Finance & Services Committee - Regular Meeting

This biweekly meeting of the finance and business committee of Denver City Council. Join us for the finance and business committee starting now.

Morning, everyone, and welcome to the finance and business committee. Today is Tuesday, March 24. My name is Serena Gonzalez Gutierrez. I'm one of your council members at large and chair of this committee. And we're gonna start off today Romero Campbell, you're here in person. We had you down as as virtual, but we're gonna start off, before we go into the agenda, with introductions of council members. And I will start over here to my left.

Thank you, committee chair. Darryl Watson, Flying District nine.

Good morning. Paul Cashman, South Denver District six.

Hello. Good morning. Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District four in person. And

just before we have council president introduce yourself, is there anyone online joining us? Nobody online. Council president, would you like to introduce yourself? Northwest Denver district one, Manasseh. Perfect timing. Alright. With that said, we're gonna turn it over to the the bond team in Denver Health. They're gonna talk to us about one of the vibrant Denver bond vibrant Denver, yeah, bond projects. Yep. Go right ahead. Hi. Molly Scarborough, vibrant Denver bond program.

Patrick Riley, vibrant Denver bond program.

Chris Gott, chief operating officer at Denver Health.

Wonderful. We're so happy to be back in front of you all today. On November 4, obviously, we had the election for Vibrant Denver, and one of our ballot measures to see was for the Denver Children's Advocacy Center and the Westside Health Clinic, the San Sandoz Clinic with Denver Health. That ballot measure passed at over 70%. And on November 5, subsequently did a groundbreaking for the Westside Health Clinic.

And now today, we are here to bring you our first contracting action under Vibrant, which is for a FAA funding assignment agreement to fund the $20,000,000 that the voters approved as part of Vibrant Denver. We are go ahead. We're gonna talk about that action, 260367, which would provide funding for the 20,000,000 that was voted on and approved. As just a general clarification of how this works, this will be the first of a couple FAAs. We, as a city, provide funding to Denver Health, who adds this to a part of a larger capital stack.

This is not a $20,000,000 project. It would be super awesome if it was, but I'm sure everybody would appreciate that. It's But we are providing that as part of a larger capital stack for them to do their project. It is bolden to the the social ordinances, things like our DISBO goals and public art. So they will be partnering with arts and venues as part of the normal public art process. They are underneath the DISBO process process and did seek goals and will be adhering to those as well. So this funding assignment agreement really just helps complete their capital stack.

Great.

Thank you, Patrick. So this these bonds were issued as part of issuance one as part of our taxable bonds, $20,000,000 to build the new Denver Health Westside Family Health Center in Council District 3 to provide affordable medical service and increase availability of care. As Patrick said, this is a partner led project. We are so appreciative to partner with Denver Health. This contract memorializes the delivery of the bond funding to Denver Health and Hospital Authority and the DHHA Westside Clinic Qualic B.

The Qualic B is a single purpose entity created by DHHIA to be an investment vehicle for new market tax credit transactions. And so we are excited to be able to contribute funds that helps them unlock this funding opportunity. And the project highlights and I'm gonna review just high level project highlights and then turn it over to Chris to give you a little bit more information. So high level, this new clinic will provide state of the art technology, light filled spaces, additional health care services in the area. It will nearly double the existing square footage.

It will be built on the same site as the existing clinic. Once the construction of the new three story clinic is complete, the old clinic will be demolished, and the demolished space will be replaced with a parking deck. They are working with their partners, Cannon for design and Hazelton for construction. As Patrick mentioned, they will be adhering to 10% women minority owned business enterprise goals. And as we discussed as he also discussed, they will contribute to our public art funding, 1% goal.

And so that is about $580,000 It is calculated off of their total construction costs. So this provides general site context. In the dotted yellow line on the image to the left is current site. And as you can see in the image to the right, the new building will be built on the existing parking lot. And then once that is complete, the existing clinic will be demolished and replaced with a new parking deck.

And just high level legislative timeline, we are here today with finance and business committee. Hopefully, you will be moving this forward into the council first reading process. We would go to mayor council March 31, first reading of city council April 6, and second reading of city council April 13. This allows us to provide the funding to Denver Health by the May 1, which facilitates their new market tax credit process. So with that, I will turn back to the site plan on here and just turn it over to Chris. Thank you for being here.

Thank you so much. So thank you for having me here, council members. This is certainly a pride project for Denver Health. This is one of our first locations that was open to serve the underserved communities of Denver. And it's one of the fastest growing communities.

I certainly probably don't need to tell you all of that. And so the demand is far exceeding the location that we have. And so you might ask, well, why are we why are we doing it on the same location? I think, you know, Denver Health has certainly shown it's a good steward of its limited resources, and that was the case here as well. We certainly were looking at other property in the area and try trying to acquire, things that were congruent and that could, actually build a large enough facility as this, and that was very challenging to to achieve that in addition to the sheer dollars that it took.

So we looked at the existing property to say, is there any way we could do it on what we already own to, again, limit the expense? And in fact, was it a better location at the end of the day for us to do it there. So that's why you see it on the property. And and then why, you know, why a parking structure? The parking structure that we partner with with Denver Human Services is a pretty good distance away from that location, and it's also sloped.

I don't know if you've you've had the opportunity to be out there. It's not an easy climb. And so what we are doing is when we take the old structure down, we are maximizing that space to take advantage of the slope so there'll be some underground parking and then a surface lot. So really not trying to make it too big, trying to be considerate of that, but also making sure that we're meeting the needs of that growing population. So the new facility itself will be about a 30% expansion of capacity, somewhat almost doubling its size when you think of the actual building itself.

So that demand takes us into future growth on ten to twenty year projections. And so that I'm that's very high level, but hopefully that answers at least some of the questions that I thought would probably be posed. Great.

Thank you. That is the end of our presentation. Open for questions.

Great. I have Councilman Cashman and then Council Pro Temember Ray Campbell. Councilman Walton.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for the presentation. Very exciting to get another clinic where it's needed. What's the total cost of of this project as best you figure?

100,000,000.

Okay. I'm old enough to remember and that was a lot of money. That's that's that's pretty impressive. Great. And and so this is 11th And Federal, and you've got the Pena Clinic down on South Federal. Correct. And is this are are they similar in the scope of what they offer just serving different nearby communities?

I would say yes in general. There are some enhanced services that will be going into this new location. So physical therapy, CT scanner. So it's our first off campus advanced imaging location, so those are just a few of the enhancements as well as let me just make sure I'm covering the other things that we're incorporating there. We'll also I I think it was covered in the presentation, but just sort of the light, the light that comes into the building. You know, as a safety net health system, we occupy some older buildings,

and

so some of that is just the nature of the buildings. They're not lit up in a way that really bring light in. So there are just some other features that come along with the advanced clinical care.

And excuse me if I missed this, but how many square feet is this?

It's about 80,000, 82,000 That's 500 square including

all three floors.

All three floors.

Yes. Great. Great. I know councilman, Nora Campbell and I are very excited at the clinic coming in on Evans Avenue Yes. And, which is a renovation of an existing structure and I'm assuming a more dollar friendly.

Yes. To to a degree, it it there is some renovation that will happen there. We are lucky to have found a location that had some existing clinic space in it. So it is less of a spend on a cost per square foot, but yes.

And will it be similar in the scope of services?

Similar, not all the advanced imaging, but yes, it will be a full service clinic. It's about 14,500 square feet. So when you think of it in relative value from an 82,000 square foot building, a little more limited and we're fitting into an existing space rather than just building from the ground up. We can be a little more creative

and innovative. Yeah. Well, the community is excited about that as well.

I live in that district, so I too am excited.

Okay. Well, move north.

Stay in the room.

That's great.

Thank you, councilman Cashman. Council pro tem, Romero Campbell.

Thank you, madam chair. Thank you for the presentation and the briefing. I know I had asked a lot of questions. Remind me, is the 100,000 total cost of the project for 100,000,000. 100 sorry. Thousand. Wow. That was really rebate. 100,000,000. Ours is the 20,000,000 that goes to it, and it's treated like a grant. So it's not like which dollars are used first. It's all combined. Will that cover the cost of the building and the parking?

The 100,000,000 does include both. Yes.

Okay. And then the access for the parking, like what happens during construction? I know that there's I know that it is such a busy clinic and there are so many families that go there. How is it working for the access to the clinic, the safety for people getting to it? It's on I'm just trying to think of some of the logistics, and I'm wondering if you have some of that baked into this project as well.

Yes. We do. So the distance as well as the slope, we have as part of the construction and deployment, we have a shuttle service that will go from the garage up to the clinic to the existing location and then even to the new as we go into phase two of the project, which is the parking structure. So all of those things operationally have been thought through, and it is a part of the cost of the project to make sure that we are accommodating whether it's, you know, people with small children, some of the disabled that might not have the capacity or even desire to walk that walk, we have put those processes in place. I

think it's such how exciting that this is the first project out of the gate for the bond. I think it's a it's a great project. And from the time that you break ground to when it'll be done, did you already say this, like what the timeline is that you expect for this

to be completed? First patient to be seen is 2027, assuming we stay on schedule. So, yeah, it's a we were pretty we were shovel ready at that time, so we were really just figuring out our financial stack as you referenced it. And so it's it's well underway. That's great. I don't

have any other questions. Just really excited about the project happening. Thank you for the work in Denver Hall.

Thank you, councilman, for your questions.

Thank you. Councilman Watson.

Thank you, committee chair. I'm gonna say I'm jealous. Eastside one. I love my Eastside clinic, but my goodness. I am so happy for the work that's going out there in the communities that are gonna be served out there.

And then you're also putting us to shame with a q three twenty twenty seven completion. That is amazing. So thank you and your team for being so smart looking through your business continuity, number one, from before you started and then making sure that we meet the expectation that we delivered to voters when they voted for the Biden bond, that we are gonna deliver that within that six year time frame and you're killing it in a one year time frame. So I just think that's awesome. I have finance and investment question that I'm not certain if it can be answered today, but I would love to maybe have, maybe for the committee chair, kind of a deeper dive into our our bond portfolio for the vibrant bond.

Obviously, treasuries are a little less risk in our investment portfolio, but we're in a different world from when we first purchased those bonds. We'd love to have some background on really the strength of that investment structure to ensure that the dollars that were the voters voted for, how what's that mix? So I'm not sure who in the future can provide that, but we'd love to have an idea on those the bond investments, the strength of those investments, and kind of the ability for us to meet the the the needs that we have for all of the projects, not just this one. Looking at Carolina's Hill.

Yes. We will come back

to you

with that. Alright. Thank you. Thank you, committee chair.

Thank you. Well, this is exciting. I am very familiar with the Westside Clinic. I worked at Denver Human Services for eight years, and so I had met many of clients in in that building, you know, young people seeking care, parents seeking care. And so I'm really excited to see that this is happening, and especially with all the the new development with Sun Valley and and DHA, the Denver Housing Authority, I think this is going to be a great value add. So I'm assuming from what you said, Chris, is that the the current building will remain open during construction.

Yes. Okay.

And we

And that's where you have the shuttles and all of the things. Okay. That's great. Because I was worried. I was go I was thinking, okay. Where are people going to go when that maybe is the closest place for them to get to? But this is I mean, it's amazing. I appreciate the thought around people going up that hill. When I was there not that long ago, I was at human services. They did, a, I don't know, a women's day thing. Got invited. We couldn't enter at human services on the bottom level. You had to walk all the way up to where you then enter on the 2nd Floor. Mhmm. And I saw people struggling trying to walk up.

And even though it's ADA compliant, like, there's a ramp, it was still difficult for folks. It's a long walk to get up to that 2nd Level. And so it would be great to see if there was even partnership with Denver Human Services because the clientele and the folks visiting both of these places are very are are they're going to both places, right, which is why it is such a great situated location as well because people can get to it's like it's like one of those continuity of care types of almost a model, right, where you can go to human services and, you know, maybe meet with your TANF worker or you're there for, you know, a family visit, and then you can go and go to your medical appointment. Absolutely. And so I think that's great.

But, yeah, I don't know. I see Doctor Federico.

Thank you, madam chair.

Doctor Steve Federico, chief government affairs at Denver Health. I too started my career at Westside and worked closely with the folks at human services on several cases with several kids. So I understand the layout there, and and I so appreciate a couple topics that you're bringing up, madam chair. One is the ADA compliance is something we have been working with DHS with, in particular during construction, thinking about limited spaces. We're gonna take away that surface lot and trying to figure out how we're gonna you know, the bus line is actually downstream from our clinic.

And so it's already slightly complicated. So we've been working with folks both with the city and and human services to think about what that's gonna look like and try and minimize the disruption there. And I'm also glad you brought up Sun Valley because they've been a great partner in the planning of this project. They've been highly invested, as you know, in the redevelopment of their neighborhood, and the clinic plays such a vital role. And they've been great partners as we think through not only how to keep it open all, but how to keep it accessible. They're super excited, of course, about the expanded access. So absolutely.

Yeah. Madam Chairman, I'd just add that DHS has been on our weekly sort of update calls, so we are very much partnering with them to make sure the transition is smooth. They've partnered to lease us additional spaces. So, yes, they've been a great partner.

Great. That's amazing. Well, that being said, this is an action item. So I will need a motion and a second. So moved by councilman Watson, seconded by councilman Cashman. Is there any need for a vote on this? Not seeing any. Alright. Thumbs up, everybody. This will then be able to move on through the council process. Thank you again so much for bringing this. I I was really excited to have you all come and present. So with that said, we have a few items on consent here. Let me Thank you for your support. Thank you.

We have four items on consent. Seeing that no one has brought those pulled those down, those will also move forward to the full council. We're adjourned.

Awesome.