Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

30 february 3rd this is meeting of the planning and zoning commission um calling us to order shelly can we do a roll call please miss austin here mr adams here miss hubka here mr montiel mr lopez mr kaplan here

Mr. Martinez?

Present.

Mr. Benson?

Here.

Mr. Haggerty? Ms. Cesario? Here.

All right.

I cannot believe that our last meeting was November 18th.

Wow.

So hopefully everybody got a chance to take a look at the minutes. Not much going on at that meeting, so Not much to review there. Any discussion before the vote for approval of the minute? Michelle, you have anything? We're just ready to vote. All right, let's take a vote to approve. I'm sorry, we need somebody to motion.

I move to approve the minutes. Second.

Ms. Austin?

Yes.

Mr. Adams?

Absent.

Ms. Hupka? Yes. Mr. Kaplan?

Aye.

Mr. Martinez?

Aye.

Mr. Renson?

All right.

Thank you, everybody. Moving on to the public forum. Does anybody here present today speak to issues not on the agenda? Anybody online? Oh, I'm sorry. We didn't get Amy a call for the vote on the... Ms. Asario? Thank you. Thank you. Is anybody online? Anybody in the room that would like to? Oh, hi. All right, Shelly, can you just go over the format for the public forum?

If you can.

I don't have those things in front of me.

I don't have that in front of me, but you will be able to come to the podium and speak. And you will have three minutes, and you'll be timed.

NOW IS YOUR TIME. GO AHEAD AND COME UP, INTRODUCE YOURSELF.

. THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE AND ALLOWING THIS OPPORTUNITY. I MAY HAVE MISSED.

CAN I ASK YOU, CAN I PLEASE GET YOUR NAME, PLEASE?

MY NAME IS JOSEPH. AND I'M VISITING AGAIN, REESTABLISHING MYSELF BACK HERE IN THE DENVER AREA. INGLEWOOD RESIDENT FOR SEVERAL YEARS IN THE PAST AND BACK AND FORTH. THIS IS A HOME. AND I JUST RECENTLY MOVED BACK AND I WOULD LIKE TO CONTRIBUTE AND I THINK I MISSED THE LAST TOWN HALL MEETING AND I SAW ON THE BOARD THERE WAS AN OPPORTUNITY TO BRING PRESENTATION HERE.

SO I JUST WANTED TO JUST GET A LITTLE BIT CLOSER.

I'M SORRY ABOUT THAT. EXCUSE ME. And so I just wanted to give some recommendations. I know we've been doing a lot of development and I guess you say modifications to the waterway down there. And I wanted to give some recommendations on the direction that we're going with the water in our community and just give some, I'm not sure exactly what this meeting is. I know it's on property and development. EXACTLY. SO I WASN'T SURE IF IT WAS RESIDENTIAL OR PUBLIC SPACE.

IT'S ALL THE LAND. OKAY.

SO I AM IN THE RIGHT PLACE, I SUPPOSE, IF I HAVE SOME SUGGESTIONS.

YOU GOT TWO MINUTES LEFT. SORRY, I DON'T MEAN TO RUSH YOU.

SO I JUST WANTED TO, WE HAVE A DIVERSE COMMUNITY HERE, YEAH? AND WE HAVE A VERY IMPORTANT ROLE AS WE, THIS WATER FLOWS THROUGH HERE. EVERYONE DOWNSTREAM FROM US DEPENDS ON US HAVING RESPONSIBLE AND ETHICAL MEANS OF MANAGING THIS WATER. And I wanted to bring this ridge to reef hybrid model from, I learned a little bit of it from the Hawaii Ahapua system and it's a ridge to reef or responsible from everyone from the peaks of the mountains all the way downstream to the Gulf or to the ocean. And I just thought that was something that we could try to implement and not just our policies, but the way that we live and how we educate our people. But also the Aztec maintenance, they used to use, instead of chemical plants, they used to use floating gardens, actually, not just produce agriculture, but they used to filter the water through these floating gardens. And I thought that was something that we could actually, with the streams that are coming through, and I know that we built a lot on top of them, whether it's asphalt or concrete. There's some waterways that are over there. over developed over and i know in new york and yonkers actually uncovered a river that was underneath these asphalt when i look around i see a lot of um open space that is asphalt and i just think about the future removing that what is what is underneath there and i believe it's water you know i mean there's a lot of uh irrigation that you see flowing through there and i think these uh YOU KNOW, THE HAWAIIAN AHAPUA, THE ROMAN GRAVITY SYSTEM AND THE AZTEC MAINTENANCE WITH OUR GERMAN ENGINEERING THAT WE HAVE, AMERICAN RESILIENCE THAT WE ALL HAVE HERE. I THINK THESE SYSTEMS, IF THERE'S ANY OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE A THOUGHT GROUP OR DISCUSSION BOARD OR CREATIVE GROUP TO IMPLEMENT THESE, HAVE A DISCUSSION ON SOME INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE WITH MODERN TECHNOLOGY, I THINK it'd be important to have versus just continuing to construct and continuing to build because we're building for production sake and not for responsibility sake, I think. And so in that liberty and responsibility should be a balance. And I just hope to bring that, an idea to build on that.

Thank you very much. Thank you for your input today. I appreciate it. Yeah. This is an opportunity for you to share information with us. It's not really what we give, you know, it's not a two way, but thank you very much for your input. Okay. We really appreciate you being here tonight.

Okay. So, okay, that's not a two-way.

No, no, it's an opportunity for the public to share information with the council. Okay.

Yeah. So, can I ask a question? Is there an opportunity for that, though, outside of this?

Yeah, when those opportunities come up, I think there's lots of opportunity within the city, whether it's Englewood Renew, which manages our wastewater and our utilities. I'm not sure if there's anything, certainly not this evening that, you know, that would be pertinent to, but I mean, I think this, you know, we have all kinds of opportunities within the city for citizens to come forward and share their passions and their ideas for how we want the city to look. So the website's a great, the Water and Sewer Board is meeting next week. Jed, just keep looking for opportunities to come and share your voice. All right, you got it. That's great.

Thanks. Thank you. All right, anyone else signed up for public forum? Anybody online?

Nobody online.

OK, great. Moving on to study session, this is case 2025-018, conservation districts. Brian.

So if you guys are OK with it, I'm going to give the presentation down here so I can take some notes for what we talk about. I don't really have much of a presentation. Has everybody had a chance to read through the packet on what conservation overlay districts are and what they do? So recently we went to City Council the City Council requested that we kind of move this along our process and we start to Go into what a conservation overlay district might look like in Englewood Council requested that they ultimately be the big decision makers But we wanted to come to the Planning and Zoning Commission and then the Historic Preservation Commission to really just gauge some thoughts on What council should be thinking about as they go forward trying to make decisions on? what a district might look like or what the process might look like and what that criteria may be that somebody would need to meet if they were going to request such a district. So that's really where we're here tonight. What we're here for tonight is to talk to you all and kind of gather some input from you on what council should be thinking of or if you all have any input on what should be included in the district, what kind of criteria might need to be in this type of district from size requirements to architectural requirements. SO IT'S REALLY AN OPEN DIALOGUE. I DON'T HAVE MUCH OF A PRESENTATION BECAUSE WE HAVEN'T REALLY GONE INTO THE WEEDS WITH THIS WHOLE THING YET. BUT RIGHT NOW WE'RE JUST KIND OF OPEN DIALOGUE CONVERSATION. SO OVERLAY DISTRICTS, IN SHORT, THEY HELP CONSERVE OUR OLDER NEIGHBORHOODS THROUGH DESIGN, REVIEW AND DEVELOPMENT CONTROLS. IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT, WHEN WE ADOPTED TITLE 16, THE REVISED TITLE 16, WE INCLUDED I THINK IT WAS CHAPTER 12 WHICH IS HISTORIC PRESERVATION. Conservation overlay districts are another kind of form of historic preservation. They just do things a little bit differently They don't really regulate whether you can tear down a structure or not It really just focuses on if you build something Here's what it needs to look like to meet to fit in with this neighborhood. This neighborhood has very specific characteristics Maybe it's height requirements or it's the way the building Sits on the lot or where I think in Denver they have one where ADUs are located on the lot So it's just different things that say that if you're going to build here, you need to look very similar to what's already on the ground. The process to get there is very long. You guys are aware of this. A lot of you were through Title 16 for a number of years. So you know that first we have to start with an amendment to Title 16. Then somebody would have to come in and request an overlay district. And then we would have to go through the zoning amendment and zoning map amendment process, which still takes another few months. We're at the very, very beginning of this whole thing, trying to set some standards. And so that's what we're here for tonight, is to go through a list of questions. If you've gone through the reading material, we can start with question number one. Chair Martinez, however you want to go through this. I can ask the questions, and you all can provide some answers to me. Or if you just want to have really open dialogue as a group, kind of like we used to do when we were doing the UDC Steering Committee. just really open dialogue, letting me kind of just sit here and take some notes.

I think these questions are a good basis to start, but if anybody here has, you know, particular interest in a certain aspect of it, let's just keep it in open dialogue.

Okay.

You want to start with us, maybe kind of look, what information you're hoping to gain from us?

Really, what I'm looking for is, you know, we can sit here and talk about whether you wanna set standards or certain criteria, but ultimately council's the decision maker. So what I'm looking for is what should council be thinking about as they go through this process of setting criteria for these types of districts. During the council study session a few weeks ago, I think one of the council members noted that in one of our neighborhoods, there's one neighborhood in particular that has already started this discussion. There's already some discussion amongst the neighbors so this is a very big topic it's a very difficult topic especially when you're talking about you know something that could be district-wide whether everybody has to agree to move forward or only a certain percentage of people have to agree to move forward the council brought up some very interesting points that we've kind of looked through ordinances and other municipalities and some municipalities do things one of the one of the items was You know, if a conservation overlay district to submit an application, you have to have a certain percentage of people agree to the application. What happens once you come up with a plan for what they want to conserve? Should you go back to that same group and then ask them again? Because some people may not agree. They may have agreed to go forward with the process, but now that we're three-quarters of the way through, they may not agree with what's being presented, and so that number might change. And we did find a city that requires a second vote. So it's very open right now, and it's kind of fluid. So the first thing we're looking at is who could initiate a request. So is it only property owners? Is it boards and commissions? Are there specific boards and commissions? Is it only council? Is it only homeowners? Those kinds of things. But we're really thinking of What would we need to think about? I know this is a very wide open question for you guys, but y'all deal out of our boards and commissions, you deal the most with development. You deal the most with people coming back in and public hearings and talking to you. That's why I wanna come to you all first and say, what are your thoughts on going this direction? Is it a good direction to go? I mean, you can tell me that if you don't believe that it is, that's okay too. No.

So can we back up to how this got on the city council or staff radar for the study session?

What are we responding to?

Is there a problem that we're trying to solve? How did we even get to this is something we could pursue for the city compared with all the other priorities and all the other things we

Sorry, going back to right about the time the Title 16 was being amended. So going through the public hearing process, we had members of a neighborhood, the Arapahoe Acres neighborhood reach out and say, hey, we want to create this type of district. We don't necessarily want to go through the historic overlay process, we would like to do something different. We started talking to them about what other municipalities have at their disposal, the tools that they have, that here's this tool, but we don't have it. We can't get it into the, you know, the Title 16 amendments that are going on right now because they're far enough along that we can't just add something to it. So they reached out to a council member in District 2, I believe it was Council Member Newton Camp, and we're having some discussions with her over the course of a year or two. She requested that city council come back with a study session, which we did, I think it was January 5th. So January 5th, we came back and said, here's kind of a staff perspective. Rather than just doing this one-time offshoot for this one neighborhood, why wouldn't we set up this process so any neighborhood would have the same opportunity to do the same thing, and we could make sure that our process is consistent. We looked at The neighborhood preservation overlay in Title 16, it is in there, but that was done through a Title 16 amendment with some neighborhood meetings. We would like to ensure that no matter what, no matter who's in my position or in our planning team's position, the process is set, which is why we're coming forward with this discussion about an amendment now. It's to say, if somebody wants to do something like this, this is the process to follow. The way the neighborhood preservation overlay district was created, it's not wrong, but it didn't set a good process out. It was created probably likely as a one-time deal. But we want to make sure that whatever we're doing, we set the process correctly and that it's easily followed no matter who's asking.

So I think you answered part of the question just kind of about process-wise how we got here. The part that I didn't hear is what is the problem we're trying to solve. So members of the Arapahoe Acres neighborhood are interested in this. Why? What is it about this that they don't feel like they can do under current Code Next rules? Like what, you know, What is the discussion that has pushed them to this versus what we have in code now?

That's a good question. It's tough for me to answer because I'm not a part of that neighborhood. But what I've understood from them is they have a very extreme or very, very specific architectural character in that neighborhood. It's a mid-century modern neighborhood. Someone could tear down a home and build something that looks absolutely nothing like anything else in their neighborhood. That's the biggest concern, is that someone could tear down homes, build things that are not similar in character or similar in style. That's my understanding of what it is. I don't know if anybody else has any.

I'm assuming they don't want to go the historic route because it's too restrictive. They want sort of a Goldilocks.

No, it's...

Go ahead.

I was going to say, it's different, right? There is a difference between a historical designation and a whole neighborhood conservation overlay, right? Maybe you could explain the differences in those two things.

That's correct. They get to the same goal, but they get there in different ways. So historic preservation looks at the structure as is when the district is determined. So if you were to adopt a district And I wanted to change the shingles of my roof. I couldn't necessarily do that unless the shingles were the exact same as what was there, either when it was built or, you know, depending on how they set the standard. There are certain things that any kind of exterior change to your structure, if you're in a district, has to go for public hearings to the Planning and Zoning Commission or Historic Preservation Commission and City Council for approval. A conservation overlay district says more like if you build this, you have to, you know, if it were that neighborhood, it would say if you're building here, your building has to look pretty similar to what's already here, whether they set it through a standard that says you can only build one to one and a half stories tall. There are certain streets that have the buildings that are turned at like a 30 degree angle to the street. They could say your building has to be sided this way. You have to have certain kind of architectural features, whether it's entryway features or certain types of windows or certain sized windows or your fences can do different things. It really is catered to that area where a historic overlay really is saying we take a snapshot in time and it pretty much has to look like that unless this board approves any other type of change. So from what I've gathered from them, there are certain people that feel like that's a little bit too restrictive for what they wanna do. This is a little bit on par with the protection they're trying to get. But again, there are different people in that neighborhood that feel differently. And what we're trying to do is, I understand that the focus is on that neighborhood. Our discussion is citywide. It's not being focused on any one neighborhood. Is this a process that we wanna use citywide? We know it was instigated in one area, but the conversation is very broad of, is this appropriate for Englewood? If it is, how do we set it up? What does the process look like?

David. I would say, generally speaking, favor of the concept of it, but with this in Denver on projects, both our preservation versus conservation overlay.

So there is area for, sorry. Hello? Okay, well, I have to scream at it. Anyways, I think generally it's a good idea. I think one thing to clarify is I believe what you guys are asking for right now is what's the process that certain neighborhoods should follow in order to get designation.

It's not saying what is, you know, a bullet list that's going to fall under, let's say, that a neighborhood.

I don't know. It's weird.

All right, so come sit over here.

those list of items of window types entry features whatever you're not saying what those are yet you're simply saying this is how we go about determining if you can establish a conservation overlay district right yeah i'm just naming random items that we've seen in other cities

while going through other ordinances for review. None of that is decided or any kind of direction that we're trying to give you on what should be done. We're just asking, is this something that should be done? What should we be considering or what should council be considering as they go through these lists of questions? The list of questions that we pulled are when we reviewed ordinances from multiple cities across Colorado and the country, we started to see patterns. And the patterns were different sets of criteria that are involved in this. And this is the pretty general list of what the criteria look like. So who can initiate a request? Are there minimum size requirements for the area? Some cities say a block face. Some cities say four properties adjacent to each other. So it's trying to look at the criteria. How does it work with Englewood? Some of the cities we look at are cities like Nashville, which is a very big city, very historic. Other cities we've looked at, we've looked at Boulder County, Denver. Trying to remember my list now. But we've tried to run the gamut of where we're looking to get some thoughts on how we should set it up, what we should be thinking about, what council should be thinking about as we move forward.

Yeah, I think, I mean, some of these questions are about sort of the structure of it. I'm curious to hear a little bit more just about use of conservation overlays in general. Specifically, what are they typically not useful? Like, what is not appropriate for something to be protected by a conservation overlay?

So the things that are generally not included in a conservation overlay district, they generally don't prohibit demolitions. That's one thing that they're not used for. I think people want historic preservation overlays to help prohibit demolitions from occurring because to get a demolition you would have to go to Historic Preservation Commission for a public hearing. What they also don't do most of the time, there are a few examples where this happens, but generally they don't allow someone to pull a land use out that's already allowed in a district. So one of the things that we've talked about was in In a district that allows accessory dwelling units, you couldn't use this to disallow an accessory dwelling unit. What you could do is say, since all of our area has accessory dwelling units in this certain location, this is where they should be located if you're going to build one in our neighborhood. We don't necessarily have a neighborhood that has a plethora of ADUs. I just know that there is a neighborhood in Denver that did something similar to that by creating an overlay that says if you're going to build an ADU, It needs to kind of be located in this general vicinity, look fairly similar to this.

Could this potentially be... Could this, an overlay, be used to protect, say, a view plane? A what? A view plane, a view of the mountains, a view of the city, a view of a certain building. I mean, is that something that this would be used for?

Potentially. If you're limiting things like your building height, it might be able to. I don't know off the... top of my head if anyone has done that but that's a that's a good question for us to think about before we go too far is this only residential or is it residential and commercial it could be done for both the majority of what I've seen has been residential but it well the reason yeah I was gonna ask that before but it'll it lends to the view plane

Well, and that's what's curious. I mean, it's supposed to not limit, well, it's a weird balance because it's supposed to not limit land uses, but it can certainly somewhat limit property rights that exist for somebody in that district, right?

You've hit on why that is such a big discussion topic.

I think, I mean, yes, there's something to be said about the property rights. So I think that's probably where you come in with the question of how many people would have to agree to be under designation. But at the same time, you know, hopefully you're not buying a house in Arapahoe Acres if you have no sense of why you're buying that house because you're already paying a markup for what you're getting architecturally and functionally. But I agree with the conservation overlay in that Those houses are cool looking. They're aesthetically great, but lots of them are built with old tech and are not particularly energy efficient. For example, they're small. Not to say we should be blowing up in large sizes, but if somebody came in, I mean, there are a few examples of houses on the west face of Arapahoe Acres that are not particularly interesting, even though they all still align with that sort of mid-century modern style. So if you come up with a list of rules for redevelopment, there are probably a couple that you could go over there and point out and say, if this got demoed and rebuilt, nobody would really have heartburn about it. as long as it still fits within the character of the rest of the community or of that neighborhood.

No other than Amy.

So I think, you know, to your point that we're trying to think about this citywide, I think it's really important that we think about how this could impact places outside of Arapahoe Acres, right? So one of the EXAMPLES THAT YOU HAVE IN HERE FOR WHERE THIS TOOL COULD BE USED IS AREAS WITH LARGER LOT SIZES THAN DISTRICT MINIMUMS SUCH AS PORTIONS OF THE BELLEVUE PARK NEIGHBORHOOD. SO I WAS LOOKING AT THE LOTS IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD RECENTLY AND THERE ARE LOTS DIRECTLY BEHIND MINE THAT ARE FOUR OR FIVE TIMES THE SIZE OF MY LOT JUST BECAUSE OF THE SHAPE OF HOW THE STREETS FIT IN THAT AREA. AND YOU COULD HAVE A SITUATION WHERE, YOU KNOW, THE Eight of the 10 homeowners on that street vote to do this. And then those other homeowners want to sell. And previously, they could have sold to somebody who wanted to subdivide those lots. And the value of their lot is reduced dramatically if they're in one of these districts over their objection, potentially. For situations like Arapahoe Acres, we have a historic process. If the historic process isn't what they want, then we should fix that rather than adding a new process and a new way for some homeowners to essentially control the property uses for other neighboring homeowners. I think we don't have other areas in Englewood like Arapahoe Acres. It's a very unique situation. And I think it would be contrary to the other goals that we've been pursuing with looking at lot subdividing and looking at making it easier to have ADUs. We would be working in exactly the opposite direction by creating this process by which neighborhoods could make it harder to do all of those things to add housing that we've been trying to do in other contexts so I think that this to me I don't understand why we why we need this what I would say is that's just an example I've used it doesn't have to be included

limiting, because that is something that somebody else brought up to, I think, during the council meeting, was you would essentially be limiting density in that area if you were to allow somebody to say, OK, the zoning district allows you to build on a 7,200 square foot lot. Sorry, I may be reverting back to a previous code in a different city with 7,200 square feet. But they're all 10,000 square foot lots. So nope, you can't build anything less than 10,000. So that's something that we use as an example. But it's certainly something that you could say, well, if the process does go forward, that should not be part of it. It should be focusing on architectural characteristics and not on something that would affect the density of a neighborhood. Or you could disallow certain things if you chose to move it forward. So I do want to say that. It's not something that says, I don't want to get on the side of let's just not do any of it for this one item. We can just not include that one item.

Well, but I don't know that you can't. So you're right, you could leave lot sizes out. But restriction on architectural characteristics is also potentially going to limit density if it makes it harder to build duplexes or triplexes or ADUs or any of it. There's no way that I can think of that you can do this that focuses on architectural characteristics that wouldn't be counterproductive to potentially adding density, adding housing, having various housing options via redevelopment in our neighborhoods. I understand Arapahoe Acres is a unique situation, but I think it's unique for historical reasons, and that's what the historical process is for.

If I may answer, I've had my light on for a while. It just keeps going off. There's some weird technical things. I think those are very good points, because this could be weaponized. So that's why the first couple of questions We could put who can initiate and what are the minimum size requirements. That's not necessarily to the home. That's to the whole neighborhood. Yeah, if it's too small of an area, then it can be weaponized against a single project. And if it's too large, though, it can be of an area. It can also be impossible to get consensus. So we do need to think about, I think we should move forward with architectural style that's not necessarily defined in historical. But these two things, specifically, who can initiate the process? We settled on, what was it, 70% in the code for historical? 70% of the neighborhood?

Theirs was 60 or 65.

65. I think that's a good area, right? That seemed to be something that we worked out. But then we didn't work out, yeah, what is the moon size requirement for, I guess, an area? We're going to define these as areas, right?

I think the size requirements, like how many, like is it four houses in a row? Is it a block? Is it an entire square? Right, right, right. I think that's the question. Threshold for, yeah.

What's the threshold exactly? Because you can't just have five owners come together and say, we're never doing this.

Well, that's why there's a minimum. Yeah, the minimum. It shouldn't be size. It should be, yeah.

OK, but there is reason why sometimes it is only five. So five houses. So there's an instance on Broadway in Denver where it's just five houses on one side of Broadway and five houses on the other side of Broadway, and that's all there is for historic designation. Yeah, so.

A historic district can be as small as four.

Yeah. Well, I'm just saying, though, I don't know that.

I don't.

So the example I keep thinking of is Sam's Auto Body. You know, the folks along Lai Pen could have. created a conservation district to protect their view of the mountains. That was one of the big concerns about four stories of apartments going up there and could have completely limited the ability to develop Sam's Auto. I mean, presumably that's one way this could have been used, right? I mean, one property owner at Sam's and then you've got, you know, 35 of the other residential owners there.

I wouldn't necessarily go down the, you know, the route of thinking, how could somebody have used this in the past to have stopped projects? Because if you set it up correctly, it doesn't work that way. It's not designed to work that way. But it could be designed to say, if you were doing a threshold of how many people, it could be the number of lots in an area. It could be square acres, square footage. Sorry, not square acres, but square footage. So it's the number of lots plus you know, 50% of the actual area of the area. Because, you know, I think at least listening to Noah, our commissioner, Kaplan, it's not necessarily something that you would want to use to prohibit somebody next door from building. But our neighborhood meeting process for projects like that, the developer worked with the neighborhood to try to redesign his project over a course of a few meetings. I think they had like three or four with that one. So our PUD process is designed to help in that respect. But if you're thinking one that I could think of, it kind of goes back to the lot size scenario of if an area did this and then somebody came in later and wanted to build courtyard homes. If the lot size was in there, yeah, it wouldn't be allowed. But if there was something that said you have to build an 80-square-foot front porch, that's actually already one of our design standards now. We have design standards in our code for how big your front porch has to be, how big your sidewalk has to be, what percentage of windows you have to have on the front of your house and on the side and on the back. It is different from first floor to second floor. We have standards in our code right now. They don't meet what certain neighborhoods feel like they want. or what we can see in other areas. I think I told council there was an example. It's on LinkedIn or Grant where there's these cool lots that the topography on the lot goes up about three or four feet in the first 10 feet of their lot. And so they have these cool front stairs. I mean, I think about that. That's a really cool thing to have. And if somebody moved in next door to me and scraped that lot and then just built a retaining wall at the back, it might look a little odd. Not saying that it's going to happen anytime soon. And I also understand that probably be more expensive than just building on what's there. But some of what we do is planning for the inevitable because I can tell you as a planner, we've seen it all. But I wouldn't necessarily go down the route of hypotheticals, like what could have happened with this project if this had. But I do like the thought, you know, it is because that does help out when you're thinking, what could this be done? Commissioner Hubka is mentioning being used as a weapon, or I think both of y'all have kind of mentioned that, weaponizing it. That's why it's such a difficult topic, and I think it's probably why council, when I say they moved it forward to have this discussion, I think it was with a lot of hesitancy to move forward and to have a very big, big discussion on if they want to do this, the rules have to be set very, very well to move forward. That's why I'm trying to talk to you all to gauge what your level is and where you're at and what thoughts you bring to the table.

Brenda, Michelle, yeah.

I just have a question. Can overlays, can this overlay regulate the form, setbacks, height, and sittings, and also the architectural style? Or since we already have that in code, we're just talking about architectural style?

It could be used to change setbacks. It could be used to change the form of the building, like the height of a building that's allowed, whether, say, You have neighborhoods where you have a garden level home. So that's where you have your basement windows are partially out of the ground, something like that. It could require you to build something similar to that rather than having your full basement underground. Or it could be done to say you need a 90 square foot front porch. Or we want it to be built in a very similar architectural style with low slung roofs or I'm trying to think of just different groups. It can be used to do all kinds of things. And it's not limited to just certain, like, this one has to be architectural. If it goes through what other cities do is they hold neighborhood meetings, they talk to the neighborhood, they do surveys, go out and look at the buildings, say, what are the characteristics of this neighborhood? What do we see consistently throughout the neighborhood? Is it that the front door is on the far left of every single house, the garage sits to the right, and it's not a front entry that they'd go through, determine the characteristics that make that neighborhood, make the appearance of the neighborhood the same, and then they would start from there to determine what they are. So really, it's hard to say that it could do one thing or not. It just depends on how people try to use it based on how it's set up.

Michelle, then Carl.

Yeah, I was just looking over here, Preservation North Carolina, just to get some other ideas that they talk about with these overlay districts. And they said things like it could be even, and I could see this in Inglewood, like you talked about the height restriction, because we do have some areas of town that are very steep and they might, the people behind them might want to preserve areas. the people in front of them going down the hill not building up so far that they can't see the mountains kind of thing. I could definitely see an overlay district as far as that goes, just west of Broadway, Kenyon, that kind of area. But it also talks about things even like landscaping. So like you could have for a xeriscape, we want this neighborhood to be xeriscaped, or trees, or natural districts, I mean, around some pond or river or whatever. that sort of thing. So I just wanted to bring those things forward to maybe stimulate some other ways of thinking about this.

I think one thing that you brought up, which is maybe a helpful contextual thing, the rules that would be applied to a conservation overlay would theoretically be based on what the existing houses have. You're not making it up and saying, you know, we're putting a conservation overlay in Arabo Acres and now everything can be five stories. No, it's what's existing. So I think the benefit of it is all the people that are there that bought into it for a reason, whether it's, I mean, I, I kind of, I see Noah's point about like the larger lots, but I disagree with the opinion on that shouldn't be eligible for overlay. Cause well, somebody sees value in selling a lot and splitting it and selling it to developer that same neighborhood who invested in larger lots because they had family and their kids want to run around outside and As soon as that conservation gets added and that lot size is preserved, someone else is going to see that value and say, hey, that's the lot I can buy because I value that also. And I don't want to suddenly have the neighborhood next to me split in half. I realize there's conflicting opinions on is that okay and whatever. But the way I see it is there's not that many distinct neighborhoods that are going to be reasonably applying for these that it's going to put the city at risk. There's enough other nondescript areas that density could be increased to add housing elsewhere in more relevant places. I feel like it's a good thing because you preserve the character that the places that actually have recognizable characters should be preserved so we don't live in a monotonous town of nothingness is my take.

No, I agree. I wasn't intending that it was something that we would just out of whole cloth just create something and make everybody else conform to it. So, no, not that at all. But, yeah.

Carl? I guess I'm a little confused here. Isn't this all Title 16, which we've spent hours and hours and hours creating?

Days. Not just hours, days.

Months. Weeks.

So it would be in Title 16. And let me tell you, when you solve a lot of problems once very big, like we did with Title 16 revisions, new problems crop up. If you've seen any of the stuff that we're working on with this discussion about conservation overlay districts, we have another discussion about nonconforming use regulations. We had home occupation discussions. Those were all Title 16. We solved a lot of people's concerns with Title 16 when we revised it in 2023, and then inevitably, like ripples on a pond, more questions came in, and more questions come in because now people have new sets of problems that they want us to look at and address.

Well, yeah, any time you change anything, you're going to create changes, which could be problems. Can we get a list of stuff that is a problem? Because the stuff we're talking about here, we've already basically covered in Title 16. There's some things in Title 16 that I don't agree with, but they're basically fair. So you can take something away from one person, and it's going to affect somebody else. So no matter what you do, there's going to be an issue.

So this specific discussion has not come up. It did come up during the Title 16 assessment that was done prior to the Title 16 revisions that came through. I don't know whether the Historic Preservation Commission was solely focused on historic designations, that they chose not to bring this out. It didn't come through with that first round of big revisions that came out in 2023. but it did come out from a group of citizens that was interested in doing something like that. That's why it's coming up now. We don't have an ability to do that other than through the historic designation process, which is why we're here now.

The council signed off on Title 16, correct? So these are problems above and beyond the current Title 16.

It's not necessarily a problem. This is something that somebody wants a new tool that we don't currently have. They may view it as a problem and fear that someone may develop or demolish a home and build a new home. But it's more of a, you know, we're a growing city. We're growing up. We have different problems that affect people differently. And we have to continue to look for different solutions to help people solve their problems.

I mean, I feel at this point, this is a solution to solve a problem for one neighborhood. You know, if this were to go forward in any way, I think it should be the most restrictive and difficult thing to do and rare and not easily be wielded. Yeah, I mean, I just, I feel like there's, there's lots of opportunities to get around like what Noah mentioned earlier, kind of the direction and the values we're striving for of an accessible, attainable community where density needs to be put in the right places. And there's so much opposition from small groups of people for those kinds of things that I think this could be a real tool in that scenario.

it could be if i may we just need to have it properly scoped should the city be allowed you know should people be allowed um disallowed from doing something in in their interior or changing the land use you know if we have this properly scoped um and narrowed down because that's kind of where i think a lot of the confusion is coming from you know hey don't we already have this in code um But there are definitely things we want to avoid. The detrimental things, you know, overly ridiculous things like it must look like a craftsman style home, you know, or anything that's anti-growth, overly vague standards that have too many appeals and keep coming back for litigation, anything like that. DUPLICATE REVIEW. WHO IS GOING TO REVIEW THIS STUFF? WE DO HAVE TO CONSIDER THAT. IS IT STAFF, IS IT THE COMMUNITY BOARD, PNZ, OR ALL THREE? WE PROBABLY DON'T NEED ALL THREE. AND LIKE I SAID, WE WANT TO I think it should be the initiated request should come from a group of neighbors, but we don't want to make it a small minority of homeowners. So I know this is a lot, but this is a lot. I want to give Arapahoe Acres a chance to make sure that those stay mid-Modern, but in time, we don't want duplicated efforts

I just think we want to avoid those things, but we can keep working through this.

Amy?

I want to...

I want to disagree with you that Arapahoe Acres is the only one asking for this. I know if this comes to fruition, not you, Erin said it, fruition, I do know there is another group of people who, in talking to me, tried to tell me that they have an HOA in their neighborhood. And I was like, you know, I was like going through everything to go, anyway, I'm not going to go into that detail. But they would, if they could, have this overlay to stop the building and or even changing the size of the houses in that neighborhood, which as a realtor scares me because sometimes that's exactly what needs to happen. Maybe the front of the house doesn't change, but maybe another room needs to be added to make it

livable and sellable. Yeah.

So to me, this is a little bit scary that it, it, it, it creates that HOA that, that if you want to be in an HOA, you should move into an HOA. Like I have lived in HOAs. They can be particularly fabulous. I also think it's,

If we haven't implemented the historic district stuff fully, I feel like that should be the first place to go.

Because even Arapahoe Acres could be designated historic.

They are.

OK. Oh, you're right. They are because, yeah.

They have a national. They have a national. It's national, but it's not Englewood. They don't have a local designation.

Okay. I knew there was something about that. Well, that's a good thing, though. I mean, that's a good point. Maybe it would have to be they need to get 60% 5% historical approval among the neighbors before they can move on to this next step as a kind of prerequisite or now that you know that 65% of the people want to move forward with this then you can move on to consensus for what kind of materials to use, what kind of set, the other things that we're going to scope out. But I think getting consensus by the right number of people is absolutely key to doing any of this, sure.

But if we aren't using the historic, so I guess where I'm just the part that if we aren't using the historic fully yet, and I understand that this wouldn't be something that you're just trying to set the parameters. I understand that. But if we're not using the historic yet, why not? And, okay, go ahead and answer that, Brian.

Because nobody has requested it. It's something that they have to go out and create. They have to request the district.

And is the historic district, could it be, and let me just back that up just a minute, but does it have to be a historic district, or could it be a house designated historic in Englewood?

You could designate a historic landmark, such as one structure, or you could do an entire district.

Okay. I just wanted to make it clear for the whole conversation.

We haven't had a request for either. almost two and a half years now that it's been included in our regs. And then recently we've received our certified local government status, which now gives people the ability to apply for grants kind of in trade. If they have a historically designated home, they can apply for grants they couldn't apply for. So that's new. It's just a few months old. but we're hoping that someone may go that route for the grant money they can use to renovate their home.

I have a response, I think, to something you mentioned, Brenda. You're saying that if there's a line of craftsman homes, that a home shouldn't have to remain craftsman. So I disagree with that, primarily from the perspective of if you've got a significant majority of a style that has relevance, I think you run the risk of saying, well, if there's no rules, you can just come knock down the one in the middle and build whatever the hell you want. That deteriorates the aesthetic and the character of a neighborhood very quickly. And there's good examples of this if you go to the Victorian houses in Baker. You'll see a few that were torn up, and you go by those houses that are out of character, and they look like sort of a mistake in the neighborhood, and I think that's avoidable. I'm not suggesting that you can't extend a house, but I do think stylistically maintaining a character is important. So to your point, Amy, of doing an addition, that's fine. But you can do that addition within the context of the language in a conservation overlay to keep that character intact and still allow people to shrink their home, add to their home, modify their home. So you can pick and choose the rules that control it without overly hog-tying people. But I think if you don't have any controls on the houses that do have character, Sooner or later, some developer is going to come in and see dollar signs because they can just do whatever they want, bigger and cheaper. And that's the problem we have with most of the bad-looking houses throughout the state, if not the country, is that bigger, cheaper houses are where the dollar signs are. And so that's why our cities are losing character, because we don't control it. And it's relatively easy to live in a house... and relatively easy to design a house that has character, people just choose to go the cheap route. And that's what kind of loses that taste.

Yeah. To your point, David, I'm just looking at the Crescent park conservation overlay, which is basically similar to Arapahoe acres. It's a mid modern off of Florida and Dahlia ish. And it, it goes into all of that, you know, what you can and can't do to protect that sort of thing. And, Arapahoe Acres might want to look at this. It's in Denver, so we're to go through. It's KRISANA, K-R-I-S-A.

KRISANA Park.

KRISANA Park, yeah.

That's one of the neighborhoods. So they, I don't like to just mention Arapahoe Acres because this is a citywide initiative, but it generally comes back to them most of the time since that's where the process has been initiated. They had a neighborhood meeting where that was one of the neighborhoods that they brought up was, and that neighborhood has their own CONSERVATION OVERLAND DISTRICT IN DENVER THAT I THINK THAT'S WHERE THE IMPETUS FOR THEM CAME FROM BECAUSE THEY SEE HERE'S A TOOL THAT THEY HAVE IN DENVER. IT'S BEEN USED IN A NEIGHBORHOOD THAT'S SIMILAR TO THAT ONE. SO THAT'S WHERE THE DISCUSSION KIND OF STARTS.

YEAH, AND IT TALKS ABOUT ARCHITECTURE. IT TALKS ABOUT, YOU KNOW, OUR FAVORITE THING, BASE PLANES, BROOK'S FAVORITE THING TO TALK ABOUT AND ALL THAT SORT OF STUFF. SO, YEAH. AND HEIGHTS AND STUFF.

IT'S A GOOD POINT. I DON'T MEAN TO PICK ON CRAFTSMAN STYLE. We did do some of that in code. We got rid of the slot home design so that you have to have those, I always forget what those windows are called. So we did some of that because people didn't like exactly what you're talking about. And I do think that there's a fair amount of Victorian style homes in the older part of Englewood. I just wonder, the older part of Englewood is not very large. What if we said that everything from the 2,900 block to the 3,000 block could have their own designation from Santa Fe all the way to say Clarkson. Would that be too big? Would that be too little? And those are, I'm just saying that those are most of the, actually not even all the way to Clarkson. Those were built in the fifties, but you get the idea that the whole style on those hills, you know, those are, those are some pretty neat homes. And I, I wouldn't, I, um, I don't think it would be too much to add for them to come forward and ask if they can keep that kind of, I don't know, Victorian structure, if not Grossman, whatever you grab there.

Yeah, zooming out, I think there is probably a place for that. Again, I just advocate for a high bar, a larger area, a full block at least, a high percentage of homeowners that are supporting it or property owners that are supporting it. and a lot of review, you know, a lot of input in the process. I think just, because honestly, to me, like, it just smacks a lot of, it could go the direction of HOA territory, which, you know, if somebody wants to dictate what shades of tan everybody's front door is painted, you know, that's obviously not what we want this to even go anywhere near that direction. So again, there's probably a place for this. I think there should be you know, guardrails around limiting, you know, density and certain development types and things like that to support the values of keeping Englewood accessible and build affordable homes here. But certainly this shouldn't be, there should just be a high bar to use this tool.

Should we maybe just start going down the list of these questions and give input so Brian has something to go on or?

Yeah.

can if you want to this is actually really what I'm looking for is this kind of input talking from you all really just general terms is this something that you feel these forward if it does what I'm hearing is if it does high bar lots of requirements don't want it to be used to not allow certain types of development density that's already allowed a to use things like that so that's kind of what I where I

Not weaponizing.

In the event that there was no discussion, these were the questions I was going to ask. You guys have run with this one really on your own, and I'm very, very appreciative of the discussion that you're having. And what I'm not typing, I'm going to go back and watch the meeting a second or third time, because the mics keep going in and out.

there's certain things i'm not hearing it's weird oh i was just going to add that that shouldn't conflict with the base zoning with what we've already done you can't make a conservation district and totally reverse everything because i can see somebody trying to back door yeah absolutely that's what i'm talking about especially around lot size density you know things like that that's things we need to be real mindful um i do wonder to your point aaron about you know

Creating a high bar, which I do agree with, because you want to make sure it's done carefully. I think this first thing about who can initiate a request could potentially address some of that. I mean, in theory, correct me if I'm wrong, we could suggest that only council could initiate a request or only staff could initiate a request. So if staff is the best informed about citywide requirements, neighborhoods, staff could come forward and say, okay, Arapahoe Acres, we think should be eligible for this, and then someone can vote on it.

Why wouldn't you have a neighborhood initiated?

Just so that you can't have the weaponized neighborhood of angry neighbors getting together and say, we all want this.

But I think Arapahoe Acres should be able to come forward to the city and say, hey, we want to do one of

Well, they're an easy example because I think we are all of the mindset there that their reasoning is good. Whereas if there's the alternative of we want to keep whatever lot splits from happening and we're going to create other reasoning, if you don't allow the neighborhood to nominate themselves, you require that nomination to only happen from staff or from council or

I'd rather see it come up organically. Well, I think the point here is sort of how it gets gated, right? Like Arapahoe Acres can come to staff and say, here's the case. Or maybe there's an application, but it has to pass certain check marks, perhaps, or gates for that to actually start that process that's mapped out in the PowerPoint. And it's not just left up to a vote of property owners. The decision lies outside of just those people. Am I characterizing? I mean, that's one way to do it.

I certainly would advocate to not put the burden on staff to do that. And leave that with our elected officials or property owners. That's generally where it comes from. Other areas have used their historic preservation commission to be able to be the folks that initiate that. But again, I think there's pros and cons to each one of those. You're certainly weighing them out right now. So what most cities have done is they set a bar of, you know, a certain percentage of the property has to have been developed before this time. So 75% of the homes have to be 50 years or older within this area to start the process. 50 years is generally about the same time that historic preservation starts. So a lot of the gatekeepers start the same way that they do with historic preservation. But maybe your neighborhood is not historic. I mean, so that's kind of where this comes in is, Maybe your neighborhood has nothing historic about it other than the homes are 50 years old. You just want them to stay in that kind of aesthetic that's built there. Arapahoe Acres already has a designation that's national. I think they have a state designation as well, just not a local one. But what I would just say to answer your question, I would advocate for staff not to be the ones to do that.

I think my biggest point there was it's not necessarily just a democratic process where 65% of the people on a block vote for it and then they get their way. You know, that there's more sort of checks and balances to that.

Yeah. One of the things that I've seen in one of the cities, I thought that was probably the most similar to what council talked about was the percentage up front that has to agree to begin the process. You go to neighborhood meeting processes where That's where city staff or they hire consultants to go out and survey the neighborhood, determine what those characteristics are, come back to the neighborhood, say, here's the plan going forward. Then the neighborhood votes again and says, I don't agree with that. And if you don't meet that same threshold, it doesn't go forward. You have to meet that threshold. So there's all kinds of different ways to get there. It's just trying to figure out the process. If there is one, it's right for Englewood.

Okay. And I keep, I'm back and forth in all of this. Like you made some very good points and I, and I don't know if I'm for or against this. It's just so like, we're all very clear, but when I think about the overlay and let's just say in a neighborhood, I could see how it could be good in commercial. I could see how it could be good in like, Residential, part of what residential could be good on if it isn't as... technical as like a historic district so for instance um keeping his store where this could be useful is if it isn't as technical because when you have those historic everybody's windows have to stay wood and it makes then the house and the fixing the house so expensive that either that person can't stay there or the next person can't be in there so i'm just trying to think of some positives about where this could go so that's just my input is i'm trying to Think about all the bell roofs. I don't even know what to call those roofs in my neighborhood. But we have a lot of houses that have that bell roof style. Not that that particularly needs to stay there, but just a characteristic that I guess it's maybe there aren't tons of characters. I don't know. But you've made some good points, and I just wanted to say that maybe this is what isn't as that would make housing more expensive, because I am worried about that.

I know what she's saying. OK. Absolutely.

I'm worried about that. I get what she's saying. And here's what we're going to go back to review. So there's one review where we're going to decide whether the neighborhood gets the overlay, but then there's a second review. Let's say somebody wants to come in and they want to change their house. So would there be two reviews? They go to the building department and then they have to have that house reviewed separately. That was the kind of duplicative review I was thinking we should avoid. Do you see what I'm saying? Individual homes, they should just, if we decide to designate an area, then there's one review team, right? Per house.

Again, that depends on how it's all set up. Some cities do it where it's only a staff review. Other cities have review committees where the actual neighborhood themselves have appointed people that serve as a review committee that you would then have to take the permit through and get approved by that review committee. Other cities have it set up to where the reviews either come to the Planning and Zoning Commission or the Historic Preservation Commission. So it runs the gamut. What I normally see are cities that do a staff review once these what the standards are set the reviews are done by staff but again different cities do different things they they're looking at it from different perspectives of you know how high do we want to set this bar do we want to ensure that it's consistent being consistently done by either elected appointed officials appointed groups of the neighborhood or depend on city staff

I can give you a context of how it works in Denver. So there are neighborhood organizations that are designated. So for example, Curtis Park has a neighborhood. Baker Historic District has a neighborhood organization. They don't have authority, but they do get the chance to review. So the way it works is Noah hires me to design an addition to his house in a historic neighborhood. We bring it first in front of the neighborhood review committee. Staff's aware of it already. They kind of coordinate it. But the neighborhood review committee gets a chance to review and comment on it. And usually, it's a pretty positive forum for people to sort of share ideas, because everyone understands that you're trying to work towards the same common goal. But ultimately, the landmark preservation board is the one who actually vote and approve the design or not. So it's really more of like a initial feedback, go back, make changes, then submit through Landmark Preservation Commission review. They vote if it's approved or not. And then once you're approved on the design, then you actually submit for building permit. So the building permit's the last one, because in a way, that's really looking at the performance and safety of the building, less so of the aesthetic. And so it sort of starts with aesthetic. neighborhood and then goes towards technical life safety stuff, if that helps. The neighborhood review committee is citizens that live there. And so that's, I think, part of what this is saying is, you know, how would this process work if you had it? So, for example, if Arabo Acres is our example, right, let's say there's a 10-person board. They would first review the design, give you feedback, usually from the perspective of we all live here and understand what the styles and ideas are. Here's a couple ideas that we think you could tweak. Great. We'd fix that. Then we would submit to the city's kind of conservation overlay review group. They would then approve or deny that request. And then if you're approved, that design that's been approved has to be the same design that gets submitted for permit so that there is controls to make sure it does look the same as what you submitted. I don't know if that helps, but I just want to give context. I mean, it does work. And actually, sorry, one other piece to add. They have a threshold in Denver where rather than doing those preliminary reviews, if it's under a certain size or under a certain percentage of increase, it can go directly through approval through staff. It does not have to go through the neighborhood. So I just did one like this where it was adding on literally like a seven by 10 bedroom on the backside of a property. You couldn't even see it from the front of the house. All we were doing is enclosing it to make a small bedroom. That went through staff review and it was approved within a week. So there's ways to make it not too arduous and painful. But the example is that we were adding a small bedroom to a house of some folks that had a second kid that lived in Baker. Their house was tiny and they had a previously illegal deck, like second story deck built on the back of their house that they bought the house that way and then suddenly realized, oh wait, we have to go through landmark preservation approval. Before we can get this design and built and we have a baby on the way But it did work because it was small and staff was able to review it approve it make sure it meets the guidelines that have been set up through things like this and Now they can stay in that neighborhood Sorry, I'm gonna ask one more question.

So then conceptually and because we already allow ad use in some of these neighborhoods then That's base zoning. So it's not possible for someone to come in through, in our theory, to come through and say, we want to outlaw ADUs because that's not historic or some such matter, right? They couldn't do anything like that.

First, state law would prohibit that now. So anywhere where ADUs are allowed, where single-family homes are allowed, ADUs are allowed. Our code already did that. The other thing that we've talked about is that shouldn't be done with this is to prohibit land uses that are already allowed. So somebody to come in and say, okay, I have an entire block in an R2 neighborhood, no duplexes. So that's the other thing that we've kind of talked about is not using it to prohibit land uses that are otherwise allowed. That's what I'm hearing from you all is don't let it be a way to supersede or to downgrade any type of zoning regulations that are already there.

I have a question, different kind of question. Have you seen or are you aware of how difficult is it to vacate some of these overlays, like to make them go away?

I have not seen one that's been vacated, but I would venture to bet that the process, they would end up going through the exact same process with the same property owners. So it'd be the same thing as vacating a PUD. So a PUD is adopted, public hearing and planning and zoning commission, finding a fact, public hearing at city council, to first and second reading. To vacate a PUD, you have to go through the same process. So however the process is set up, to vacate it would follow a similar public hearing process. That's just off the top of my head. But I don't see that many of these going away once they're there. I'd have to go do some extra research to see if there have been any.

Yeah, and I'm just thinking about that in the context of, you know, 50 years, right? And fully built out, you know, just what could really, any way that we could really hit a wall in terms of what we can do in the city in the next, you know, far into the future.

Curious. Carl, you have a question? What was my question?

Oh, the timeline that's later on in the right up here. It has the first step there is we are here. Well, I don't agree with that. I think we're probably halfway through, but we're going back to... We are here to change something. So we're not.

We're there because we don't have this opportunity in our code. So we're talking about do we want to create this opportunity? If we do, what should it look like? Do we not want to do this? So we are at the very beginning stage. And that's to get to an overlay district in existence, it has to go through all those different steps. First, we have to discuss and adopt a code amendment. then somebody would have to request the overlay district. The other parts of it, the neighborhood meetings and input document creation, that's just based on what we see in other cities. Then you would have to have council adopt the district. This group likely would get a public hearing because we would recommend that if we did this, they would be included in Title 16 because they would be amendments. They would have to do with land use and design. So we would recommend Title 16 text amendments. It would be a zoning map amendment as well. So you'd have the map to talk about the location and then the standards as part of a text amendment. That would have to get adopted by the Planning and Zoning Commission and City Council. Then somebody would have to apply for a building permit in that area. And then it would have to get reviewed for whatever process is created when that district was created. So we are far from the end. We're talking at least probably a year before we were to ever get to the point where somebody could apply for a building permit within an overlay district.

I was looking at this, and I was thinking it was for the new Inglewood development plan.

It's totally different than what you're talking about, though.

What's that?

We're talking about city center.

Yeah, the city centers. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CITY CENTER. NEW ENGLEWOOD DEVELOPMENT, CITY CENTER, WHATEVER.

NEW ENGLEWOOD DEVELOPMENT, CITY CENTER, WHATEVER.

NEW ENGLEWOOD DEVELOPMENT, CITY CENTER, WHATEVER. NEW ENGLEWOOD DEVELOPMENT, CITY CENTER, WHATEVER.

NEW ENGLEWOOD DEVELOPMENT, CITY CENTER, WHATEVER. NEW ENGLEWOOD DEVELOPMENT, CITY CENTER, WHATEVER.

NEW ENGLEWOOD DEVELOPMENT, CITY CENTER, WHATEVER. NEW ENGLEWOOD DEVELOPMENT, CITY CENTER, WHATEVER.

NEW ENGLEWOOD DEVELOPMENT, CITY CENTER, WHATEVER. NEW ENGLEWOOD DEVELOPMENT, title 16 other than most likely it would fall in chapter 2 because that's our process and procedure chapter and we would create a new line in there that says conservation overlay districts here's what the process looks like same way we have zoning map amendment subdivisions major and minor text amendments Board of Adjustment and appeals appeals all those processes are spelled out in chapter 2 this would be another item in that process and procedure we would determine posting notifications, publishing notifications, how many neighborhood meetings you have to have. This whole process is trying to spell this out. Part of what we did a couple years ago, the majority of that had already been done 80 years in the past when they originally adopted zoning in Englewood in the 40s. It had been fleshed out for the last 80 years. So the previous round, I would say, is probably easy compared to having this discussion.

If this is amending Title 16, this could go on for like three or four months?

The adoption process itself lasts three and a half months, three and a half to four months. So we're still in the discussion phase, so this could last even longer than that.

Okay.

So that's four months between where we are here to even just the next box.

oh it's yeah we're at the at the fastest it would be four months and we're not even going to get to the fastest because that would mean that we would have to have notified and done everything else have an amendment we have nothing drafted at this point we're just asking questions like i mentioned before there was some things in title 16 that i wasn't really agreeing with so um

Can those be changed? Our direction to change code comes from council.

OK. So another comment?

Yeah. So at last night's council study session, you talked about you were primarily focused on the changes regarding ADUs. But you also pointed out to the council members that there are a number of state housing and land use related laws from, you know, back 2024 and 2025 sessions that we are not yet in compliance with and that we are. at the point now where even individuals within Englewood may not be able to get access to grant funds from the state that they otherwise would potentially be eligible for because we're not moving on those things. And I just feel like any time spent on this right now is time that is taken away from addressing those other needs in Title 16. And you talked last night about how long it takes to go through these changes and how the staff preferences to sort of bundle things so that you go through the process one time. And I'm worried that anything else that we're putting on the table is something else that essentially gives us as a city more permission to say, well, we're not going to handle those other things because we have this thing coming, and then we have this thing coming. And we're just going to keep packaging those things in and not make the changes that are required to be in compliance with state law and to pursue the other goals that we're trying to pursue as a city. So yeah, I take your point that we are a year or more away, but I still think right now we're spending time on this instead of providing input to council on the things that you spoke about last night or the things that you didn't speak about last night that still need to get resolved. And I would rather see us focusing on those more timely concerns than this for, you know, maybe not just for one neighborhood, but at the impetus of one particular neighborhood.

I just don't feel like we should make this a priority. All right. Other comments?

Brian, is there anything else you'd like input from us on?

No. I think you guys have kind of hit on the harder parts of this discussion. To make a comment towards what Commissioner Kaplan talked about. Actually, I'll do that during staff's choice.

So I guess to close out this conversation, it sounds like, and it's not a vote, but it seems like there's a general consensus that there is a place for this, although maybe not worthy of any priority if there's constrained capacity, but it generally should be a high bar for something like this. That's kind of a straw-hole nod of heads. People feel like that's generally what we're kind of in agreement about. Okay, helpful for you there? All right.

I want to make a comment on the Arapahoe Acres. Basically, they're a little town by themselves. And if anybody in there creates a change in the design of their house, they're going to be tarred and feathered and kicked out of town. They have their own Codes. Not city codes.

Their own codes. There's nothing currently. The whole point of this is to avoid. Have you walked through there by chance? Through the neighborhood?

Yeah.

Right. So just the whole point is to preserve that look. It is a specific neighborhood and it's a small piece of the whole city, but it. It doesn't take long for the cookie to crumble if people start demoing old houses to make money.

And I think they may have an HOA there as well.

I believe they do.

So that would prevent them from doing crazy, crazy things.

Nothing prevents you from doing anything there currently.

Okay. All right.

Well, then let's close out the study session. Let's move on to staff choice.

All right. So last night, we talked to council about what we brought to you a few months ago. We talked to them about draft changes for ADUs, landscape provisions, and the definition of occupancy. They've given us the go ahead to move forward. So that should be coming to you all for public hearing, I think, in late March. We initially were thinking February, but we don't try to split votes around when different council members are seated. So we're going to push it back to ensure that the public hearing happens after the election. So the fully seated new council is to make the decision moving forward.

But that's my only...

item right now. Actually, we have another study session with council. I think it's March 9th for non-conforming commercial uses in residential districts. So that one will be coming up. Hopefully we'll be bringing some amendments back to you all sometime not necessarily in the near future, but in the later future after the Title 16 amendments wrap up for ADUs. We've had a few discussions on that one.

All right. Thanks, Brian.

There's a historic preservation meeting on the 18th of this month, isn't there?

We do have an historic preservation commission meeting later this month to have the same discussion with them that we just had with you all.

All right.

Attorney's choice. Nothing from the city attorney's office. Thank you.

All right. Thank you.

and we'll go down the row. Let's see, let's start with Carl's side this time. Commissioners, Joyce, you got anything for us, Carl?

Nothing, really. Michelle? I have nothing, thank you. Brenda?

I have a question, Mr. Isham. I don't mean to put you on the spot, but recently, or in the last six months, after the chief came on board, they've taken code enforcement from underneath the police, and now they report to community development. You know, and I've established a relationship with Dave Lewis as when I was... kind of a liaison for the off leash park. And of course, I'm kind of a neighborhood, I don't know, somebody who keeps an eye on these undeveloped properties and the trash and everything like that. I was just wondering, it didn't seem like it was something that was, I heard about it at council or anything. Is there any documentation or a staff report that explains the rationale for this transition and how it you know, why would we do something like that? And now that's going to, if it's going to affect anything.

I certainly don't have any of that. If I, I want to say that that was a request made by a council member too. So let me go through the council requests or to see if there's any upcoming study sessions on that topic and I'll report back.

Thank you. Oh, yes.

Sorry, yes, there is a study session upcoming. I'm looking for the date right now to confirm for you where that will be discussed.

Sorry, one second.

February 9, there'll be a study session by request of Councilmember Russell for clarity on the recent reorg and its impact on code compliance.

nothing for me just thanks for a good discussion tonight Brian and I don't have anything new but I want to make sure I understood Brenda's comment Brenda are you saying that you're concerned that the cops are not doing code enforcement they are not I don't know I mean they don't they report to community development now I am confused right um

That's animal control. That's weeds. That's trash. So, yeah, I'm just curious how it's going to work.

Okay. I would say, I mean, that to me sounds like the correct thing. I don't think we need to be wasting cops' time enforcing code. Not to say code enforcement is not important, but it's a different area of expertise.

They already have those officers. They're just reporting change so that if you call an emergency...

If I can help... The code enforcement department was part of the police department, not to say that they were police officers doing code enforcement. They were their own group of people. And then that group of people was moved into the community development department. And I think Council Member Hupka is asking for clarity on why and how that's going to work. And hopefully that's what that study session next week should be about.

Okay.

Thank you. All right. So with that, we adjourn. Thank you, everybody.