Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I'm going to go ahead and call to order the August 19th, 2026 Planning Zoning Commission. First item is call to order.

Thank you very much. Next is the land acknowledgement. We acknowledge that Longmont sits on the traditional territory of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute, and other indigenous peoples. We honor the history and the living and spiritual connection that the first people have with this land. It is our commitment to face the injustices that happened when the land was taken and to educate our communities, ourselves, and our children to ensure that these injustices do not happen again. Next is communications from Grant Penland.

Thank you. Next is first public invited to be heard. This is the initial public invited to be heard. This is opportunity for the public to come. They get up to five minutes to speak to us about items that are not on the agenda today, are not going to be coming before us as quasi-judicial items. So there is nobody on the sign-up sheet, but I will open it up to the public to walk forward. Seeing nobody walk forward, I'll go ahead and close up. Public invited to be heard. Next is approval of the minutes from the July 22nd, 2026 meetings. Are there any corrections, any questions, comments, or are

Thank you very much. Next, we move to public hearing items. We have one item today that is the 801 Main Street Recovery Cafe Conditional Use Site Plan. Senior Planner Phil Taylor presenting.

Can you move the mic down just a little bit closer? Oh, sure.

OK, thank you very much. At this time, if you don't mind, we are going to go ahead. This is a public hearing item, so we are going to go ahead and open up for public invited to be heard. If there's anybody in the public who would like to come forward and speak for this or on this item, nobody signed up on the list, but we still give you a chance to come forward. So we just ask that I remind you that you have five minutes and that you give your name and address for the record, please. I think we have somebody.

OK, your five minutes are up. Thank you very much, Hull. Thank you for your comments. Anybody else from this? Yes, please come forward. Once again, state your name and address for the record.

Seeing nobody else coming up, I'll go ahead and close out public invited to be heard. We'll go ahead to move to comments and questions, motions from the commission. Commissioner Edgley-Wells. Nope. Commissioner Boone.

Okay. Thank you, Chair Polin. I just have one question to the recovery people. You mentioned 795 members. So in order to use your facility, do people have to join up, their members? So this is not a drop-in facility for anybody? Is that correct?

You're welcome. Okay, we'll go ahead and move to Commissioner Edgley-Wells.

Thank you, Chair. My question was for Catherine. So in the neighborhood, oh, I'll wait till you get up there.

Yes. Hi. Thank you so much for being here. So my question, in the neighborhood meeting, you did address that utility easement, that 10-foot, I believe, utility easement. There was community concern about accessibility of other businesses to that easement. And I believe you said that you all would be managing that 10-foot easement area.

Well, that's kind of my question of what does that actually mean of management? Like, if there's somebody that shouldn't be using that area, would you all be the ones to post signs? Or, like, I'm just trying to figure out how... there seems to be concern over the use of that area. And I remember in that meeting you saying this easement area would be managed by this property. So I'm wondering what that entails and what that means.

Yes, thank you so much. Okay, and then I had another question. So this was addressed in the traffic letter attachment 13. And it's more of like a multimodal traffic and sort of safety question. I don't know who I address that to.

Staff, OK. Staff in general. So my question is, in this letter, it says that the site is located on the northwest corner of 8th Street and Main. And then there's a transit stop east side of Main Street directly across the site, serviced by RTD Route 324, and that there is no sidewalk. So it's stating that pedestrians will generally wait for gaps in traffic. to cross main street and i'm wondering um how we if that is should i mean i find that to be a traffic safety concern and how that could potentially be addressed i literally read that in the letter and was like not waiting for gaps in traffi

I'm done. That was it. But thank you so much. Thank you. We'll get an answer to you.

We'll come back to that question. Commissioner Arment.

I also have a traffic question. So in the conditional use site plan, I noticed that along a, you're moving the current, and I don't know how to describe this, but you're basically, in front of the parking, you're adding a 17-foot spacing to a solid white line. And then you're also moving the double yellow. And I'm not sure what the function of that white line is. Because that doesn't seem to be parking, since there's already parking behind it.

OK. OK. So that's just about giving access to the head end. That makes sense. The other question I had was on the, I guess that's currently a utility easement, but it was mentioned that garbage trucks and other such things are using that. I don't know what the plan is going forward, if there's still going to be enough room for garbage trucks.

Okay. Yeah, I just... I'm not seeing that on the drawings there, and also there's utility poles in the utility easement.

Okay. Yep. So I guess if there is an access easement, any future development would still have to allow that room for a trash truck and whatnot to still maintain. Okay. I think that's all I had. Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you, Chair. I have thought of one more question. And this is in response to a concern of the owners of Luna Cafe. And they expressed concern that they may not be granted a desired liquor license because of the proximity to this use. So I guess my question is going to fill and or grant Is that the case? I would hate to limit their use by changing this use.

Okay, so they would still be able to do so? There's not a required so many foot buffer? There's not, no. Okay. That's all I had. Thank you.

Thank you. Phil, I have a couple of questions. See if I can remember them. First, so it's been mentioned about the trash pickup using the easement area. Do the other establishments in that area also use the alley for, let's say, trash pickup? Okay, so it isn't just this one, it's other uses? Yes, I think it's all, yeah, several properties. Okay, very good. Second of all, to clarify, so we have been asked to approve a conditional site plan, and the site plan is basically taking an existing retail shop, which looks like some kind of resale shop.

They are going to do some modifications to it, and the use is going to change from, let's say, a public resale lot store to a community service. And it's because it's a community service that's coming before us. If it had been another resale lot or even a cafe, it wouldn't have come before us then.

That's my questions. we have any other questions i think we're still waiting comment on commissioner edgley wells question

Thank you, Chair. I believe I read in that report it's about roughly 900 feet is the, I guess, amount of feet that it would take for somebody to actually be able to access Recovery Cafe from the nearest safe access point. So I just wanted to make sure that that's what I was reviewing there. Is that like a couple of blocks?

Commissioner Arment. I had one other question for staff. Because it was brought up that they are having no parking on site. And I wondered how that interacted with bike parkings. Is there also no requirement for bike parking? And I didn't see any bike parking proposed, so.

OK. So the plan is just to have them park on Main Street. That makes sense.

Council Rep Popkin. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Commission, for the good comments here and the clarifying questions. I had one more that I don't believe was addressed. I was just curious with this back alley if there has been emergency vehicle access discussed, needed, and what kind of those parameters would be between fire, police, public safety in different ways.

And then maybe a question for our city attorney and legal representative here. So there was a discussion about the use of the land, like the use of the property and the land going forward. And I know the applicant spoke to this already. Um, I just want to ask, there've been multiple public funding contributions to this. Am I correct on that? And I think that's and maybe the applicant correct me if I'm wrong. I think it's city, county and federal that are contributing to this in some way or federal pass through that are contributing to this in some way, shape or form. Is that correct?

Sure. And how long is the county agreement for, since I know we were messaging about that?

Thank you. And I believe one of the stipulations in that, and apologies, this I don't think was in the commission packet, but just given some of the questions and the land use relevance, I want to just ask these on the record. Okay. I believe Section 7D of that speaks to the use of funds and property specifically focused on the use of property solely in furtherance of the program that the agency is seeking to commit, right?

Great. Do those other affiliates include for-profit leases or other types of sales?

Great. Thank you very much. And again, apologies, Chair, that that was not in the packet, but I figured I'd add that into the record.

Thank you. I'm just going to say right now that I am for this. I understand that there were some concerns by the Luna Cafe. I think that the fact that you had an existing retail property by you, that it's actually becoming a community service instead. I think actually that should give you some relief that there's not going to be a cafe put over there that's directly going to compete. So I really don't see a problem with the fact that we're taking an existing retail shop, replacing it with community service. I think that is a good use for the conditional use for this. And I will be for this dev

Thank you, Chair. I will go ahead and make a motion. Move to approve the Recovery Cafe Conditional Use Site Plan based on the findings of the staff report and the evidence presented at the hearing.

Thank you. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Vice Chair Earle.

We have a motion. We have a second. Any other comments? I will say that I do find that this supports 1502055 of the Land Development Code, and that is another reason why I will be in support of this. Seeing no other comments, let's take a vote.

Thank you very much. This item now enters a seven-day appeal period. During this time, any agreed party may appeal the commission's decision by submitting a written appeal letter stating why the planning zoning commission's decision should be amended or reversed by city council. All appeals must be in writing and must be received in the city clerk's office and the planning office within the seven-day appeal period. The appeal period begins Thursday, August 20th at 8 a.m. and ends Wednesday, August 26th at 5 p.m. I want to thank the public, the applicant, and staff for the presentations on this

Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to give you all an update in case you didn't stay up until 11.45 p.m. to watch our review of the appeal for the variance requests that came through and was appealed from PNC. Again, as a reminder, you can find this recording, I think this was last Tuesday at this point. In short, the council upheld PNC's decision on that six to one. Again, our decision on that was more in an appellate procedural function. And so our decision was supposed to be whether planning and zoning commission erred in its decision. So a six to one finding means you did not, or we did not f

Okay, thank you. Items from Planning Director Grant Pendlin.