City Council - Regular Meeting

Mayor, I have a question. What's before us is a rezoning. The items that you described that you're willing to do to help satisfy neighborhood concerns as part of site plan approval. Does the site plan come back to us, this is a question for staff, or is that administratively approved?

Joe, I'll second that, but may I make a friendly amendment? I'm guessing that the developer is going to do this anyway, but on any building facade that abuts single-family homes, there will be no lights. And if there are balconies, they're probably going to be recessed, but any balcony lighting has to shine straight down. Is that acceptable to the developer? So we don't have security lights four stories up in the air that

I'm satisfied with the developer making that verbal commitment.

Just for clarification on the electric easement. Yep. I can bring that back up. And that would restrict...

Mayor, I'd like to make a motion to approve 60B for approval. And if I could have a second, I'd like to make a couple of comments.

I was a little bit skeptical when I first heard about this project. But the more I thought about it, it's on an eight-lane divided road. And there's a bike path on one side only. Okay. This is an opportunity that that whole MLK was designed to move cars. And I remember when it was first designed, it was designed to be an elevated roadway with columns and a roadway on top. And if I remember correctly, Fred White's out of his own pocket paid to have a model done to say this needs to be brought down to the ground level and not do these overhead roadways anymore. And that was that was enough to co

I've got some comments and I will say this is something that I struggle with, but I am prepared to support. so long as it is not precedent setting. And I want to be clear, I think this is a unique site. It is an awkward parcel to start with. And then you layer on three different types of utility restrictions. You have railroad, you have transmission, which impacts height. And by the way, the same transmission lines are impacting the design on a much bigger parcel across the street. And we're getting more density across the street, but that is because It's a much bigger parcel and it's limited

I certainly do not anticipate this roadway being lined with auto-oriented businesses, but I am open to ideas. I spend a lot of time in Philadelphia, and there's a beautiful five-story apartment building, and it has a fire station on the first floor right on the corner with big trucks going in and out, and there are apartments above it and apartments on the side. You can have density with a little creativity. I agree with you. there's no other use that i can think of for this odd piece of property but to say zero ever i can't say that but i would not support a row of auto oriented businesses th

The challenge is that the next one of these is not potentially that far away from us since we have a proposal. We have a proposal for that Dutch Brothers that is also downtown in a lot where I think we could do better. So that is my concern from a precedent's perspective.

I apologize, I even said anything. This is the right use for this piece of property.

I have some comments and maybe start with a question for our attorney to see if I can understand a piece of this, because I know this was bid with one bridge is kind of a, that could be separated out. And I'd like to see if we can just go forward and approve the contract, but kind of hold back on the piece that separated out where we have approval to do that. maybe have to come back after some additional due diligence? And is that possible?

It was bid as an adder. Like, it was bid separately.

because I have some level of concern with this particular bridge because there's some redundancy there and I think there's an opportunity for some efficiency if we worked with the property owners. And I think we've started the process, but we haven't got all the way down that process. This is a section of Skywalk that requires capital investment beyond just the 80,000 for that bridge. There is 150,000 in HVAC that is going to have to be an investment that's going to have to be made pretty much right now. So there's an opportunity to avoid $230,000 in capital investment. In addition, on the wes

So, Mayor, if some of us vote no, may we make another motion?

IT COULD ALLOW US TO PAY MORE MONEY BECAUSE IT'S NOT, IF THE REPAIR WORK IS NOT BEING DONE IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE ORIGINAL PROJECT, WHICH MEANS YOU START ALL OVER AGAIN, YOU SET UP SCAFFOLDING AND IT'S GOING TO COST MORE MONEY.

Yeah. You know, if we were to take this down, there would have to be some private sector investment, right? Because there is building repair on the facades. The $150,000 that the private sector would save would maybe be what would cover their investment. Is there... Well... When is the next phase of this work going to be done?

Well, how long has it been sitting this way? You know, I'm not sure I can answer, but you know that, I mean, it's been sitting this way for years. I mean, we have urgency now, but it's been this way for quite some time.

It's not a not fix ever. It's work with the property owners and see if they're I mean, because this would be the time if this bridge was ever going to at least for another 20 years and this is a one of the few places that is completely redundant in the in the skywalk and not going to any particular destinations except for the hotel that for the parking is that who you said is it the most well but the owner of that parking garage is okay with this and there's also closer parking it's actually a city lot that is the closest parking that they don't use

so i wanted to just highlight a few things one i want to thank cameron middlebrooks for his service on the civil rights commission i wanted to call out blake who's kindly sat through sat through a our meeting this evening uh and thank him for his willingness and interest to serve and wanted to to highlight this particular moment um You know, we have a great history in Des Moines from a civil rights perspective. We were early champions of civil rights. This happens to be the 75th anniversary of anniversary year of the enactment of the Des Moines Civil Rights Commission. And we were early in rec

We could, could we have Steve come up and address it? Because my understanding is that that wasn't, it wasn't a prohibited use before.

Or it wasn't an allowed use rather, like we did not make a change on edible plants. It wasn't. It wasn't allowed before it wasn't allowed after that change. There was no change on that.