister Lechuga from community planning and development. So we'll start with the rezoning at 922 North Knox Court as he strolls to the table.

Alright. Good afternoon. So my name is Tony Lechuga with Community Planning and Development. And, yeah, I'm here to start on the West Side Of Denver with a applicant driven rezoning to change the zoning classification at 992 North Knox Court. So let's start with what they're requesting.

So this this property owner owns the property that's outlined in red in the map here. You can see they're asking to go from ESUD to EMS 3. So that's an urban edge single unit district to an urban edge main street district increasing heights up to three stories. And so the property outlined in red is 12,500 square feet roughly. We'll see some images of it a little bit later in the presentation, but it is currently occupied by a single unit residential building that was built in 1899.

And there have been numerous additions, accessory structures, and garages that have been built on the property in the past hundred and twenty seven years. So this is located in Council District 3 represented by council member Torres, and it's located right here in the Villa Park neighborhood. So I just wanna note, this map's a little bit zoomed out, but it is about one block south of Lakewood Gulch, which is, known for an abundance of newly created trails over the past decade, connecting both east and west. It's about one block south of a transit stop for the w line, which connects Golden and Union Station. Eagleton Elementary is just to the Southeast.

Federal is known for having Dems Commercial to the East there. And 10th Avenue, which runs along, just on the northern boundary of this property, has stops for both the RTD one and nine buses, which bring people across town. So this is the property itself, and you can see its existing zoning is ESUD, which as I said is a single unit district, as is a lot of the area around here. I'll note the only difference between the SUD and the SUDX to the north is that the DX allows the suburban house building form, so slightly different house structures allowed to the north and to the south. But you can see it's located sort of at this very small commercial node within Villa Park, where to the north we see the E M X 2 X District.

And then there are a couple of row house districts where we see slightly denser housing. But this is located right at sort of a commercial node at 10th And Knox. What they're proposing is to rezone this property to EMS 3. So the EMS 3, that's a main street district that is designed to promote sort of safe pedestrian scaled commercial streets, activate that public edge, wherever that primary street is. In this case, it would be along 10th Avenue there with a high degree of walkability.

So it's den typically placed at local or collector streets and embedded mixed use areas within residential districts. So we do think that that, meets this definition as we go through the presentation. And there are two building forms that would be allowed here, the townhouse and the shopfront building forms. While this district typically allows the drive through building form, it doesn't allow that when a building is within a quarter mile of a transit station, which this is. I do wanna point out a couple of things about the EMS three.

This was just to highlight those two, districts that are on the zoning, building forms table, but wanted to note that they are within that, geographic limitation. So, again, only the townhouse or the shopfront building form. And the other thing I wanted to note is that because it's adjacent, low scale residential districts, our protected district standards apply to this property. So it does have single unit districts to the south and to the the east. And so in this case, where we would see those apply is on the side interior adjacent to protected district.

So, normally, the side interior has a zero foot setback in this district. But because what's to the south of them is a single unit district, their setback requirement will be a minimum of 10 feet from their southern boundary. And then also at the rear where they are adjacent and protected district, we will see that their rear setback will be 10 feet, whereas normally it would be zero feet. And then the other part of the protected district standards I wanna demonstrate have to do with height. And this image is not their site.

It is illustrative only and taken from the Denver zoning code just to show sort of wedding cake step backs that apply in this case. So because they have, a protected district to the rear and the side of them, they will have to have that 10 foot setback, then their property can rise, 27 feet, and then it will have to step back an additional 15 feet from there. 20 feet if there were no alley at the rear or 25 feet if there were no alley at the rear. So just to demonstrate, they will have to sort of have additional setbacks, and then they will have those upper story setbacks both to the south and to the east to protect those low scale districts, to maintain light. So in terms of existing land use context, this is what it looks like.

So aligning with the expected outcomes of the zone districts, most of the area is single unit development. You can see those to the South and to the east, as I pointed out, are those single unit districts. But to the north, we have those commercial retails that are building this small node within the Villa Park neighborhood. And then you can see some of those multiunit houses that are associated with the row house districts. These are some, images just to give you some context for where we're at at 10th And, Knox Court.

So the image on the top is some of the existing commercial that's across 10th Avenue right there. So what exists is this sort of small, strip mall type of, development, that could be developed into something, much denser if it were ever to be torn down and rebuilt. But this is what exists currently. And then the picture on the bottom is the site itself. And so you can see the the small 1899 home in the bottom corner there, and then some of the additions that have been built out on what is actually a a really large, property for a single family home.

I also wanna note that they have entered into a voluntary affordable housing agreement with, the Department of Housing Stability. A representative from Host is here today if you have questions about this, but wanted to note that, the negotiated alternatives for that require that 12% of units be income restricted at 70% AMI if they are for rent, or 12% of units are income restricted at 90% AMI if they are for sale, and those would have a ninety nine year covenant. It also waives them out of the, any of the height bonuses that they would get, any of the fee in lieu that they could opt into. So these must be units built on-site here at Tenpin Knox. Alright.

So let's talk a little bit about process. So original informational notice went out at the January about this. It went to planning board at the March, bringing us here, and we anticipate this going to city council in early May. In terms of public comments, we have received no comments from the local RNOs in the area. We did receive one letter of support from a neighbor of the property who noted that they would encourage the ability to have new businesses located at this intersection and new residential, especially income restricted residential.

Planning board held a hearing on, March 4, as I said, and they voted unanimously to recommend approval. There were no comments or significant deliberation. So that brings us to the review criteria. So as all of you know, we're mandated to consider these three criteria in determining the appropriateness of a of an applicant's request. And we'll start with the first, which is consistency with adopted plans.

And lucky for us, we actually have three plans that apply here. The first are two are citywide plans, and the third is the newly adopted newishly adopted West Area Plan. So starting with comp plan 2040, we do think it would help advance some of our equitable, affordable, and inclusive goals by increasing the development of housing close to transit, close to other mixed use districts, and creating a greater mix of housing options in neighborhoods that are largely dominated by single unit development. We think it would create a more strong and authentic neighborhood by ensuring that there is that new mix of housing types that would support a diverse population, and it would allow for, growth and support for neighborhood serving businesses. By being a small site that could contain commercial properties, we're not gonna see the proliferation of big box stores here.

We are going to see some sort of small, more local neighborhood scale commercial. We believe it would advance some of our connected, safe, and accessible places goals by promoting transit oriented development. Again, this is within a quarter mile of an existing transit station. And we believe it would be more environmentally resistant because, resilient because we are promoting infill development where there is already infrastructure and services, and we're focusing that growth near transit. We'll turn to Blueprint Denver now, which is the city's land use plan.

So Blueprint Denver has future neighborhoods. It identifies this one as urban Edge, which is predominantly residential, but is noted as having sort of small scale multiunit or commercial embedded along main corridors. We believe that the proposed district meets those, narrative, definitions or descriptions. In terms of future places, you can see this as well as other properties at this 10th And Knox corridor are noted, as local corridor, which is described as dining, entertainment, shopping, some residential, active street frontages, and heights up to three stories. We believe that the EMS three district aligns with that description as well.

And then Blueprint Denver identifies its growth area as all other parts of the city where we anticipate minimal growth, and we believe that this would help achieve sort of minimal growth at this small site. We do wanna talk about Blueprint Denver's equity analysis Because of this neighborhood location because of the site's location within this neighborhood and its particular lot size, we did an equity analysis to look at three different categories of equity concepts within Blueprint Denver. I'm just gonna give you a sort of summary analysis of this. The actual equity analysis data is more thoroughly described in the staff report, but ultimately, areas where we saw lowest possible scores had to do with educational attainment, median household income, and then the number of income restricted units and a lack of missing middle housing, which are buildings that have units the number of units between two and nineteen. And we believe this would help achieve some of alleviate some of our equity concerns in this area by creating income restricted housing, which helps with median income households as well as a number of income restricted units.

And we believe that this site would require the building of a different housing typology more in line with missing middle housing than the predominant single unit housing that we see, throughout the neighborhood. We also believe that it would help advance many of the city's climate goals. This would help us locate more housing near transit and active transit corridors, which are things where you can bike, walk, scoot to where you need to be. It would create that housing near open space, and it would create these multiunit buildings that we know are more energy efficient than low density, single unit housing. So now we can turn our attention to the West area plan, which I said was pretty recently adopted in 2023.

And in terms of the West area plan, I wanna focus on a few things. Largely, the the land use guidance is reflective of Blueprint Denver. It is now our policy to update Blueprint to reflect our small area plans. So it does in fact show the neighborhood as urban edge, local corridor, but the West area plan provides more nuanced guidance on heights. However, in this particular case, it also supports heights up to three stories, and we believe that the EMS three aligns with that.

There's a lot of text on the screen. I'm not gonna read it to you. It's here just for the record's sake, but, we wanted to highlight that the West Area Plan does have very specific language about exploring strategies to make sure that affordable housing is located everywhere, that we are increasing the development of, potential, shared value through affordable housing in neighborhoods and expanding that diversity of housing types. And we believe that through the voluntary affordable housing plan, they are helping to advance these goals that were identified in the West Area Plan. And therefore, we do find that the requested zone district is consistent with our adopted plans.

Turning to the second review criteria, public interest, we believe that it also meets this criteria because it would be creating neighborhood scale, walkable mixed use area, which aligns with what the community and city council advanced through the plan adoption. It would also create diverse housing types near transit and open space. Turning to the third review criteria, we believe that it is consistent with neighborhood context, zone district, and purpose and intent statements, most notably by locating commercial area embedded in a residential area as identified in the plans, embedding multiunit in a low scale residential area, and maintaining that low scale throughout the neighborhood except for where identified to have this mid rise commercial and mixed use structures at particular nodes, which this is identified as. And with that, I want to say CPD finds that all three criteria have been met, and we encourage city council to move this to a vote of the full council. I'm here to answer any questions.

Representative from host is here, and the applicant team should be online if you have questions for them.

Yeah. I think they are. Great. Thank you so much, Tony. I wanna welcome madam Protem on her birthday eve. She is in fact here. Birthday eve. Yes, that's a thing. And then in the queue, I have councilmember Torres. This is in her district, followed by madam president.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Tony. And with your boss here, I recommend you do a podcast in the zone with Tony Lechuga.

It's the best joke ever is. It's not a joke at all.

It's not a joke at all. It's just thank you so much. I think what you've presented makes this really accessible to anybody who's trying to understand what's happening with a really interesting corner in the Villa Park neighborhood. I live within a block of this neighborhood, so I know it well. I knew the original owner, Mr.

Roger, worked at Coors all his life and retired, and he tried to buy up the whole block at one point in his life, just such an interesting character. But it's such an interesting property because it's so big, because it's right at the corner of this intersection for the neighborhood. 10th And Knox Court is a pretty busy one, traffic light and everything, but right by light rail, a lot of development up Knox Court towards Paco Sanchez Park, so it's always been of interest, I think, what's going to end up happening with this property. Is the owner with us on Zoom? Yeah, they're there are two owners.

Yeah, Niles Emmerich and Stephen McCullough, I think, are promoted already. So gentlemen, if you can hear us, please introduce yourselves.

You can.

Hi, Steve. Hi, Niles. Thank you both for being here. Can you talk to me? I know we've met over a long time about different ideas about the project. Can you give me a sense of what would happen with what you're planning on doing with the 12,000 square feet?

Yeah. Right now, what we have preliminary modeled in our kind of early site development plan is for somewhere between twelve and fifteen units. They would be a mix of three bedroom, two bedroom, and one bedroom units with a small commercial corner that would be probably just shy of a thousand square feet with two one bedroom apartments that would sit on top of that. And then we are currently exploring how the recent change in the parking minimums will affect the site. We'd like to keep some more green space inside instead of having that dry bag all the way in.

So with parking allowed on the tenth Avenue side, we think that that will help to support the commercial corner, and then that will allow us to pull back on the originally required amount of parking on-site. We'll probably still have some parking on-site, but then we wanna be able to keep the middle part of that lot a bit more open. So a patio from the commercial corner that would then be able to look into a some kind of a green area that would be more of an open space that could be shared among the different units there.

Okay. Super helpful. Thank you for that. Let me just ask host, yeah, can you talk to me a little bit about how you arrived at the 12% and the AMI levels for the voluntary agreement?

Afternoon, everyone. John Cullerelli with the Department of Housing Stability. This is a voluntarily entered into affordable housing plan where the developer does not currently have any development plans. This is ahead of when we would usually expect to see an affordable housing agreement. And one of the main concessions that they made is that they would not use the fee and lieu to opt out of providing any affordability on-site.

They said no matter what the size of this project is, whether it's fewer than 10 units or more than 10 units, a minimum of 12% of units or one affordable unit will be provided on-site. So additionally, a major concession was that they would voluntarily opt into the program even if the development plan did not require them to comply with mandatory affordable housing.

Was there a discussion of which kind of unit would be the one unit?

We do it proportionally. So whatever the largest proportion within the unit mix is, that'll be an affordable unit. And if they go above 13 units, then they'll be required to provide two affordable units on-site, so proportionally as well. If the majority of units are three bedrooms, then the affordable unit would be three bedrooms.

That's great.

Thank you for that. Tony, just so that I'm understanding the protected district rules, So they would have 10 foot setback at the back and the side. The upper story setback above 27 feet is 15 feet for the rear and 25 feet for the side. What did I what did I read on that?

Yeah. Sorry. I'm gonna go back to my my reference here to make sure that we get it right. Yeah. So you are right. So the rear and the side setbacks will be 10 feet because of the protected districts on either of those sides. And then the building can rise to 27 feet. And then after that, it will have to have an additional 15 foot setback. The 25 foot setback only applies if the rear doesn't have an alley.

So Oh, right.

Properties right next to each other. So on both of those, it would be 10 feet, then rise 27, then set back another 15.

Okay. Perfect. And that's 15 just from the alley, not from the side?

No. It is 15 feet from or or yes. Sorry. It's 15 feet from the, yeah, the property line.

Okay. On the back. Okay. For the owners, if I can get them back on, can you talk to me a little bit about community engagement? Like, what's been the conversation with both adjacent neighbors and maybe with the RNL?

Yeah. We since we acquired the property back in 2016, we've had extensive outreach. We attended the Villa Park Neighborhood Association meetings beginning in, I think, as early as 2017. So we were a part of a lot of the the West Area planning process as well. We really wanted to be engaged along the way.

So I I just give that context to share that we've we've been involved closely with the neighborhood association and neighbors since the the very beginning. And then I did last summer do, personally, some door knocking up and down both both blocks there, Knox and Julian between 9th And 12th. And the majority of respondents were positive. I spoke with two residents, one who was North Of 10th Avenue on Knox Court who just generally didn't wanna see any change and didn't wanna see any additional units being added to the neighborhood, more than a single family home. That was her major concern.

And then there was someone who was behind, maybe over over closer to where you are on the Julian side, who really was just asking about what would the impact be on on his house. And so we talked a little bit about the setbacks and how, we would plan to have trash on-site as well so that shouldn't overflow into the alley, And that seemed to, help him feel more comfortable with it. And, ultimately, he said, you know, I can't change what you're gonna do, so, you know, you can do what you need to do. But, predominantly, the responses have been, yes. We wanna see something come into this corner.

We would love to see it activated. And many of the neighbors that I was able to speak to said that they would like to see just some kind of a place that they could meet with other neighbors. Mhmm. So we have a a whole list of all of our engagement that's too long to to cover, but we have dates and who we've met with and when we met with them and all of that should be provided as part of the application as well.

Thanks, Miles. I

will say I've also heard some interest about the commercial side of this. My well, maybe only council president remembers the rezoning that we voted down that was not too far away from this. And it was because that community corridor designation is pretty unique to this little node and really trying to see folks get creative about how to really make that a community corridor and not exclusively housing took, I think, some of that time and that conversation to get to a potentially small footprint commercial space that could be offered here. So I'm glad you're so far still sticking with that. It seems like a good added benefit to the location.

So thank you. I don't have any other questions.

Great. I have madam president next in the queue.

Thank you. Thank you, Niles, and thank you, Steven. Think it is. Wondering for the commercial space, how big are you thinking of the commercial space, and have you thought about any vendors?

Perry, what we have right now in the preliminary plan would be just under a thousand square feet. I think it's, 978 square feet or something like that. We do not have any specific vendors in mind. Personally, I think coffee shop, bagel shop, something like that that would be that would have a lot of traffic in and out that would also support, you know, some food or beverage options and a place for people to be able to enjoy them themselves inside or on the patio right next to it as well. But I don't we don't have any vendors in mind.

Okay. Okay. And then with this the all the setbacks, how does that end up functioning? Because you end up having to you'll have to dedicate right away for the sidewalks. You'd have to dedicate in the rear. You have to like, there's lots of dedications. And then you have the rear setback, the side internal setbacks. Does it end up looking like a wedding cake, or do you know what I mean by that?

I don't I I mean, well, from what we have planned so far, I don't think it's gonna end up looking like a wedding cake. We intentionally put some space next to the commercial to create a patio. So, hopefully, that creates some openness and really separates the buildings. And the intent is that it will be built in four separate buildings so that it will be space in between each of them as well.

It. Got

it. Okay. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Thank you, sure.

Okay. I do not have anyone else in queue. I go after these two ladies. Usually, all my questions get answered. So with that, can I get a motion and a second?

Motion.

Great. Anybody need a voice vote? Okay. Alrighty. We will see everybody on the floor. Thank you. Tony. And we next have another item presented by mister Luchuca, which I am scrolling up to to say the number of it. 1453 North Wabash Street.

Is this stretch ready? Yep. Oh, it tears out.

Reoriented now to that address. Alright. Journey Claudia is waiting for us to be done making wedding cake shapes with our hands.

Oh, good. What's the way to

get now you say it. I'm like,

oh, I get it. They're coming.

Alright. Now we're on North Wabash, you guys. Alright.

Let's journey across the city to the East side of town. So, yeah, this is similar. It's an applicant driven request to change the zoning at 1453 North Wabash Street. So let's start with their request. So you can see the small property outlined in red here. It's about 6,000 square feet. So they're requesting to go from an ETUB, which similar to this last one is urban Edge, but this one is two unit. B dictates the maximum size of the lot. And they're also looking to go to EMS 3, which is that urban edge, main street, up to three stories. So, again, it's about 6,000 square feet.

And the reason that this property owner is requesting a rezoning is that they actually own this particular, parcel, which is bigger than the rezoning boundary. So immediately to the north of this is an existing auto body shop. That property and this property are all part of one parcel, but they have split zoning. So the property to the north has the existing EMS three zone district. The property owner would like to apply that zoning to the entirety of their parcel so that they can have one single zone district applied to the entire property.

So this property is in Council District 8 represented by council member Lewis, and you can see it's right here in the East Colfax neighborhood. You can see it's kind of neatly, equidistant from Verbena Park to the South there, McNichols Park to the Northeast. The closest school is Ashley Elementary, which is sort of across the street from McNichols Park there, right on the edge of Denver and, Aurora to the East with Yosemite as the boundary right there. We're gonna linger a bit here on the existing zoning slide because I think it's important to point out a few things. You can see the existing Colfax Corridor is largely that EMS district, sometimes 3, sometimes 5.

Immediately to the north and to the west is EMS three. To the south of this property is a continuation of that ETUB district. And then if you look at the east, it's kind of split along this, particular property line with some of it being EMS three and some of it being ETUB. But quite notably, when we looked at this, and I believe when the plan was adopted, they would have looked at this as well. The depth of EMS 3 on this block appears to be where this property would be as well.

So it's not pushing that EMS 3 boundary, significantly into the mid block, where we would normally see the ETUB boundary. But then you can see as you get farther from Colfax to the south, it tapers off into that ESU district, which would be a single unit district. Then if you see to the north across Colfax, we we actually have an ERH, which would be a row house district, which is also sort of a moderate, intensity residential district. So similar to the last case, they're looking to go to EMS 3, which again, the point of it is to create those safe, active pedestrian scaled sort of commercial areas with active street edges, high degree of walkability. Typically, they're located along local or collector streets.

This one would allow for, similar to last, the townhouse and the shop rent building forms, but is not within a quarter mile of a transit station, and so would also allow for those drive through building forms that are associated with the EMS three. And that's what's shown on this slide here is that those two that are outlined but not colored in are allowed outside of a quarter mile of a transit station. So we would see all four building forms be allowed to be applied to this site. But, again, those protected district standards, let's go back to talking about the wedding cake, would apply to this site as well. So because to the south, they actually do have that TU district, that's also a protected district.

So any new development that would happen on this property would have a 10 foot setback from that single unit there's actually a single unit home to the south. I I highlighted the rear box, but I believe looking at the map that the rear is actually an e f three, so it wouldn't apply there. And so once again, what that does is say that we will have a 10 foot setback from that property to the south. The building a new building, if there were to be one built, could rise 27 feet, and then we would have to continue pushing that setback a little bit farther back to 15 feet. Looking at the land use context, you can see because this is all one parcel, this property is identified as being part of the industrial land use associated with the auto body shop to the north even though its zoning is a TU zoning, which is a solely residential district.

But a couple of things that I wanna point out here. Immediately to the west, you can see a multiunit residential property. That is a former motel that was converted into a live workspace for artists. Interesting. And immediately to the east, what's listed as a commercial retail property is actually a former motel that has an approved site development plan to be converted into multiunit residential as well.

So we are seeing sort of a proliferation of these former commercial businesses turned into residential along Colfax. This zoning would allow, an existing commercial, property owner to maintain their commercial business, which you can see is kind of one of the few in the area remaining. So a couple of images just to orient you as street level. So the top image is the existing auto body shop. The bottom picture is that remaining 6,000 foot parcel parcel that, you can see wedged sort of between the existing auto body shop and single family house, to the south there.

Alright. Let's talk about process a little bit. So this one's pretty similar to the last one. Informational notice went out in early January. Planning board heard this one in in early March, bringing us to here today.

And should council move it forward, we anticipate having a a final public hearing, in early May. This one, we've received zero letters from applicable RNOs in the area, but we have received two letters from the general public. The first letter was a letter of support that we received from the FACS partnership, a well known nonprofit group in the area, noting their support for continuing local businesses within this commercial context of Colfax. We did receive one letter of opposition which didn't speak the review criteria but was a neighbor concerned about, I apologize for the typo, about the smell of paint that comes from the business that exists there today. I do wanna talk a little bit about the planning board hearing which was held on March 4.

So they did vote unanimously to recommend approval. One point of deliberation that they did have was that the East Area Plan never received the same sort of legislative rezoning that some of our later plans did and it's because it was one of our first adopted plans. And planning board felt like this is the sort of property that might have been included in a legislative rezoning saving the small business owner time and money as well as staff time. So just wanted to note that they did call that out as, like, potentially revisiting some of our original NPI plans for legislative rezoning in the future. So let's return to the or let's turn to the review criteria.

So as said before, there are three criteria that were mandated to look at to determine if a request is appropriate. The first is consistency with adopted plans, and we have three. The two are our citywide plans, and then the third is the East Area plan, which, as I noted, was adopted in 2020, one of our first NPI plans. So we believe that this would actually encourage equitable, affordable, and inclusive goals because it would allow for offering a mix of housing types and services a diverse population. It would be allowing for infill development, that is compatible with existing uses in the surrounding neighborhood, and it would continue to support neighborhood serving businesses within the area.

We believe that this is actually more environmentally resilient than its existing zoning, because, again, it promotes infill development at a higher scale where we already have infrastructure and services, and it would focus growth near transit stations and along high and medium capacity transit corridors. As you're all aware, Colfax is the location of the city's first bus rapid transit network, and this will be adjacent, some stops. Let's turn now to Blueprint Denver, the city's citywide land use plan. So in terms of neighborhood context, it does call for that urban edge neighborhood which is predominantly residential but does allow for some small scale multiunit or commercial and mixed use development along main corridors. Colfax is a main corridor where we would anticipate seeing the mixed uses associated with an EMS district.

In terms of future places, you can see it matches the parcel to the or the properties to the north, which is part of the same parcel as Community Corridor, much like the rest of the Colfax Corridor where we expect to see a mix of uses, both large and small scale buildings, and it actually recommends heights of up to five stories. So we do find that their rezoning request is consistent with these descriptions. And finally, in terms of growth strategies, it does call for more intense growth than some other parts of the city, potentially 25% of new housing, 20% of new employment. And we do believe this district associated with property to the north could allow for that future growth in the future. We also wanna note a couple of strategies from Blueprint Denver.

So it does call out using land use regulations to encourage higher density mixed use development in transit rich areas. And we believe this would do that again by locating higher density near future BRT stops. In terms of equity goals, we do believe that it helps advance some of the city's stated equity goals in Blueprint Denver through supporting small scale business growth. Neither of these lots is super huge. So, again, not a location where we would anticipate seeing some sort of big box retailer locate in the future.

So any commercial growth would be low scale, and this could help increase access to jobs and amenities should this small business choose to grow in the future. In terms of our climate goals, we do believe the EMS 3 District helps support many of our climate goals by locating mixed use near transit. The EMS 3, by focusing on higher density, active uses, can help reduce auto dependence, and can create greater density, which is associated with better energy efficiency. And now we'll turn to the East Area Plan adopted in 2020. And I'll note that many of its recommendations are identical to Blueprint as Blueprint was updated following its adoption.

And so the future neighborhood place, future neighborhood and place guidance are identical to Blueprint where we have the urban edge community corridor. The West area plan has more specific height guidance. It calls for up to five stories at this location, but only achieved through the provision of some sort of community benefit. And this applicant is not looking to achieve that five story height. They are simply looking to match the existing three story height of their business to the north.

So we believe that it is consistent with the land use recommendations. Moving to the second criteria, public interest, we believe, again, it's in the public interest by creating the neighborhood scale walkable mixed use area near transit and supporting existing businesses, which brings us to the final review criteria, consistency with neighborhood context, and the zone district purpose and intent statements. And, again, we believe that it is consistent with those because it would provide a commercial area embedded in a residential area where we already see commercial nodes. It could allow for multiunit embedded in other residential areas, and it could create low scale development with some mid rise commercial or mixed use structures at this node that is Colfax. So finding that all three criteria have been met, CPD recommends the committee advance this to a hearing of the full council.

And I'm happy to answer questions. Again, I believe the applicant should be online.

Yeah. The yeah. Jeremy Robodeau, who's the current business owner and the applicant, is online, promoted, and ready if anyone has any questions. The district member, council member Lewis, is, I think, having some trouble joining us remotely. So I tried to check-in and see if first half have any questions they wanna pass along. I don't know they do. And I actually have nobody in the queue. Okay. Good. I'm wrong. I have people in the queue. Council member Albedrez followed by council member Chavez.

Thank you. Again, thanks for the great presentation. I think you broke it down really well, but I still have some confusion, which is around this piece looking like it's left out on slide maybe seven where it shows that it's not part of the main street, but then also being part of an industrial context on slide I get there. Oh, the slide with purple. I guess one of the concerns I have is okay.

So the purple slide is 13. Yeah. What is the the difference between the existing context, existing land use on 12, and that other slide?

Yeah. So I think the other slide

Existing zoning.

Was the existing zoning. Mhmm. Yeah. So the property this is an insight into unusual regulations of Endeavor. Yeah. So the entire site is one parcel, but it does have split zoning, which is an unusual context for a property to have. And so while it is currently operating as one parcel that has an industrial business located on

it Mhmm.

Part of that industrial business is located within a district that is a two unit district. Mhmm. That's part of the property owner's issue at hand right here Mhmm. Is that they do have the split zoning, which theoretically would not allow them to operate their business on this property.

So and how does that lead to the land use context and the building form existing context

Yeah. So being industrial. The land use is associated with the parcel, not with the zoning. And so it's currently being utilized as one big parcel, which is industrial because it's an auto body shop even though it has split zoning.

Okay. My concern is if because drive through is a potentiality for this type of zoning. Correct?

It could be. Yeah.

And so I don't think anybody would want the drive through on the side street. They'd want it on Colfax. So with this parcel being so far down onto Wabash, that's an interesting name. Wabash. Could they put it on either side? Because it seems kind of, from my perspective, weird to have Main Street zoning even though it's, like, one parcel so far into the neighborhood.

Yeah. It's a good question. The the parcel this particular piece of land is actually maybe too small to locate a drive through business on, just given the drive aisle requirements of a of a drive through business. Because it's all one parcel with one current property owner, the property owner's intentions are to utilize it for his existing business right now. But you're not wrong. Like, in the future, should he choose to sell the entire parcel, somebody could tear down this auto body shop and build a drive through on it. That's also true for every EMS three or EMS five property along Colfax today.

Okay.

So part of it is trying to, like, provide the property owner with the same entitlement that their neighbors have and that the plans have said is appropriate.

So is there different types of EMS? Because I thought we were rezoning in my district part of federal to not allow drive throughs, and I thought it was EMS.

How was it not that?

So the EMS district, it depends on how close it is to transit stations. It also depends on if we've applied some overlay districts to it, things like that.

So this would be really close to a transit station, I'm assuming, with the BRT going down Colfax?

It as of right now, our zoning code does not define the transit stops for Colfax BRT as rapid transit that would eliminate the drive through building form. That could change in the future.

But How would that change if I mean, it's a fact. I guess that's frustrated with this when there's, like, literally, we're putting in a BRT lane, but, yeah, it's not considered.

Yeah. It's a definitional change in the zoning code that would have to happen. So it would be a simple text amendment to include the BRT stations as rapid transit stops.

And who would that have to be led by c p community planning and housing? CD? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. And is that, you know, part of the text bundles that you do every year? Would that be, like, added to that really long list?

It it could be.

Okay. Interesting. Alright. I'd be curious to hear from the council person their thoughts, but thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Torres.

Okay. Oh, thank you. This just kind of reminded me of a location in Loma Lincoln Park, the Perry and Terry auto collision location on 8th And Galapago. They had a little upper location that was a TU zoning, but it was still part of their parcel, and pulled them into that MS 5, I think, or something like that just so that they can keep doing what they're doing. What's their consequence right now? Because even just like a Google Street View, they're using it for parking, should they not is that out of compliance?

It it is. That's part of what brought the property owner in to rezone is that he understood that his property was one parcel and did not understand that it had split zoning.

And so how do would be confused about that.

Exactly. This is a very reasonable misunderstanding. And so he did receive a violation from the city, which prompted him to come in and ask for the rezoning so that he could continue to to operate some of his business on that property.

Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. Thank you. Thanks.

I'm gonna pause. I think council member Lewis has not been able to join us, so apologies to her for that. Not seeing any questions from her. I just was gonna invite the owner since he is online with us. Mister Roboto, if you can hear us and wanna introduce yourself, I just wanted to give you a chance to tell us for yourself why you're applying for this, which I think mister Lachuga just basically overviewed. But since you're here and we appreciate it, hopefully, you can hear us hear us. Maybe not. Maybe maybe councilor Lewis is not the only one with the issues.

Okay. Can you hear me?

Oh, there he is. Yep. Yep. Nice to meet you. Do you wanna just introduce yourself?

Yeah. Do you see me?

Yet. You Now we can. Welcome to our committee room.

Oh, thank you. Yeah. My name is Jeremy Robidoux. So, yeah, Tony laid it out perfect. Just found out the hard way that it has this clip zoning and you kinda look at some street views and and basically all I wanna do is basically just keep using it.

But I want to we have a bunch of storage containers and trailers, and it's just kind of ugly and disorganized. And so I kind of want to just get those out of there and eventually first just continue the fencing around that property to match the business, wrought iron vents, and then get rid of all those storage containers and eventually apply for a permit just to put up one storage building just to put keep our parts in and stuff. So it'll just make it more organized and look better and be more efficient. I'm not going to expand the building that that houses the business onto that property. I just basically want to continue to use it to support the business.

That's all.

Okay. Sounds good. Any other questions anybody wants to ask? All right. Thank you so much for joining us. Okay. With that, motion and a second. Moved. Moved by Torres, seconded by Campbell. Clearly, we don't need a voice vote. Thank you, mister Robert. We will see you in full council. Thanks, Tony. I think Tony is out of the hot seat, although he doesn't seem to experience it as a hot seat. And we are on to Chris Gleisner with the site development plan extension item. Also an action

item. Oh,

and it looks like also mister Buchanan. And miss Showalter, we get everybody. Thank you all for being here. Yes.

Yes. I really feel bad.

Alright. CPD team, y'all can feel free to introduce yourselves even though we, of course, know you.

Welcome. Sure. Hi, everyone. I'm part

of the sponsor team. There you are. Pickens. I was like, has she joined CPD?

Don't know. She really would. Yeah. You know, I might as well at this time. Right? That's like the best compliment I've ever had.

You know, it's just It's just I was

like, wow.

That sounded like emotion to me.

I was like, I could join CPD. No. Alright. Send over. Yeah. You know, I'm like all happy. So thank you all. This is something that we've been working on. I've been talking to Brad for a while on what would it take to get a little bit more housing through the queue in Denver and really thinking about I have to admit Brad and I send each other articles. So if you think I geek out, he sends me articles and he's like, did you read that?

And I'm like, yeah. Here here's what my thought was. And so this is just some of that work in that realm of an extension. And so I think that the market conditions are very unique and difficult. It's hard to move forward. We've all heard about permitting. Permitting office has really made huge improvements. And we really think that this addition of time will allow some more projects to come through the queue. And then I'll pass it over to CPD. I do just asking questions about that, we can add this extension and then we can go back and also remove it.

It doesn't have to live in there forever. And that was one of the questions that I asked Brad is I was like, when and Sarah, when we were and Chris, when we were talking about this, I said, I understand the need for this right now. I may not understand the need for this in three years from now. Could we take this out? And they're like, absolutely. It's a tool that we can and we're always looking for different tools to use. So I just wanted to set the table with that because that was something that was on my mind as I was getting this briefing as well. And I'll hand it over to Supervie.

Thank you so much, madam president. Great.

Thank you. Nice to be with you council members.

Can you all three introduce yourselves just out of formal Sure. Even though we know you?

I'll go first. I'm Sarah Showalter, one of two deputy executive directors at CPD.

Brad Buchanan, executive director at CPD.

And Chris Gleisner, director for site design and neighborhood development within CPD. Thanks.

Nice to be with you. So let's run to the you're on the context slide. So no earth shattering headlines here. We know the marketplace. Housing has dramatically slowed, and there are reasons for that.

Interest rate challenges, uncertainty in the marketplace, construction costs, and oversupply are all contributing to some uncertainty in the marketplace. We are also at a moment in time coincidentally where we are about thirty months out from the large number of projects that submitted prior effective date. And as you all know, we had a huge slog of projects come through and about 40,000 units worth of projects actually that about half of them followed through and completed their STPs. Those projects that completed their STPs are coming up on their STP expiration date of thirty months. And and we're at it at a moment in time in the marketplace where there's an oversupply.

And so the punch line is we're trying to keep those projects alive so that we can take advantage of this unique moment in time to build into the supply pipeline as quickly as the market can. So next slide, please. So this is a little of the data background. This is the national chart. So Denver is not unlike almost every other major US city.

The United States overbuilt in housing in most US cities peaking in 2024, creating an oversupply in most major US cities. Next slide. Denver did the same thing. This is the Denver slide. It dropped during COVID and then came out of COVID very strong, peaking in 2022 and dropping since then.

And the impact has been that with an oversupply, supply equals demand, those rents in those apartment units and the Class A and Class B apartment units have dropped. And in in Downtown Denver, there are market rate rents that are in the 80% to 100% area median income range. So the private sector marketplace today is creating a much needed affordable housing product themselves. Next slide. This shows a little bit about some of the market rate rents for Class A on the left, class b in the middle, class c.

And those are really about ages. I don't wanna paint a picture that class c units are somehow not good units. These are still high quality units, but older. Class c apartment units have dropped 11.5% in the rents. And this is actually the first of the year since then they have dropped further. And this also does not calculate in the rent concessions that projects are giving. So three, four, maybe in five months sometimes for projects when they're signing up, and that is the same for renewals. So when folks are renewing their leases, they are requiring these additional concessions as well. Next slide. I think this set of graphs is amazing to me.

The blue line on the Denver chart to the right, the graph, those are Denver Class C apartment rents in the blue line are actually less expensive today than our designated affordable units in Denver right now. So Denver is producing 80% and less affordable levels of affordability. And what is unique about this moment in time, different than a lot of other all other major US cities, is that because of the timing of that deadline, we got all these projects in that got their approvals, but then because the market slowed, they've been sitting there waiting. Other cities don't have that. Other cities, the units were tailing off.

They got built. They didn't get built. But we have this shovel ready group of projects that are just looking to stay viable. And I get a lot of calls about this. And we lost our first SDP on December 12, and they continue to just tick off as they hit that expiration date. Chris is going to describe what we are proposing to address that.

So diving into our proposal, what we are looking at, just as as a reminder, site development plans in today's world have a thirty month shelf life from approval. The proposal that we are putting forward is to add an additional three years to that time frame for site development plan validity. So this would mean any site development plan approved on or before 12/31/2025 would receive that three additional years to obtain their building permits and start construction. What this would ensure is that those projects that did proceed through the full site development plan review process, and and as a reminder, that means all of their transportation engineering plans, all of their associated studies with other agencies, But those those plans that achieved approval by the end of last year, just trying to make sure that they have an opportunity to achieve success. And we've what we've heard and what we continue to hear is those projects, it's a time barrier for them.

They're they're many of them are still actively working seeking to achieve financing for that. For a sense of the scale, it's about 22,600 residential units that are in that. That's about a 156 total projects that we're talking about in that in that grouping for this for this project. It's 22,633, just for fun. Without this proposal, right, the flip side of that coin, our our concern is that without this and these expired, Denver could lose thousands of what we see as shovel ready projects that are ready to go that could meet our housing needs.

And if and if projects with those approved state development plans, which again represent an investment of time and money, don't have time to achieve their their financing and building permits. Many of those will never be built. As you're used to, we're gonna walk through the the process and the review criteria for this proposed text amendment. We did send out courtesy public review back in February on February 20. Planning board did recommend this unanimously at their March 18 meeting, and we're here in front of committee on March 24, preferably moving to full city council on the sixth and onto May 4.

All RNOs did receive written notice of this. We've received three comments to date. Those were summarized in your staff report, but they were they essentially were inquiries about why is this a text amendment, so clarifying that as the vehicle to achieve this extension. One was a great question from the Westward neighborhood looking at projects in their district. Unfortunately, they didn't have any, so I couldn't tell them any more about projects in their district for this.

And the the last one was a great question about how does this impact other codes that that receive amendments, building code, things of that nature. What is what is the interplay there? Looking at our review criteria, we'll go through consistency with adopted plans, furthering public health, safety, and welfare, and the uniformity of district regulations and restrictions, starting with consistency with comp plan and Blueprint Denver. Comp plan seeks to create a greater mix of housing options in every neighborhood for individuals and families. We do find that this will support the ability for continuous residential development in those in those neighborhoods and to seek city policies and regulations encouraging encouraging every neighborhood providing those complete range of housing options.

Again, keeping projects that are in our queue alive to be able to seek success does support this recommendation. And then facilitating the growth of a diverse business sector that serves as a foundation for global innovative economy, the provision of housing will both continue to support those businesses as well as provide housing for who we hope to see as as workers and patrons of those businesses coming in. Blueprint, very similar, ensuring that the Denver zoning code continues to respond to the to the needs of the city while remaining modern and flexible. As as we've spoken to, this is a very unique situation that we are trying to be responsive to with our with the with the provision of a of a code text amendment to achieve that that longer timeline, that that longer shelf life for those projects. And working to ensure Denver and its neighborhoods have a vibrant and authentic retail and hospitality marketplace, Again, the the continued provision of residential will help support all of those businesses, including that hospitality marketplace.

We do think that this will further public safety, and welfare in terms of this being a very unique market condition, wanting to make sure that we are thinking ahead and being proactive to meet the needs of our future residents, not just folks that are here with us today. And this will result in uniform district regulations for projects within here. Based on the criteria for review, community planning and development does recommend that the committee move this site development plan extension text amendment, that's a mouthful, forward for consideration by full city council.

Thank you so much. That was some speedy, but clear. And I know you have offered us all, I think, two different briefings on this before, so thank you for that. I have council member Albedrez first in the queue.

Thank you so much. Thank you for bringing this forward. I think it's really important, Excited to see continued building of housing that we much need. One of the things I'm curious about is how many of these plans do we expect to expire every year, and how how much will this help?

It's a it's a fantastic question. So as as plans are are sort of continuously approved throughout the year, right, their expiration date is based on when that approval happened. Given that given that we saw a big influx of projects that have sort of worked their way through the system, what we anticipate is really toward the end of this year and even the beginning of next year is when we would start to see a glut of projects kind of grouped together that would start to to expire or would start to achieve that thirty month period of validity that they have today. But as Brad alluded to, we've already seen some of these expire, and the the idea behind some of this is that the extension would would, in essence, breathe those projects back to life as well with that extended time frame. Right?

So they might have exhausted their thirty months, but they would still have thirty six months left if this text amendment were successful at city council.

I appreciate that. I'm just curious on, like, an actual number of projects out there or STPs, like, that are gonna expire in that tranche maybe in December, January. So do some of the research

I don't have an exact answer, but some of the research that I've done when I or to be the sponsor is it's hard to get the money into Denver because of our market conditions. And so hopefully, if they go to the bank and say, hey, we have this extension, it becomes marketable and they can pull the financing down Mhmm. Because the interest rate is so high. Yeah. So I think we'll have a better sense if we if this gets passed, then in a couple months, what I hope to do is go back through and say, okay, now which ones actually utilize this extension and which ones didn't.

Because from what I've understood talking to some of the developers Mhmm. Is their the the money is just not flowing to Denver because of the interest rates and all of the other things. So I don't I ask for that same, like, what's our metrics of success? Mhmm. And we just don't we I don't we don't have it right now. I just wanna be honest with you. Okay. I appreciate that.

I have a

quote saying that

projects that would otherwise have expired that come to fruition, we can track that and report that back to you.

I think that would be great. I think one other question that I have is at what point do we require an SDP? Is it for a single family home or is it for what? Can you speak a little bit more to that?

Site develop so the the easiest way that I try to explain it, site development plans are required for all new development that's not a one and two family home. So if you're doing a triplex, you're going through a site development plan. If you're doing a mixed use development in, you know, at the at the corner of a of a high intensity arterial, you're doing a site development plan. If you're doing a high downtown, you're doing a site development plan. Okay. Yep. And then that's the way that we organize the city's multi agency development review.

Great. Awesome. Yep. Wonderful. Thank you. Excited for this. Appreciate it. Thanks, commissioner. Thank you.

Madam Procham. Well, you've answered all the questions. I was wondering what was triggering the site development plan, but I is this also, I imagine, across the city, are there more plans in certain parts of the city than there

are in others? And, like, what Yes. There are.

And in fact, we'd be happy to resend it out because it's been a little bit, but we sent out to all of you after we did our briefings because that question came up a lot. And so we actually provided some charts to y'all to show the distribution of the units by council district. And so not having it in front of me, but I know that some of the and you we probably won't be surprised to hear the council districts because they are also where we just generally see more market activity. So to be clear, it is it is it is citywide an impact. Like, there are units in every council or projects in every council district.

But in terms of residential units, even though this impacts all projects, obviously, big focus is on units. We're seeing really high proportion in District 9. Definitely some actually in District 11 was pretty high, District 10. Any others that you can think of, Chris, that popped up?

I think those were the three highest.

Those were the three that were the most. No. Thank you. I appreciate the presentation. This is interesting and a good solution, I think, to keeping people in the game to to do these developments. So thank you.

Thank you, madam chair. I didn't have anyone else in the queue just yet.

Maybe just one quick clarification. The 300 unit difference between It's darker. It was like 22,600, 22,300 were pre EHA. So another grouping of 300 units. 314

units. Thank you.

Okay. Actually have an component to it?

It would have an component, and that would result in about 30 IRUs.

Yeah. Great. Okay. Thank you. Thanks.

Good question. I'm pausing again if anyone has questions, including even Madam President, who's been known to think of new questions. I just wanted to ask I think you I think you have addressed this a little bit. I wanna ask again to make sure that I'm understanding, so thank you for the patience on that. From when these STPs were all approved through to now, are there any have there been any, like, subsequent changes to any of the criteria for those STPs that like, would have been the biggest changes since then? I'm sure there have been some, but if you could talk about that a little bit so I can get my head around, like, you know, what what's been changing that if they had to reapply, they would then have to comply with and haven't in the past, if that makes sense.

Sure. One of the big ones, obviously, is the is the requirement. Right? The Right. Sure. Vast majority of these did come in pre EHA.

Yes. This part we get, so we know where Exactly. Yeah. That's the most obvious example of all of it. No. I appreciate it.

But, right, we we do continuously have updates whether it's to the zoning code, whether it's to building codes that all have different impacts, and those are those are really based on sort of timing and interplay of those things. And so one of the things I alluded to and was a was a great comment from Bruno. From the public, yep, was a question about how is that impacted. Right? And so the way that we're looking at that is so say you have a site development plan that's approved.

Right? That locks you in for your zoning. So you're set on your your size, scale, form, number of units, those kinds of pieces. But say there's say there's a commensurate change in the in the building code or in an energy code or things of that nature that caused something in that site plan to have to shift or or modify, The the vast majority of scenarios that we've been able to identify that that could happen, right, that could be a a a roof form change to change some screening for mechanical equipment or something like that. The vast majority of those would could be processed as a as what's called a minor modification to the site plan and would have absolutely no impact or bearing to any of our conversation here about how long they would be valid for.

And so that is that is something that we're that we're being sort of cognizant about and talking with applicants about so that they have clarity as well in terms of how how they can continue to that that path forward even though other regulations may change. Okay.

And that we did, I did ask that question as well because we have approved energy code Mhmm. And a building code since these came through because I was the one of the sponsors. Me, Kaneesh, and I were the sponsors for I have a rental property where I had a huge cottonwood tree that was six feet tall fell on it, and I had to bring the back half of my nineteen o four rental property up to a different energy standard because the building And it was a nightmare. So I did ask that question, like, what would we have to do? So this is just one thing where we're working together to make sure that we get units out because as much as I want EHA, I also want units.

Like if you I read I was reading the Denver Business Journal and I don't know if you all read I you know, this is something I love, but the rent has dropped 4.8% almost five points. So it's making it more competitive, which in downtown when I sit on the DDDA board, we're not even having to have EHA. EHA is triggered, but they're already affordable. They're already at coming in at 80% AMI. And so we're actually creating affordable units in Downtown Denver.

So these are just I'm looking at all tools in our toolbox, but councilman Parady, I asked that same question because I do think we're we're all gonna get emails saying, hey. I got this site development plan. Right.

And I think the I mean, the other elephant in the room, we already have named, is just that our permitting processes have been slow for people. So

okay. I don't have

any other additional questions. Does anybody else? Uh-uh. Alright. Motion and second moved by Alvedras, seconded by Romero Campbell. Anybody need a voice vote? No. Okay. That's great. Thank you all for the work.

You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And we have nothing on consent. She's checking that, and so we are adjourned.