November 13, 2018 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[4:05] [Music] the City Council study session of November 13 2018 we have two items tonight and I guess we're starting off with the Alpine balsam project did you want to say anything Jane I'm eating an almond joy which is a huge mistake before saying yes we're ready however we already and tonight we're gonna have Alpine balsam based on comments at CAC we're going to talk first about the deconstruction and other manners with regard to the hospital building and then we'll be talking about the various scenarios that we've talked about with the boards and commissions and with the community and then finally jim robertson

[5:01] our comprehensive planning manager we'll be talking about the timeline that we're thinking about as well as the economics about this project so let me turn it over first to michelle crane who is our i'm i'm turning it over to you Jim and you're turning it over to Michelle yes okey-dokey that works fine Jim thank you jim robertson comprehensive planning manager for the planning department thank you Jane so what we thought we would do briefly before we go into the two major topics of the evening that being the hospital building deconstruction and the update and feedback on the area plan I thought we could give you a basic sort of schematic view of how the pieces fit together because I know sometimes when we talk about this it can seem like disparate elements of the project sometimes we talk about the planning sometimes we talk about the divvy the redevelopment of the site including the deconstruction of the hospital sometimes

[6:01] we talked about funding issues I thought I would try to give you a brief overview of how those fit together with some level of sequencing or phasing in mind so that you could think about that as you have as you as you look at these individual components of the of the presentation that I so I'm gonna I've sort of divided this sort of notion of see how this might sequence and phasing into three key elements the planning elements the redevelopment elements and the funding elements so I'm gonna show you what looks like a timeline now I don't initially have any dates on here because there's a whole lot of variables over the next handful of years as to how this might unfold but I wanted to give you a notion of how we're thinking about it in terms of how things could be layered together how we can approach the overall arc of this project in as efficient a manager Manit manner as possible so as to

[7:00] prevent periods of dead time where nothing's happening so here's how it might layout and of course this is very schematic and as I said at the moment I don't have any specific times on here so we will and this is looking ahead from tonight so in early 2019 based on what we hear from you tonight we anticipate that we'll be able to come back in front of you in the first quarter with a perhaps refined scenario of how the project how the redevelopment might occur perhaps some revised and refined cost estimates of that and even discuss with you how this project might be financed a little bit later in this spring potentially we as a team would be coming back to you to actually talk about the funding for deconstruction of the hospital building and then mid 2019 as you know is when we are targeting that you will have in

[8:00] front of you an area plan for potential approval and that will have basically two components with it to it one would be in essence a program of uses for the city-owned site and I'm speaking only of the city-owned site right now because of course the area plan will reach outside the site but with regard to the city owned parcels it will have a program of uses and in essence a site design for the city-owned parcels we anticipate that we would be then in a position to commence deconstruction soon after BCH does its final vacation of the hospital in mid 2019 and we're anticipating and Michelle will talk more about this that would be a roughly plus or minus two year deconstruction process now the good news is we we don't have to just put everything else on hold while that's going on because we anticipate there during that same roughly two year period we could be tackling as a

[9:00] community the issues of entitlements on the city-owned parcel how do we handle the BBC land use the BBC P land use designation and what should the appropriate zoning be to move forward with the redevelopment of the land we also anticipate that during this deconstruction period we could commence what you might call 30% engineering preliminary engineering of some of the public infrastructure being looking at the systems that will support redevelopment the roadway system the utility systems of flood mitigation systems and so forth so that we're making good use of this time during deconstruction to set ourselves up for moving a pace into the following events as we do that we will be prepared to come to you in the community with some preliminary designs for the public infrastructure including cost estimates for what that would be and ultimately go

[10:01] through the budgeting process to allocate the money for infrastructure construction we would also try to overlap that during the missive beginning at least during that deconstruction 2-year period perhaps even the permitting of that public infrastructure and then ultimately leading to assuming all the funding plays out the initiation of construction for that public infrastructure so that there wouldn't be a dead period once the deconstruction is completed that we could move at that point smoothly into having gone through the precursors of constructing the public infrastructure and then while that's going on we also anticipate that if there is an RFP process to solicit the involvement of a private partner to perhaps to redevelop a portion of the site we could be working on that during that same time period while there are things happening at the site there would be other things happening behind the

[11:00] scenes to set ourselves up for the later stages of the project and also during this time period when perhaps the public infrastructure would be under construction we could begin the process of design cost estimating and perhaps even bringing to you proposals for funding the construction of any Civic buildings that go on at the site ultimately then that would all lead to the ability to permit both the public and the private components of the site assuming there are both public and private components and ultimately starting construction now this is really schematic and there's a whole lot of assumptions built into this but it shows you hopefully in one big picture how these various threads might come together in the coming years and now as I mentioned we didn't put a time on that now I'm gonna come back to the time in a minute but one of the things I do want

[12:00] to point out is that the the ability of the council and the community to weigh in on the funding of this effort would not probably be a one-time effort but we would the first major a score if you will the first major request for funding would be worth regard to deconstruction the next one would be with regard to the funding for the public infrastructure and then a final request for funding and allocation of funding would be for any portion of the above-ground construction that is that is to be undertaken by the city we estimate that from roughly mid 2019 with the adoption of the area plan and the commencement of hospital deconstruction this might all unfold leading to the start of construction in a roughly three to five year period that is a really broad range I understand

[13:00] once almost twice as long as the other but now but there's a whole lot of is I think you have a sense there are a whole lot of assumptions and if if this then that type elements in this but we wanted to give you a brief picture of how they fit together and roughly what time period would occur with that I think I would maybe prefer that we if you have questions about scheduling and phasing I would say now I just wanted to give you this as a precursor we can revisit those I want to now turn it over to Michelle to talk specifically about the hospital deconstruction issue so Jim I'm not going to ask questions and we'll talk about schedule later but let me just say that was extremely helpful as a framework to go through the rest of the night tonight so thank you very much for doing that thank you thank you okay hi I'm Michele crane I'm our city facilities design and construction manager and so I'm here tonight to provide you with an update on the analysis we're doing just to deconstruct the hospital itself and this

[14:00] was based on councils direction we got last January to pursue that more sustainable approach to deconstruction so there's two segments really to what I'm presenting tonight the first thing I want to do is bring you through a brief history of the hospital's growth and then talk a little bit about the current conditions in the hospital really to help provide an understanding of the complexity in the scale of this project and it also probably will help give some basis for the costs around what we're talking about with deconstruction and then the other part is I'd like to go into the sustainable deconstruction itself what we're talking about here what are the principles and goals around that and then how we're proposing to phase that out that construction so we're currently in the middle of this analysis and our plan is to come back to you in the springtime with more of the conclusions of that analysis and at that time we'll have more refined cost estimates around exactly what we anticipate this project will cost so the

[15:01] question we have for you tonight is does Council have any questions on staffs approach and timing to begin with deconstruction of the hospital starting in 2019 so first I want to bring you in a really brief history tour of the hospital or the hospital BCH was first established in 1920 in this original house here that a little yellow block that you see in the corner of the slide is the footprint of that house and we'll watch it expand as we go through the slides so the first expansion was in 1926 and when they built on a new 45 bed wing and that little black wing is that first expansion then in 1953 we had another single-story added to the hospital 1957 there was another major addition added to the hospital 65 there was the patient towers that we know now to the north that were added 1972 there was another major addition this was just

[16:02] prior to asbestos being banned in buildings and in construction in 1978 so we can understand from that that all these additions will require abatement up until this point 81 there was another expansion followed by 85 86 oops sorry so that leads us to the last expansion that was the medical office pavilion which was built in 1992 there were a lot of interior renovations that actually went on in this timeframe as well and you know what this history really has told us in this analysis is just how patched together this building has been the systems that were added over time the structures that were added to each other over time we actually know that there are our systems abandoned in place in the walls and in the ceilings of this building that we'll have to uncover and handle through the

[17:01] deconstruction there's a little house buried in there somewhere yeah actually sorry I meant to point that out so that yellow block that is in the pavilion that's that original house so you can see you know we're gonna look for it when we get into this we have not seen the original foundations much of what was done over the years was taken down as other things were built and so we don't really see much in there but something's got to be buried in there somewhere we know where to look so the hospital today around three hundred and thirty thousand square feet including the pavilion it really sprawls the site two thirds of the building are actually just in the basement and on the ground floor and we understand you know how this hospital evolved its form its character really was in response to the growing needs of a hospital as opposed to attempting to be a really architectural distinctive piece of

[18:01] architecture nor was it developed to really address the surrounding community it was it was to serve as a hospital so now I'm just going to go through the interior of it just kind of briefly to give you a kind of a full picture of what we're looking at the basement which really houses the inner workings of the hospital is again of roughly a third of the overall area it has nine major mechanical rooms that holds the the big equipment that served how the hospital space is it's a network of ducts and pipes and conduits that run from down in these spaces up throughout the walls in ceilings of the rest of the hospital the morgue the kitchen are also on this level parts of the basement did flood in 2013 and so there's active dewatering of the hospital basement today to keep it dry there are 31 air handling units that

[19:01] serve this building so air handling units are the big large pieces of mechanical equipment that essentially provide heating and cooling and fresh air to a building for comparison the buildings down here that we work in like the Municipal Building and parkcentral have about two per buildings so this is kind of like adding 15 buildings to our inventory again just to give a sense of size there are various ages and conditions most of them are pretty inefficient so they would not meet our current energy codes there's a massive electrical distribution system in the hospital again to serve the needs of a hospital we can imagine with the kind of diagnostic equipment the o-r is the type of needs there would likely be oversized for just about any other use little access to natural light the other thing we know about asbestos is it's found in just about everything but in pipe wraps that go around pipes that run throughout in duct insulation in sealants in addition to ceiling tiles and floor

[20:01] tiles where we commonly hear it so all of these the images we show down here are of some of those air handling units we know when we disassemble we will have to abate around all of those pieces as well so so the first floor is another third of the hospital to give you a good sense of proportion we have some dimensions on there but also a visual is it's about a football field deep by almost two football fields wide it contains the emergency rooms the laboratories the diagnostic rooms some of the images that I've put in here one in the upper right hand corner are the way we see walls throughout the building all those little outlets are medical gas lines electrical data and they cover just about every wall in the hospital what it really is telling us is what's behind those walls is pretty intense infrastructure so we don't just have you know vacant drywall walls and when we try to move something it's it's an

[21:01] intense effort there's a pneumatic tube system that runs throughout the hospital that's that other photo in the upper middle that's like when you go to a bank or a pharmacy that system that delivers pharmaceuticals there's stations all over the hospital so we can see how that network runs the lower images are of the diagnostic equipment that we see throughout the first floor so again in addition to being served by electrical medical gases these pieces of equipment are supported by very large sub structures that actually move the equipment around that will have to be disassembled once we get the building and then you'll see a bunch of little dots all over the plans and those are the plumbing fixtures so we know there's about 700 or more than 700 plumbing fixtures throughout the building again this tells us a lot about just the network of plumbing that runs throughout the building most typical buildings try to stack their plumbing so it's

[22:01] efficient and so that doesn't run throughout it's not the case in a hospital it pretty much runs to just about every room page or the floors 2 through 4 are the patient wings and so a lot of what I just had talked about on the first floors is the same thing here we've got plumbing fixtures we have medical gas lines we have a network of systems that runs in the walls and the ceilings throughout the building so this history and the current conditions have provided us with a lot of insight and clues again into just the intensity of what it's going to take to disassemble this project and ultimately take the hospital down just moving a wall is is a big challenge it really it interrupts major systems and would have to be handled so with all this in mind I just want to touch really briefly on the issue of reusing the hospital and remind folks why we have continued to recommend

[23:00] against reusing either in the short term or in the long run so if we were to reuse any change of use or any new use would be considered a change abuse and one of the first and foremost things we would have to do is reconfigure the floor plan to address the life safety requirements of that new use the other thing that we would have to do is bring the entire building up to meet our current energy codes and we would also have to comply with current flood protection requirements so just sort of playing out this timeline and what that might look like for us just assessing what an appropriate new use might be who could take advantage of that what would make sense could take several months to figure that out we would have to go into then a full design to again address the life safety the new use those requirements and go through the regulatory review process in order to get a building permit and then we would have to enter

[24:01] into an actual renovation project which we know would entail some level of abatement so even for a temporary reuse this could take two years to get to a point where we actually could reuse the building and our big takeaway from this as we know this would be costly it would take quite a bit to renovate this building for really any other use it would be time intensive and it would just detract from our looking at that sustainable deconstruction so again this is a little bit more basis of where we have continued to recommend against reuse of the building so now I want to get into sustainable deconstruction itself so what our principles are what our goals are with this project and then how we're proposing to phase this project out so the principles behind the sustainable deconstruction are to reduce reuse recycle and rebuy specifically

[25:03] with the hospital our first goal is to reduce the amount of materials that actually leave the site altogether so part of what we're exploring is just how much of this building could theoretically be just repurposed right back on site in other infrastructure new infrastructure and buildings what can we even limit from exiting the bill or exiting the site altogether but ultimately we want to reduce to the greatest degree possible what ends up in a landfill as far as reuse and it kind of couples with rebuy we know that all those sinks and toilets and there's just a whole bunch of cabinetry in there that's in really good condition and our hope is that we can work with our local nonprofit partners and resellers to just reuse directly those those fixtures and so essentially we're coining this our garage sale phase of the project but hoping to directly reuse all those fixtures and cabinets there's also things like refrigerants and hydraulic

[26:01] fluids that have a good secondary market as well so we would drain a lot of our systems and then try to resell those sorts of things on second three markets and so that rebuy is you know are selling or donating others so others could rebuy and then we'd look to recycle as much as possible and with all that infrastructure it's actually a lot of really good recyclable material so I think that our ability to achieve kind of a high percentage of recycled content was pretty high all that sheet metal and ducks and the pipes if we know there's a lot of copper and lead shielding and all of that we'd look to recycle it's a very conscientious sorting of materials that would go on to do that and to get it into the right waste streams but this project really creates quite an opportunity to look at that on the toilets and stuff how do you get them so that they are low water toilets I don't

[27:00] know exactly how you might retrofit them to be low water toilets do something that would be more to our goals today yeah it's so it's gonna be I think a balance between land filling them and reusing or reselling them but that's something we can certainly look into and some of them may be lower flow you if you want it which is simply the the ones that aren't efficient a recycle that at the city's charm yard into asphalt base Oh way base and the ones that are are sold at resources great and then when one nice question on this part you went through a really good presentation of the development of this hospital and back in those days they used lead paint so what are you going to do what's the

[28:00] city's plans to abate for lead paint and make sure that that doesn't get into the soils and things like that yeah well good I said there's a big abatement phase and so abatement is really not just of asbestos it's going to be there's lead lining in a lot of those walls so all those x-ray rooms they're lead-lined or they have copper so our abatement takes into consideration LED paint the copper shielding the lead shielding asbestos all those hazardous materials we're going to be looking at fume hoods what kind of things went up in a hospital through fume hoods so that's part of the whole process is to go through a large survey which is what we're conducting right now to test every material and then have an abatement plan around that so just finishing in this slide you know this has really been coined as construction in Reverse and so you get a sense of where the time it takes to take this building down it will take some

[29:01] time to disassemble these parts but it is an effective waste mitigation process does different types of professionals to deal with each of these processes there can be one if we could get one abatement contractor who is qualified to take care of all these different types of materials but the process that which you have to actually take out and then what you do with them can be different what you also have on-site is an independent hygienist so as we take things out people are testing so they understand exactly what is coming out and that it's being properly handled but one contractor typically is qualified and we would qualify a contractor who can take care of all the materials we're going to encounter in the hospital so we are doing a full survey right now and it's a destructive sampling survey in just about every room of the hospital so we know what we're dealing with thank you

[30:07] so we've broken down the phases of deconstruction into four kind of distinct pieces the first phase is decommissioning and ongoing operations and maintenance and we plan to start this in early 2019 even before bch vacates and this some aspect of this will continue to go on for the duration of the project the second phase is the interior deconstruction where we're taking out all those components a lot of abatement will happen and we would like to start this in June of 2019 right after the hospital make aids we anticipate this will take roughly 12 to 18 months to complete this phase phase 3 would be the exterior deconstruction follow on the heels of interior deconstruction we're expecting that this might take about six months and then phase four is really site

[31:04] preparation so once we take that exterior down down to the foundation walls we would look at how we prepare the site and the time frame of that is going to be dependent on the soils investigation and I'll get into all of these phases in a little bit more detail in just a second but at the end of these four phases we would have a site that's ready for redevelopment and so that would be the goal and again we anticipate this would take you know roughly two years for this process to complete on your soils are you the investigation are you looking for swelling soils or are you looking for contaminants in the soils or are you looking for types of soils on the site we are specifically with this going to be looking for contaminants and do soil testing to know what kind of abatement we'll do as far as if you're asking about redevelopment and understanding what types of soils that would be something a geotechnical report that would be done as part of redevelopment based on what that next project is so

[32:05] before I get into a little bit more detail on each of the phases I just want to take a moment and address our sensitivity to the community because we do understand that this is going to be a large project and it will be disruptive and we very much want to be a good neighbor throughout this project as best we can we know we're gonna have to mitigate a lot of what we're talking about in each of these phases but we're hoping if there's a way to turn this into the best positive experience that we can so starting in early 2019 maybe around March we'd like to hold some community open houses so we can just inform people about what's going on and form them more about the project itself helped set expectations and answer people's questions and address concerns we will throughout the whole project plan to provide regular communication so we can get people heads up when you know something new is gonna happen what next phases are going on so people

[33:01] have a place to come and understand what's going on and ask questions and address concerns we would like to explore opportunities to engage people and you know this could be around creative ways to reuse materials we know we have some great resources in the community to talk about that so we think that there are some opportunities in our garage sale phase and in some other places to really engage people on that and specifically one of the first things we're gonna have to do is put a fence around this building or around the site and we don't want this to be a 6-foot chain link fence what we're thinking is this is more of a solid fence and we're going to work with our office of arts and culture to see if we can extend the really successful mural project to this fence to make at least the experience around the site as pleasant as possible and you know perhaps we can keep pieces of this fence you know into the future and permanent installations and buildings but that's at least one way we want to try to get out in front and and

[34:00] make at least the outside something pleasant while this goes on we know again as Jim pointed out the timeline there's going to be some active construction for quite some time around here so now I'm just going to get into the actual phase is a little bit more detail so the first phase decommissioning and ongoing operations the really the key objective around deccan decommissioning is to reduce energy consumption and then the ongoing maintenance of the of the hospital last year the energy bill alone in the hospital was seven hundred thousand dollars so one of our primary first objectives is to reduce that and the way we're going to do that is to turn the building temperature down to really just above freezing so we're just not freezing water in pipes but otherwise we're going to try to limit that energy consumption we'll also look to shut down any unnecessary systems so that big electrical system we can probably take a that offline shut down some unnecessary

[35:03] elevators other unnecessary mechanical units and then a big imperative of the first phase is to secure the site in the building so we can keep unwanted inhabitants out of that building it is a large maze that people get in there so that is really the first thing that we know is important to tackle in this project right now most of this is funded we have eight hundred and seven thousand dollars that has been funded for this work and we're working to essentially be able to implement these measures within that funding as we continue on our analysis and we kind of uncover more costs there may be a small unfunded gap but again right now our goal is to stay within what's funded for this first year so the second phase is about interior deconstruction and our hazardous materials abatement it really starts that so the first thing we'll look to do

[36:01] is before we start abatement is remove as much of the building contents as we can again for resale or reuse so we're a lot of that cabinetry and the fixtures that we can but then once we have removed those components and we start getting into more deconstruction we will get into the abatement phase and then have that full of bateman phase we actually anticipate much of the hospital and the insides is probably going to be taken down through some form of abatement but then once we have evaded everything we need to in the inside we will continue to disassemble what remains of the structures and the systems that are in there right now based on estimates that we had brought to you back in January this is roughly six to eight million dollars it's probably the lion's share of the work and it's the lion share of the time by twelve to eighteen months to get in there and conduct this but again the point of our analysis here is to help refine those estimates with the current surveying that we're doing so we can

[37:00] have a better sense of what this these costs will be so phase three is about exterior sustainable deconstruction it is really taking down the structure the exterior walls the roof down to the foundation and we will continue to have to conduct abatement through this phase because asbestos can be found in concrete in bricks in all those different pieces the image that you see on the left is of Saint Anthony's Hospital in Denver it was taken down in 2010 so this is just what we might start to expect to see on the site and this is really when the deconstruction starts to become visible to people on the site a lot of what's happening in the interior phase you're gonna see truck traffic coming to and from the site but lots going on just inside the building it's not looking like a lot here you're going to start to see the building come down and the site's really going to transform the image on the right is our simulation of what we will end up with at the end

[38:00] of this phase you won't see this from the street but it's essentially a bathtub because we will take the building down to the foundation walls we will have to continue to do construction dewatering during this phase because we know water is percolating up through the foundation so this phase is roughly approximated at two to three million dollars and we anticipate this would take about six months just to take the exterior down and again the last phase is about site preparation so either at the end of that last phase or beginning of this is when we will actually test soils to know what's in there know the level of abatement that might go on the image on the left is again our simulation of just a pad ready site that's our goal for this phase and the image on excuse me it was the image on the left the image on the right is again st. Anthony's something creative they did they actually filled their hole with the structure and so they crumbled that

[39:01] existing structure and exterior walls back into that hole we'll explore if that option is possible for our site but again this would be a way to reduce truck traffic and reduce actually having these materials even leave the site in the first place so will you be taking down the foundation walls themselves as we will after we test the soil so essentially we can't disturb any soil which is why we'll take exterior deconstruction just down to the foundation we can't actually take those foundation walls down until we know what's in the soil and what we have to do to treat if anything and so this phase will be taking down the foundation walls we'll take out the slab and then we'll fill in the hole and essentially grade the site for future site development and and what's the depth of the groundwater level I don't know offhand what the groundwater depth is it may vary across the site I know that the floodplain

[40:00] comes in across the northern part of that so so would you implode the building or the foundation no we won't implode the building and specifically because we know well we don't know we're testing right now but we anticipate that we'll have to do some abatement of those exterior walls so that's where it takes time it's not you know a day and it's done we really have to disassemble because we will abate as we're disassembling the exterior so the costs and the time really for this phase are unknown until we can test those soils and know what we're dealing with soil testing do you have to wait until you're done to test the soil or can we be testing the soil now no we really need to wait until we're further into the process the challenge with and we have been advised not to test the soils now until we know more definitively about what the future

[41:01] uses will be because a lot of how we handle the soils is determined by what those future uses are okay that doesn't work for me so okay I mean we know we're gonna build a building or many buildings and we'll have some open space between the buildings I mean so depending on if we build housing or we build sort of subgrade parking those there's differences in that and there's also how they're financed so a lot of times the level or what you do with abatement depend and what you encounter can be determined through or defined through the financing that goes and the lenders who actually are giving the money out to develop those projects and what you do if housing goes above or if you're digging out and putting parking in is different than if you're putting a different kind of retail space on there as far as what you actually do with the soils depending on how far you go into the soils also

[42:01] determines how deep you need to go and treating the soil we just don't know what we're going to encounter and as soon as we test those soils were on the clock to do something with them but we don't know what we need to do with them yet okay that's the missing piece re yeah okay so so our next steps are to finish this deconstruction analysis in order to help bring more refined cost estimates to all of this work and and then a more conclusive plan of how we want to proceed with this work we want to come back to you in April to provide you with those results and those refine cost estimates and then we plan to begin decommissioning in early 2019 BCH has been very cooperative with us and helping us coordinate what things we can start doing ahead of them actually vacating and really focused around securing the site first but then we plan to begin deconstruction when BCH vacates in June of 2019 so our big takeaway from our analysis so far is we actually think

[43:01] this is a great opportunity to reflect our values and see how much progress we can make towards zero waste goal and with a big deconstruction project like this maybe be an example for others and some lessons learned in the community but it is also a very complex undertaking and it will take time and it will take money and some focus to accomplish this work so again our question for you tonight is if you have any questions on staffs approach and our timing to proceed with this deconstruction in 2019 Cindy I just wondered if you'd speak briefly about what's going to be happening with the pavilion during this time so all of our deconstruction plans include trying to preserve the pavilion again for the same reasons that we went through it's quite complicated to try to reuse in any interim use but we are based on our discussion earlier this year about reuse

[44:01] of the pavilion we're preserving the pavilion for reuse but we will do abatement and do an interior deconstruction that just takes advantage of you know our contractors being there and the economy of scale of being able to do that at this time which you'll leave the exterior we will leave the exterior and as we get further down we will have to address and this will get into some of the timing of other developments those big holes that are left behind when the pillow and the hospital is gone so we we do know that that's coming but I think there'll be progress on other work we're doing that will help inform I'm just what we're doing there yeah I was gonna ask the same question but drill into that a little bit on the medical pavilion is it gonna be really taking it down to the exterior walls and maybe the the core or is there gonna be more left than that do you have a sense of that my sense is is that we're taking it more down again the the extent with the renovation and the extent of work that

[45:00] we'll have to do just to patch back those walls will trigger our energy codes and our need to bring that building up into full compliance with our energy codes and it's similar to what we encountered on the Brenton building where it was really taking it back to its kornshell because what we did back there is we had to rebuild the exterior wall to meet our envelope requirements and so likely we'll be bringing it more down to a corn shell and I know we're gonna have to hit that level of renovation eventually and do you think will that be done as part of the abatement deconstruction process or will that be in a later phase where it's renovated because that's the renovation I think of as part of the new uses and whereas the deconstruction is about getting rid of the old ones do you have a sense of how that's gonna play out I think based on you know the other discussions that will go on and what we can determine about its its future use from a constructibility standpoint it's ideal if we can do these things concurrently so if we're actually starting renovation

[46:01] as we're taking the hospital down again that's a more ideal scenario but we understand we may not be in a place to make that decision so these are sort of two options we're carrying in our costs is you know what if we have to preserve the pavilion for a future renovation versus what if we can renovate it while we're in this deconstruction project and we can then maybe take a look at what the difference in cost is and that may help with some decisions yes maybe that's part of the next phase of analysis because I'd if I remember was it 42 million yeah 40 yeah and that includes a new floor but that's a lot more than the six to eight million and the the numbers that you're talking about the renovation is not included in any of these numbers but yeah but it is part of our analysis is to understand those different options we understand will be carrying those and there haven't been decisions made yet so but there might be some real efficiencies over there okay that was one question thank you does the hospital have any lingering responsibility for hazardous materials

[47:01] like if we dig into those soils and we find some real contamination can we share with that responsibility at all my understanding is that this really wasn't as is okay so purely as is all right I hope it goes well and what about the the parking lot so you're talking about the fencing right and so we have these big buildings you need to put a fence around protect people but that parking lot to the west is kind of different from that would we well we're going to need that parking lot to actually do this deconstruction and so it's part of our analysis is you know can we give back some portion of maybe the western edge of that you know and bring our fence in a few bays but if you can imagine all those different types of recycling they're gonna each require their own bins we're going to have some really extensive lay down area needs and so we expect actually to use most of that parking lot for the deconstruction process by our project okay thank you

[48:02] that's it for me yeah yeah I did question about security that was a big bold and we've heard from like 3303 and eleven that that that's been a big issue over there do do you guys um this like feels like it would be great to do it in a really conscious way where you know we're redirecting people we're not just like kicking people out and making sure that they understand what their shelter options are and things like that is that part of your plan I think we can take a look at that right now our our plan is really understanding how we we can secure the building to keep people out but I think we can address how we might redirect as part of that too and our messaging and our communications yeah I think that'd be great okay great so beside lid I was just wondering an initial understanding or is there cadmium are there radioactive materials right Nick you know in the soils really I have no idea at this at this point we hope not and we

[49:02] don't necessarily have any reason to suspect that honestly at the the hospital has to comply with pretty rigorous standards as far as you know keeping what they do in line so we don't have reason to suspect that but we won't know until we get into it great presentation my question is about you mentioned the dewatering that goes on in the site and part of what we're going to be talking about next is considering how we deal with the flood mitigation and and Goose Creek and the drainage and all that and to what extent does this process and what you find out in terms of the groundwater inform that next piece of it I think these two are fairly unrelated this is ground water that percolates up

[50:03] as opposed to what I what we're going to be talking about really is flood mitigation in a you know flood event so I think you know we'll continue to kind of learn from each other but this is everyday events just the snow we have today or the over the weekend will seep into the soils and we'll call that ground water to percolate up all those expansions that we saw every time we expanded we have places where water just wants to come up we don't have a really nice clean bathtub if you will so that's just daily groundwater that's seeping up that we're handling right now to keep the basement dry I just forgot to you didn't mention one possible interim use which is as a haunted house terrifying so in our analysis there was a lot of hospitals used as haunted houses yeah

[51:02] down in the morgue maybe that's right so I have a couple questions one is and I know just enough to be dangerous on this but in terms of labor law but this is gonna be a huge multi-year project we is there any way to make sure we're hiring locals that were employing on community members in this effort have we thought about that typically our procurement process does spell out a bit about trying to use local resources but we can certainly look into that as we bid the project there is going to be multiple subcontractors on this and we can look at how we can I just saw that after I don't know what hour it's not that we do that much construction ourselves but here we are so I guess I would just saw that out so you're frowning mister attorneys that's why I precursor that with I don't know what our labor laws are but I just thought usually you can

[52:02] do some sort of local preference but remember there's lots of things you're doing contracting like you want to encourage women to my own businesses as well and some of those might not be local so I think there's a balance of things that you want to look at we'd certainly put that as one of the priorities but I think it has to be part of the total mix well I'll just throw that out there is is a value perhaps among others that might be I think would help endear the public to that what is going to be a long process if it's hiring people in the community and then the other one I'm gonna ask this carefully but just in terms of you meant engaging in the whole deconstruction process all the folks that are involved nonprofits and what not and I guess I'm curious about the process for that especially we're gonna hope to make a model out of it several of us sit on the resource conservation advisory board which engages a lot of folks think about these issues and I'm just wondering just the process around setting up the best

[53:03] systems for that and engaging the community because there's a lot of folks obviously already talking about this so so it's really it's part of our analysis right now that we're talking about and we have our our purchasing department looking at that as well so we make sure that we're complying with everything we need to do from a regulatory standpoint but we are going to be engaging resource and others to kind of understand who can we engage or who can we reach out to who takes this sort of stuff really and so that is really part of what our analysis is right now so we should have more information on that when we come back there's a very how to deal with hard to recycle stuff is a very active conversation in the larger front and Range recycle Colorado is the big statewide group that tries to convene conversations and there's talk about you know and have a website where this person's waste is that person's remanufacturing feedstock and anyhow I

[54:02] just encourage us to take advantage of that larger conversation about because we're gonna end up with some weird stuff that yes anyone pulling those creative mechanisms to make sure it's used anyhow I would think we could take advantage of some of that absolutely we'd love to have anything else on this phase of it great that was really helpful um to understand the complexity and why it can't obviously I think there's a lot of desire to move fast and but now we understand there's more than one value at stake here in terms of trying to do it right and also abatement good lord there's a lot there great thank you we'll turn this back over to Jean

[55:41] all right thank you I'm gene CATSA with a planner with the comprehensive planning division and as Michelle and Jim already talked about Alpine balsam is both a great opportunity for a place where we can reflect some community values but is going to be a major change

[56:01] for central Boulder what we're here to talk about tonight are several key choices that shape that future and specifically just for that city on site we need your feedback to be to enable the continued progress to plan the site to inform additional analysis on costs and infrastructure in order to complete the area plan by the middle of next next year our vision plan that was adopted in 2017 outlines the desired future for the site as a hub of community life and local government services with affordable and sustainable living this aspirational plan provided the baseline for the analysis that's been done especially in regard to the uses that we have tested the Civic facilities and housing we seek your feedback on several key choices that were outlined in your questions you might think of these questions as the what and how of the site what uses go there what's the mix and how that should be achieved there

[57:02] are trade-offs around how we develop this site for example the lower building heights might result in fewer housing units or more space for flood mitigation may result in less development potential for other uses so if we can clearly understand the council's preferences on these key choices we can refine the scenarios and analysis and come back to you with a preferred option we've had a lot of community feedback around the initial discussion for Alpine balsam and the analysis that we've done in the past several months we've talked to community community members about goals and shared this analysis and scenarios we've had some lively and gain and engaging consumption imagined events included the project kickoff in May pop-up events through the summer a workshop with representatives of several advisory boards a community workshop online feedback from be heard

[58:00] Boulder and a discussion with the Planning Board what I'm gonna do next is just briefly walk you through some of the key topics and highlight what we learned from the analysis and also describe what we heard from in the community feedback first off it's around housing and I don't need to remind you that a for that affordable housing is a key goal in the community and a high priority for this location the mix of housing types and the level of affordability are the key issues related to housing we know from recent projects that a higher percentage of affordable housing on the site will likely require the city to subsidize or discount the value of the land we are not yet at the point of being able to identify who the housing would serve whether that would be workforce housing or seniors or low income that will depend on the types and numbers of units that can be achieved and we'll provide more information on the potential population served when we

[59:02] come back with a refined option tonight it will be useful to hear your preferences about the amount and the mix of housing the other priority for the site is for civic facilities and services replacement and consolidation of city facilities are needed for several reasons to create better spaces to serve the community achieve efficiencies for customers as well as staff locate buildings out of the high hazard floodplain reduce costs for maintenance operations and leasing and to achieve our climate goals when we're talking about civic facilities we aren't just talking about replacing office buildings it's also to engage it's also to create engaging spaces for the community that include places to gather or meet and to deliver services and we're not just talking about buildings we're talking about public plazas and open vibrant street level places that could include small-scale small-scale retail or in computer spaces

[60:00] the city has a range of facilities space needs renovation of the Brenton building and the Medical Pavilion pavilion as Michelle discussed were identified by our early studies and concern and confirmed by our consultant teams to be the most efficient way to achieve our near-term facilities needs and when we discussed facilities priorities in August around the East bookend the council indicated the preference to that relocated facilities don't go in the East bookend of the Civic area but be okay today Alpine balsam and so that direction is reflected in the potential programming that's shown in the scenarios so regarding the potential for Boulder County to occupy some of the space at Alpine balsam our respective staff members have been working to further assess that possibility based on the direction that was from the council and the commissioners at the luncheon

[61:00] last spring to can to continue to evaluate and assess that of that possibility the scenarios shows several variations of mix of uses including the potential of meeting some or all of the county's needs at Alpine balsam this could include facilitating their gold of redeveloping or relocating the Health and Human Services functions that are currently housed at the iris and Broadway complex into a facility similar to that at the Longmont hub the county is anticipating a process in 2019 to further explore the right location for that facility whether that's at the iris complex another location or could possibly be an Alpine balsam in order to utilize the iris complex for affordable housing that process is in its early stages but could be promising for more affordable housing along the corridor so what we heard about mix of uses you receive the results of the polling that was done

[62:01] both at the workshops and online those results are pretty specific excuse me pretty specific about the questions we also have the event summaries that include a little more nuance about people's preferences so the graph up here shows the the mix of uses from the community workshop and the be heard Boulder polling online people have told us that they think affordable housing is a critical need and there are a range of viewpoints about how much is appropriate excuse me would you just reiterate how many persons were involved in that mhm we had about between 60 and 70 attend the workshop those that stayed for the polling I think we had about thirty thirty summer forty responses in the polling and then the be heard bolder feedback we had over a hundred I think it was about a hundred and the numbers

[63:04] represent percentages oh those are percentage those are percentages Jean and a question about this so we have this survey was that voluntary or was it statistically it was it was completely voluntary that was we communicated that out through next door and the planning email and various other methods okay all right so regarding the mix of civic facilities and housing most folks want to see a true mix housing with active vibrant plazas and spaces in conjunction with the Civic uses as as was outlined in the vision plan the Planning Board was cautious about this amount of Civic uses on the site suggesting support for Alpine balsam to minimally provide a consolidated service center some members expressed the preference to locate city

[64:00] facilities closer to Boulder Junction or in the transit village area plan face to area regarding the county facilities at Alpine balsam community members and the Planning Board acknowledged that there may be benefits to considering more Civic uses at Alpine balsam if it would mean more housing at the iris complex but but people express concern that the process might complicate or delay delay that decision-making okay now I want to talk a little bit more about the how we can figure the uses on the site intensity and building heights primarily the vision plan outlined a wide range of possible building heights and intent and intensities and now it's time to really narrow that range to get more specific the intensity of development and the height of buildings as you know is one of the topics of greatest concern in the community and about which we have a range of viewpoints we heard from people who live throughout Boulder but I would say a majority of the feedback came from those who live in Central and North Boulder so as you can see from the the

[65:01] survey results and others we did ask folks where they live and a good a good number of them were really in that central Boulder and North Boulder areas and as you can see on the the feedback is mixed here on this one we were able to roll in the feedback from the advisory board workshop but the questions that we asked between that one and the other ones were a little bit different so it wasn't included in the previous slide generally there's support for taller buildings up to 55 feet along Broadway with most favoring a mixed intensity across the site many would prefer to see buildings at the three story at three stories on the western part of the site expressing concern that higher intensity development might negatively impact the character of the area well others advocate for higher and - excuse me higher intensity buildings up to 55 feet across the site and true in order to truly maximize the potential

[66:00] for housing and achieve the activity that and vibrancy that wouldn't be achieved at lower densities the Planning Board favored mixed intensities towards 35 to 55 foot tall buildings and emphasized a preference for variation in the heights of buildings flood mitigation the big component of this site about a third of the site is currently in the hundred year flood plain and how mitigation is handled affects the development capacity on the site the vision plan calls for developing continuous green space from from Broadway to North Boulder Park for storm net water management flood control and recreational amenity when we talk about a Greenway in the scenarios we mean space for water to flow from a storm but would be dry most of the time our consultants and staff completed a now initial analysis for an approach to construct some flipped some flood mitigation in North Boulder Park in

[67:00] order to detain about half of the flow in the park and then accommodate the rest on the site in the Greenway this approach had strong support from the community and from board members I'll just say also that our initial study indicates that mitigation and the park could be designed to preserve the aesthetics preserve and maintain the existing uses and maintain all of the existing trees and if the detention of the park is selected as a preferred alternative well our staff will work closely with the community in determining that final design to read to retain all of those uses Jean can I interrupt you the question there and in terms of the flood conveyance through the site with the Greenway when I looked through the scenarios there was the the narrower greenways 4550 feet and the wider one of a hundred feet and it seemed like them the wider one could accomplish accommodate most of the flows but when I looked at the narrower narrower one the way that it looked to me was that the flows were being accommodated in a pipe and not on the surface I misunderstand that did the

[68:00] narrow Greenway also include conveyance on the surface yeah the narrow narrow Greenway and again this is these are early designs somewhere between that 40 to 55 foot space could accommodate a on the surface conveyance so it would have a pipe and surface conveyance I think it could be one or the other one or the other okay although all those scenarios had a diagram with a pipe but I guess it's flexible okay show that way but it is possible okay I'm just confused by what you just said we we you're saying we could put all of this in a pipe and do no Greenway is that what you just said you could do either four we could put it in a pipe but it would still require some space on the surface it would require a little more space with the narrow green way to still convey that half of the flow on-site okay I'm not sure I'm totally dope is

[69:00] what being envisioned a mix of both or is it really either/or because I didn't see the or part I mean all the versions have I know that the recommendation is to open it up but I'm just curious I didn't see a version where there was just a pipe and is that because we're not recommending it it's not feasible I'm just trying to understand the range of violence if I could and I'm like oh well we have others here I'll let the experts answer instead of the amateurs okay so as far as the introduce yourself I'm Katie Knapp I'm a flood and greenways project manager and so as far as the different mitigation options that they're looking at with the narrower Greenway that is in conjunction with detention at sat North Boulder Park so what that does is detain waters and so you have smaller flows that go across the Alpine balsam site if we don't do

[70:02] the detention in the park then you need a a wider channel because you have more flows that go across the but go across the Alpine balsam site but in either scenario we don't have the capacity downstream to continue the channel so even if you put it another option is to put it in a pipe blurt it's not there are there are trade-offs when you put flows into a pipe and bury it you're more susceptible to clogging it's not as resilient of a flood mitigation strategy but either way when you get to the Broadway side the flows are going to have to be spread back out again it would be smaller flows if we do detention in the park and larger flows if we're not doing any detention know if that helps to answer clarify kourindou um and and I've gotten us off on this go

[71:00] ahead Mary and then Lisa where the location of the flows as currently depicted and all of the options on that north side of the property is that where it has to go or could it be run more through this site there's there's from a flood mitigation standpoint there's flexibility there this site is relatively flat there's not you know it's not like we're looking at the bottom of a canyon and that's where the creek is it's been buried a long time ago so that that location was for illustration mostly it's also for Mac for efficiency of building site and of infrastructure and circulation so as our consultants worked with really penciling out viable building footprints viable circulation it maximizes the development potential to be able to have it on that north side so you you approach if it

[72:07] didn't really speak to it that goose creek has downstream component to it that's on the east side of Broadway so what kind of work has been done to work with people who own land on the east side of Broadway so we have the ideal shopping center or whatever they call it and if I looked at the floodplain map some of that drainage could also go across the street on Alpine to the south so the goose creek floodplain is kind of a sinuous kind of flow so what work has been done to address the downstream flow so right now we have a we're working on a flood mitigation study and so we've looked at several and it's Oh goose

[73:02] creek and two cannon Creek they're both part of the same flood mitigation study and right now we have several different alternatives we've been getting feedback from the community on that we we've had several different public meetings we had an online questionnaire part of that study you might recall the one of the options we were getting feedback on was also the Long's garden site for detention that's all part of that whole study and so we have been reaching out to the community getting feedback we are now taking that feedback and we're looking at assessing the different alternatives to come up with an overall recommended plan we have somewhat put that process on hold because this is a great opportunity with Alpine balsam to get that input on detention at at the park and to get your feedback on that

[74:00] and so we're going to be folding that back into our our analysis as we are developing our recommendations so our next step is to come up with recommendations weighing off some of those different trade-offs but I guess my question is does the city directly contacted the people who own the shopping centers to the east because I met with one of them and one of them was very surprised to see the Creek on his property right so we have we have sent out notifications to all of the property owners and all of the people that live in the areas to both the occupants and owners as we get closer with our forming recommendations one thing that we'll will be doing is having you know those one-on-one sit-down meetings with property owners and neighborhood groups to help refine those alternatives so we have not at this point we have not had

[75:00] the opportunity to sit down with every parking on it so so there may be some scales or but you economies of scale where you know maybe the property owners are interested in doing something across the street but that there might be an opportunity to collaborate and I would think something like drainage flood Creek I'm a floodplain drainage might be a great opportunity to engage people who would be impacted at least I think you're exactly right and as we move into the next couple of months of talking to the community members about that the area planning parts of this mm-hmm we're gonna be working closely to consider plan mitigation with that as well okay in the interest of flow we'll get back to I have a couple more questions about this but I'll wait about the flood peas all right I'm gonna keep going let's talk about access and

[76:00] mobility so staff work with consultants to study the trip generation and develop an approach for access and parking for the uses that we're considering we learned that the number of vehicle trips estimated to be generated by the new mix of uses in any of the five scenarios would be lower than the number of vehicle trips generated when the hospital was it was fully operational we considered a range of ways to address access and parking since this impacts development space and costs and a lot of this was outlined in your material about various levels of parking ratios and how to address that there is strong community support for what we described as the district approach so similar to what we do in the downtown and Boulder junction with shared parking a commitment to transportation demand management transit and proactive ways to address overflow parking in the neighborhood people generally support not devoting more space and resources to building more parking and advisory board

[77:00] members and the Planning Board strongly supported modeling the TMP goals here okay I'm going to talk just briefly about each of the scenarios and what they illustrate the scenarios were informed by a number of technical studies for economics flood and transportation among others these all assume the renovation of the medical pavilion as Michelle had described and with additional floor with an additional floor as the most efficient way to meet that minimum Civic facility need we think think of the scenarios as tools that illustrate the range of possibilities these are no by no means final designs and we're not going to be asking you to choose any one of them we are not recommending any one of them what you see on them is the conceptual configuration of buildings parking flood mitigation and the sketch of the building massing so of the five scenarios there are two bookends that are high intensity and really test the

[78:02] ranges of mix of uses three in the middle are at the medium or mixed intensity and they show different configurations of housing types uses and circulation okay scenario one illustrates that the one bookend the full Civic facility uses and this was really both the city and the counties full consolidation needs we recognize that this doesn't achieve housing goals and it doesn't achieve that vibrant mix of uses that was described in the Vision Plan but it illustrates this choice scenario two illustrates the mix mix of uses with housing and civic facilities with multi-family flats and civic facilities on about half of the site this one would achieve about 55 units and it shows the the wider Greenway that would be needed if there's no mitigation than North

[79:00] Boulder Park scenario three illustrates a mix of housing types there are about a hundred and forty units with some of majority of them as townhomes and then or know some of them as townhomes and some as multi-family flats this one shows a moderate amount of civic facilities and with the plaza closer to Broadway it also illustrates that narrower Greenway scenario for illustrates most of the housing as townhomes with just a sum of the flats along Broadway and it shows only having the Civic facilities in the renovated medical pavilion this one's with the wide Greenway and then lastly scenario five was developed seeking to understand what the way that we could accommodate the most housing that can be built on the site including still that moderate level of civic facilities needed and this one is if the entire site is developed up to 55 feet we might be able

[80:02] to achieve about about 320 units so with can I ask a question on the type of units between four and five you're talking about 90 units and one and 330 in the other is that I know it's not for sure anything but is it intended for a broader mix of people can you just explain very briefly why such a large range it's quite a few townhomes and so that's part of that the townhome use while that would meet some type of housing need they they you will have a lower yield of number of units yeah and so on five we're really looking at all of them being at that stacked flats and

[81:01] so that's where you get the I have a number of units but it may not serve different rooms are shorter buildings right in scenario for right scenario for us is you have a lot more a lot less floor area total as well correct so we're gonna have some questions about this I see that the next slide is financing can we pause here and ask you questions then yes okay Sam and then Jill had a question on scenario three do we have any idea about the mix of townhomes and multi-family because that's got 140 units so more than scenario number four maybe can you I just switch back to it um yes and so it looks like there's some big complex to the right I don't have

[82:04] those numbers right in front of me but you can actually kind of count yeah I can counsel it's like 24 count homes or something along the line okay yeah Jill will you remind me what percentage you're thinking in each scenario could be affordable versus mark your aid I don't think we yet know we think I know the RFPs it will depend but we're finding like at the most aggressive thirty percent right now I mean what do you think I don't think 40 but 40 is that feasible really like you said actually doable it would depend on what the financial objectives of the city for the project were gonna be the higher the percentage of the units that are affordable versus market rate then that diminishes the value of the land if you want to convey it on to a private developer and if there's a there's a point you come to and of course I don't

[83:01] know exactly where that is where if you if the community expectation is that of a quite significant portion of the units are gonna be affordable then at that point the only way that you know private partner could make that pencil would be to have essentially a zero basis in the land yeah that's kind of you know xxx and Perl that's kind of the model there we're achieving I don't remember the exact number where we are we're somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of the unit's I think being affordable but the city's contribution to that of course is that conveying the land at a zero basis right cuz I do just sort of want to remind council as we consider these options that the townhomes which are pretty modest over it sparked the martin the market rate one sell for about a million and the townhomes that are fairly modest in size along east pearl sell for about 1 5 to 1 8 so you know townhomes can look like cute and mature but but in that location you know they're about 1/5 okay we're gonna thank

[84:04] you for that we're gonna keep on questions because yep so this is a question from our packet and it's on packet page 74 but it's 22 so it might be a appendix but it starts out by saying according to the Newmark night Frank third quarter 2017 market trends boulders office market has experienced negative absorption increased vacancy and flat lease rates and then it goes on to say as of that third quarter there were almost 7 million square feet of office space and 802 of that is vacant and so that's about eleven point five six percent so I'm curious what is there a healthy vacancy rate I'm not in real

[85:00] estate do you know on commercial is zero healthy vacancy rate in the city or I mean at least I'm sorry we would probably have to get back with you on that okay I'm just curious because I think in the various scenarios we could be talking anywhere from 110,000 square feet of office space up to I don't know 400 if we include that I don't remember all the numbers if we included the county so I guess so I'd like it an answer to that because if we have all this excess office space then maybe we shouldn't be creating additional office space it's just the point and I guess I can't make it comment you can I well right so just hold on this because we're gonna finish questions get to this last section and then we're gonna discuss two questions on the flood peace and one is

[86:00] just some unclear so we daylight it we have the Greenway and then it hits Broadway and because I don't quite get how we need to devote so much conveyance to this water if then it has to go down the sewer again all that cable I do love my greenways so that's crime so some of that is going to depend on whether or not there's detention or not if we're reducing those flows so if we're able to do detention in the park and reduce those flows then we can direct the stormwater into the existing stormwater system with the caveat that it's still going to be some overflow the existing stormwater system from Broadway down does not have the capacity to accept the flows our mitigation plan is looking at doing improvements all the way down to basically or Goose Creek has been been widened down like 28th Street area that

[87:05] area where we've done improvements in the past has hundred your capacity and so one of the alternatives were looking at is increasing the capacity in the channel up through to 19th Street basically at 19th Street is where the channel ends and so between 19th Street and the park we're looking at either doing some sort of channel systems some sort of pipe system we're getting going through the analysis to look at those different alternatives to figure out what we would do with the water okay I think you said that that you've held off on that larger study to figure this out but it does seem that one of the one influences the other they both influence each other so definitely and you could still do the the redevelopment at the Alpine balsam site what we'd need to do

[88:00] is once the flood waters even if you don't detain them once they pass through the site at the downstream end of the state at Broadway you'd have to figure out a way to basically spread the Mack out again to mimic the current floodplain conditions and so you could still do normally we do flood mitigation when we're doing channel work you're working from the downstream side up when you do detention you can actually reduce those flows which gives you some benefit through the whole system in this particular situation we have spills that come down from 2-mile we have different as you go down the system you get diminishing returns from the detention at the park but it does have a good benefit when you're looking at the Alpine balsam site and Broadway in that immediate area that the initial question stands in terms of okay you've got this Greenway now the water comes to the end you say it has to spread out so just like some of it go into a be great and

[89:00] some of it gets spread out all along just flood Broadway yes yeah so right now the flood plain floods Broadway but right now on a good rainstorm it collects on 9th Street so presumably we're mitigating that but when when Broadway would flood would be during 100-year flood as I would flood events as well but basically you can't normally when you contain waters and and for one site and you don't have the capacity downstream you need to figure out a system to mimic the existing conditions and so you'd be spreading them back out in a major event so that would flood similarly to what would happen in a flood today which means what you you pipe it down all the way down to Alpine so that and so that spreads out from Alpine to balsam like what is that yeah it'd be like yeah so your channel there would be an inlet that would go to the existing pipe system whatever can't fit

[90:00] in there is going to overflow and go onto the street so that's in one spot so it's not spread out well you can die design it in such a way where it's it ends up spreading it out so your channel can flatten and widen out once you get past the where that Inlet is that connects to this pipe system so were 50 feet we'd make it wider right at the end that could be one way one way of doing it you could also have some inlets that bubble up we're once the storm drainage system hits its capacity you have some inlets that basically instead of the water draining into it they drain back out of it and it spreads out onto the street it's just what I was sort of saying like you pipe it all the way down to it like they're bits of it that come out all the way down to towards balsam I'm not sure I'm understanding what she said I was trying to get a visualization of but it's good enough okay I guess I'll just say that Mical de new Cadillac's through this site but then it goes back to being

[91:02] kind of a piecemeal system kind of makes me I'll just say it makes it hard to understand why we have to devote so much of the site to this water if we don't really have a plan for when it leaves the site anyhow I'll just just this bed feels like it needs more discussion an example an example of where we've done some flood mitigation and then it spreads back out again is if you're familiar with the violet crossing site and formal Canyon Creek so that was that's on violet and Broadway there's a residential development there so just on the east side of Broadway channel improvements were done in a multi-use path so that channel improvement there was able to allow the development of that violet crossing site but at the end of the site the channel ties back into the existing channel it was designed in such a way so that once the floodwaters get around that site it then mimics the

[92:01] floodplain that was there prior to that channel improvement okay on that particular site I mean we are planning to at a nine acre park to the east where Four Mile Canyon Creek is going to come through and I imagine I don't know but I imagine we would mitigate that to help contain or process those flood flood waters through there so I just see the violet crossing they also added a bunch of soil there so they took themselves out of the floodplain and across the creek they also took what will be the North Boulder library site out of the floodplain even better so I guess I'm still somewhat you know at that site that you're talking about there's already a really well formed

[93:02] channel and Alpine and awesome we don't have a well and I think that's kind of the question and so and I share some concerns I mean I think it would be kind of important before we go down this too far to figure out how we're gonna get Goose Creek to 19th and Alpine right absolutely that's and that's part of the bigger mitigation study and that's the analysis we're doing right now and we have the different alternatives that were assessing okay so it does make a difference if we're doing attention or not because those flows change right so I have a question about the detention so you know I can't find it but you have like a 4-foot detention and North Boulder Park and my question there is again what's the flood the groundwater level you know so if you go

[94:01] down four feet are you gonna see water I mean I know at my house you would so so the groundwater we know it is high in that area it gets soggy and stuff as far as looking at detention in the park as you as you dig down what we would need to do is look at what sort of a dewatering sort of system we would need in the you know whether it's clay tile system or whatever that can take that groundwater and convey it down through the system so that we have that capacity during a flood event or look at a combination of doing of going down or building some seat walls or so that we can you know Behrman contain things there's different options for that how much would that cost there wasn't any cost analysis and they're just I'm just curious you know because it looks like a pretty large area that you'd be digging out yeah as

[95:04] far as that goes moving dirt ends up being a much lower cost than building giant infrastructure so it's it's I forget what the nut but the estimated cost is off top of my head but I think we're looking at million dollars or somewhere in that range for the day so we have a couple people on flood mary and then so katie again with respect to what happen with the water between Broadway and 19th Street on Goose Creek and full disclosure I live on Alpine at 14th so so I know the area well channels and so I'm wondering how those two channels will be dealt with because one of the channels is alpine and the other

[96:00] channel is between the houses on Alpine and north and so there's a bunch of structures along there in fences and all that so I'm just wondering if that part of the evaluating what happens with with Goose Creek is part of the area plan that comes together with what happens at Alpine balsam that comes together with a broader flood plan that you're developing and and I'm just trying to understand how how that comes together right so right now we have alternatives for two mile and uh produced Creek that we've gotten feedback from and we have a list of criteria for assessing the alternatives and they include things like putting in large piped infrastructure or putting in channels so we're looking at both of those different options and right now we don't have a recommendation that's the next phase

[97:02] that we're just getting into on that study so how will the area plan many of that so as far as the downstream area areas that you're talking about this area plan isn't going to have a lot of impact on that but it will impact the recommendations that we have for this upstream area because whether we do detention or not changes the flows it changes the size of the infrastructure as you get further downstream we have so many different flows tying into it that it doesn't have as much of an impact on on the size of the channel or the size of the pipe if we go in that direction so yeah my question is in looking at this site the idea and what you're talking about with either the swales and or detention is to mitigate what will be

[98:00] happening on this site and also mitigate what happens downstream to the best of your ability but you're not this isn't part of this whole site redevelopment is it is that this is more storm water flood water utility or is this part of the planning effort I'm knowing because I'm because we're going so far downstream and I thought we were actually just dealing with this site and how we could the idea of mitigation is that you theoretically since floods are really not that predictable you do no harm downstream right so getting off on these other things I don't know if that's down the rabbit hole at this point or not well so the mitigation plant study that I'm working on includes a much bigger drainage area mm-hmm but this planning effort helps inform this upstream act portion and it also is

[99:00] important for the redevelopment of this site because one way or another the conveying the flows across the site needs to be done to develop the site but then you're looking at it so we're looking at ru with LED utility are you yes that's what I thought so you're looking at a much different piece as you alluded to earlier with this this is one piece of the bigger puzzle that I'm involved in right thanks okay so I just thought I'd tried tae-bo on this I think I think you're if I can go to a comment I think you're hearing a lot of interest and confusion about the role that the flood mitigation is playing in the site I think it's really important that we pin this down in the next phase to get a really good understanding of what's required for the site development and what role it needs to play in the larger systems and and how much we need to do and what our options are here because I don't think we're quite getting that here tonight you know and I'm gonna ask Katie to listen carefully to what I say because

[100:01] because of I'm gonna simplify things what is fundamentally a complex problem but I think one of the things that is in front of you tonight and you can decide whether you have enough information to weigh on this or not is that the flood mitigation study the case that Katie and her team are doing has indicated in essence that a certain portion of the overall flood mitigation for Goose Creek needs to occur in this upper area and essentially the the the choice we are posing that we have posed for the community and that we pose for Council is in order to meet that in essence that that that proportional contribution to flood mitigation along Upper Goose Creek we have two choices we can either do nothing in North Boulder Park leave it just as is in which case we we would need to devote a significant portion of the site that is illustrated by the wide Greenway in order to accommodate the rate the amount and rate of flow coming

[101:01] out across ninth Street to this site if we if we were willing to split the way in which this portion of the upper Goose Creek meets its proportional share of flood mitigation by doing you know the several feet of excavation in North Boulder Park that Katie was describing that would allow us to devote less of this site to the conveyance in other words because you would be detaining a portion of the flood the flood waters in North Boulder Park and therefore you would have less of a conveyance obligation if you will on this site so one of the choices that's before you is is simply the choice of like are we comfortable splitting that load between North Boulder Park and the site or do we want to leave North Boulder pardon just as it is and therefore have to and therefore construct a fairly large conveyance system on this thing and if I can't I understand wants to say something but and that was well it was clearly

[102:01] presented in the memo and I guess and I think we can probably weigh in on that but I think for the next phase and I still am not clear to what extent this is strictly a hundred percent required for this site versus the role that it plays in the larger flood medication areas the things in the Nathan how much does it have to take care of it so to me it seems like I would be more interested in minimizing the amount of site that has to be given up to conveyance and so that indicates that whatever the answer is to the question you asked Aaron there will probably have to be some conveyance and so from my standpoint I'm interested in further exploring North Boulder Park as a detention area because that will allow us to maximize the use of this very valuable site for housing and for civic offices is perhaps so I mean that's my I agree we need more detail but just as general guidance I would prefer to minimize the conveyance here if we can increase the tension in north

[103:00] walter Park and still have it be a functional Park okay so from a process point of view because we're mostly asking questions okay and you had a question it doesn't need to be answered yeah could be answered any time but if we're gonna move on to financing it does relate to the use of the land and we'd be we talked very very quickly about the balance between civic use and housing and I'd like to drill into the civic use is this a good time or you want me to wait until later let's get there now let's hurry up and get to financing and then we're just gonna go ahead and start talking because we're running out of time okay oh sorry just back on the flooding can I just ask and again I I'm sorry I didn't see it in the packet but did the community have a stance on this whether or not they'd like to see it more in the park wares versus on the site there was some some split but there was a pretty strong

[104:00] preference about being able to do detention at North Boulder Park and I think that's with the caveat of the design work and the initial design work that was done to explore how we might do that to preserve trees to preserve uses and to I mean I think in it I understand from Katie that it does provide some life safety benefits by having that detention in the park and I just like to add to that also we had our own surveys for just the flood mitigation separate from the Alpine balsam study and when and the feedback we received was pretty split as far as doing detention in the park or leaving the park untouched and the in the since you brought it back up the when you say preserved uses you mean both right now cross country skiing happens around the perimeter so I was just looking at the photo about how it's it kind of slides right in yeah I'm just curious if that use is considered one of those preserved along with kind of big

[105:00] playing fields in the middle both of those are envisioned as being able to continue big playing fields but initially thoughts of preserving those and I can come back with I'm not to make sure that okay I do think becomes John the scheme okay so we're gonna finish financing then we're gonna come back to mix of uses which is kind of an important and this should only take a few minutes on on the sort of budget and finance issues based upon the the feedback that we've received from the community and prior feedback we've received from Council as you can see these scenarios that we've Illustrated for you accomplish a lot in terms of community objectives community benefits and and and the like in the in the form of high-quality diverse housing we don't know how much going back to the question asked earlier we haven't done calculations as to what we think what would be affordable and whatnot but potentially significant amounts of

[106:00] housing flood mitigation the provision of high quality high quality spaces and high customer service civic facilities and high quality public areas so in that sense these scenarios represent a significant investment by the city in achieving council priorities but all but also community benefits and community priorities no surprise though that when you take that approach that comes with a substantial cost so we have some very preliminary cost estimates and I do want to emphasize very because we are at a very conceptual level so this just gives you a sense of the scale of those costs in order to make this kind of investment in the community based on sort of taking together I believe it's four elements the perky original purchase of the Alpine balsam site in 2015 the interest that would accrue over the course of the certificates of participation the

[107:00] deconstruction of the hospital structure as Michelle outlined and the already incurred costs of renovating the Brent and billion those four elements add up to about 78 million dollars so that's kind of if you could almost establish that as a first benchmark of investment now if going beyond that in terms of city facilities the kinds of things we've talked about and public infrastructure there's a very wide range in this number and I can give you a little bit of information about that because the the biggest single factor driving that range of cost estimate there is simply the magnitude of city facilities because you've seen the scenarios illustrate all the way from relatively modest city facilities the brenton building plus the pavilion with an additional story all the way up to I believe 250 260 thousand square feet of city facilities that accounts for most

[108:02] of that range that you're seeing right there the public infrastructure costs associated with the site redevelopment don't very certainly by orders of magnitude depending on which scenario you choose because we're talking about underground utilities roadways the flood mitigation is one of the variables I will let you know that one of the sort of big lumps of that variable between 47 million and 165 million is that there there's at least one scenario in here for example the one scenario font of excuse me scenario one which was the one that maximized Civic facilities because of the the parking demand for that amount of civic facilities it was over 400,000 square feet of civic facilities that would require as you've seen illustrated there the construction of a

[109:00] new parking structure a new and as you know that's about forty to fifty thousand dollars per parking space so once you hit that threshold of having to construct new parking in addition to the 407 spaces we have in the existing parking structure as well as the parking that can be achieved through surface parking lot and tuck under part that's a pretty big threshold you cross where you you do the range of you where you select a range of uses that requires an additional substantial investment in structured parking so those are the variable that's the that's what it counts for that range you see there in those in in those facilities did you just say it and I missed it at what threshold of public square footage do we trigger needing more surface parking because that would be an important threshold I'm sorry more structured parking I don't I don't have a square footage in my head that exactly corresponds with that threshold as you can see on scenario one when you've got

[110:01] four hundred and seventy thousand square feet of civic and county facility city and county facilities you have to build a new parking structure that has you know four or five hundred spaces in it you can see for example in scenario two just going from scenario 1 to scenario 2 when you're at about 260 thousand square feet of Civic facility which is the Brenton building the pavilion a new Civic facility on the north side of the site as well as a new Civic facility just westward of there that's 260 thousand square feet we can still meet the parking needs without having to build a structured parking so I don't know it's somewhere between probably the important thing to know because I think yeah where is that I'm gonna guess was it going to stop before we have to build another structure party now of course one of the variables in that and we talked to probably talked about this in a little while is what numbers you assumed for parking ratios the more ambitious you get in terms of

[111:02] the ability to meet mobility needs through alternatives to this into the single family you know to the single person car then you can minimize your parking needs but I understand your point we it would be helpful to know where that threshold is where we surpassed that and thereby have to build a new parking structure so here is here is here are the numbers with the with everything total now one of the key features of this mix of uses that we've been illustrating which is achieved a lot of community goals that being sort of housing the creation of high quality Civic facilities is that this is not a mix of uses that is going to tend to pay for itself or necessarily attract a lot of private and private partners because it's not these are not mixes of uses we're private partners because it can

[112:00] easily pencil out a level rate of return that they are accustomed to seeing there are some exceptions to that and so that leads me to next steps which is that hopefully if we get some focused feedback from you tonight we will be able to come back to you in the first quarter of 2019 not only with refined cost estimates but really some ideas that we would like to discuss with you and get your feedback on on what are the mechanisms by which the city could undertake a financial effort of this magnitude so that's where we that's that would be an early 2019 and I have just next steps and then questions so if you want I can just get through this so as this indicates next steps this puts a priority on us the the feedback you you have and are going to give us tonight because those that feedback will

[113:00] allow us to continue make progress along this schedule which would be to come back with a basically a preferred scenario based on the feedback you give us refined cost estimates and the discussion of how those costs might be carried by the city that would lead to then a draft plan in roughly March of 2019 there would of course be community engagement along the way as well and then in the subsequent months to March we would be going through feedback on that draft plan refinement to that draft plan and then in May and June the enter the adoption process with that that takes us to the questions we have tonight and we've structured those and using the words that Jean used later which are the feedback around the fort what is the mix of uses that council would like to steer us towards the ratio there the relatively mix of civic facilities and housing and then the how questions of how we do how do we

[114:00] accomplish that with regard to intensity and Heights access and mobility and then the flood approach to flood mitigation with that okay so you had your question and okay I'm sure there's actually a lot more questions we could ask I think we should 30 and then we kind of need to move on which is 15 minutes more than we're supposed to so keep in mind we are at some point we're going to go around and answer those questions so be thinking about your feedback your question sir I'm just going to the the range of city facilities was pretty wide from 10,000 feet up to 250 oh forget about the county just for a second turn 110 in two hundred two thousand feet and I know weed we inventoried 13 buildings and some we feel we need to get out of because they're in the floodplain and others are inefficient and others we rant because in so we could there's actually is a slight return on investment where do we can we find or

[115:03] when are we gonna get that information with respect to what 110 thousand feet does for us and what 250 thousand feet does for us and what all the things in between because it's really hard to make a decision about whether the right answer is 110 250 or some number to me ii mean unless we know what the dependencies are and what the impacts are in other words presumably if it was 110 you'd say well these these three buildings are going to move and if it was a 150 as these seven buildings if it's 250 it's all these buildings what are the impacts were the savings what happens to the space I mean there's a there's a probably a hundred questions relating to that and because the amount of civic space that we put in here has a tremendous impact on the amount of housing we put in here it seems like we have to answer that question first I'll take a shot at that and then I'll and I'll let Michelle weigh and beyond that just to give you sort of a maybe a threshold approach with the with the 22,000 square feet of the Brenton

[116:01] building if we were to renovate the pavilion and at an additional floor to it that would get us roughly an additional 90,000 square feet so we'd have about a hundred and twelve thousand square feet between those two it's my understanding that that hundred and twelve plus or minus thousand square feet would enable us essentially to not only accommodate what's already up in the bretton building but to move folks out of the two buildings that are currently located in the high hazard zone that being the new britain building and the parkcentral building so that's that's one threshold Oh Michelle may want to elaborate on that that's true Jim and that also includes actually likely being able to get us out of the lease spaces Center Green Gate again that would also so the renovation of about a hundred and ten yeah it's just repeat I didn't hear reason it would likely all include getting us out of the lease space at Center Green Center Green for

[117:00] the fire department isn't that an HR and ITF yeah well so I guess I want to piggyback on what Bob said is we did this whole analysis and I think it was really useful to go hey if we did 250 we get these five uses we could all put here and we'd still have a hub here and here how does that feel so we can bookend right now with what we have so just renovating the pavilion and adding that in addition to the Brent and building essentially accommodates our greatest or most urgent needs which is to take care of the park central and the new Brent or the new Briton building and the center greenlease which is a big lease that we carry every year the 250 gets us everything that's that's really accommodating everything that we've studied in that analysis the 13 buildings everything I mean I would like to know like what rent does that save us and and if they're buildings that we own is there is is there a value to those

[118:01] balloons that we can capture to offset the big numbers that we saw from Jim I I really feel like I don't have enough information to make an informed decision so our analysis that we looked at for the city facilities we assessed the space and the need so in looking at these two sites where the opportunities were but what does need to accompany this as well as the the Civic area study that we've done is understanding what value we do get back when we build these new buildings so the 13 buildings that we have now are inefficient they won't meet our climate commitments these are they will need upgrades and infrastructure that does need to be included in our next phase of this financial analysis how are we going to narrow it down from five to some number less than five unless we had that information because I don't know I don't know if the answer is 110 250 or something in between me because there's a whole bunch of factors rent a resale a building in efficiencies all these other things like when does that invert is the chicken ray

[119:00] I don't know how we're gonna possibly make a decision on the range between 110 and 250 unless we knew that information these are really important financial decisions and there's like a multiplier right for every dollar we save we're gonna have to spend 10 or 20 dollars and these are really really big numbers so I think we have to have that number for the information first and then I guess I will just add on to that to me there's uh you Stolte if you will about how where do we want to group these things like we I think we've made a decision long ago to that grouping everything around development in one spot really makes a lot of sense there's a cluster around human services so when we think about okay we're spread around I presume we're gonna leave open space where well it is because we just renovated a building for them to be there right so I guess to me that that's also part of it it's kind of understanding what do we get if we lump these uses or if we lump these uses with the county similar uses and kind of have you know a human service hub that includes you know I don't know to me

[120:02] that's also part of it in addition to the fiduciary it's how would it feel one option that it's missing I think is an option that has zero Civic space right because there are other options for the civic space there's there's the do-nothing option right which I know people don't like about because we have the buildings in the floodplain but I think we should talk about that and then there are also spaces around town the weekend and this is really really really expensive land and the question is is this where we want to plop down 110 to 250 thousand square feet of civic space especially since we have a huge housing need and you know for every square foot of office space we take up here that's a that's a square foot more or less of housing that we can't accommodate and is is this the highest and best use of this land on Broadway office space or is it housing or is there something else that discussion yeah okay I'll let you jump in I will say we kind of did when we purchase it we said I don't think we're

[121:00] saying hey nothing it we did say this would be important for Civic uses I think that was part of the conversation to me it's just how much and which ones I guess I would go that far [Music] like I I'm totally with you Bob like it but I don't think we would have purchased it just to be a housing developer right it's for you know help me out there's a lot of hands who was next I married and Cindy and me look ya'll just be obvious ok Mary's go right down very Sam Cindy so now I forgot my question No so to Suzanne's point that when the discussion happened about whether or not to purchase this site it was the main reason was to specifically house the new brand building and the other one in the

[122:01] hunt parkcentral so my question is to what extent was that reasoning at that point in time because of the financial commitment made by the city does it commits us to using it for those uses you mean legally yeah legally I'm not a lawyer but I play one on TV we are not committed to using it for those purposes yeah and one if if Jane doesn't mind me typing in I guess I'm not a lawyer but I play one on TV too I do recall looking back at the the sort of the 2015 documents regarding the purchase and one of the decisions was made there as I understand it there are two types of certificates of participation and the specifically the city specifically chose the type of certificate of participation that would

[123:01] allow some port some yet to be defined portion of the land to be conveyed on for other development in other words the city did not lock itself in to utilizing this space specifically for city or civic purposes it left that option open at the time of the purchase via the type the vehicle it used to make the purchase so we have a queue I want to float out there though because another well okay but the question we have a force it gets that mix of uses so people need to start ringing it sounds like we would like to have light or we would like more information about deciding how much Civic use I guess the question is are people still of the mind that we want some mix of housing and civic but we need more information to figure it out there that's what I'm hearing from some people so as you answer us start weighing in on that so we have Mary Sam Cindy Mayer by Lisa well I still have a question I'm not answering it well we're moving on to

[124:01] both well my other question is is has there been any consideration to doing the the converse of instead of having the county services be at the site to do the other where our services would be with the county site over it iris and Broadway something like that the ones that have synergies like housing and human services for example and as well as transportation coincidentally the two that are housed right now in the old kaiser building I often see because I live in that area I often see city employees walking over to meet with county employees and vice versa so if they were co-located there would be some I think really good synergies there so I guess what I'm saying is could we look at seeing as the county moves through

[125:03] its process to look at saying well maybe we could share this space with you doing it the other way around but but I do think that there should be some mix of Civic uses and housing at the Alpen bison balsam site and all of that market analysis that said the office isn't a good use and the retail is there's plenty of it and I think all of that for me at least and and the input from the community so far points towards something like presented in three also in terms of the parking and the Civic uses because that's one hundred and ninety one thousand square feet of civic uses that's closer to that two hundred and

[126:01] fifty so in terms of the intensity and building heights that particular one I think that moving some of that conveyance area somewhere towards the inside of the the buildings that with a within the site I think would make sense otherwise it makes it look it's not quite I guess the urban form that we would be looking forward though with buildings up to the sidewalk so if and if possible to use that particular new Street as part of the kind of conveyance that might work and then with respect to access and mobility I think there we also could use a lot more information and again because

[127:03] because I lived there there's a lot of I have a lot of anecdotal evidence I guess that the parking situation it may not be quite what meets the eye because I think that there are a lot of downtown employees parking in that neighborhood and getting out and writing bike so what I would like to see us do is and I think it was suggested by somebody somewhere and some of the stuff that I read to in parallel with all of these processes figure out if there's any kind of parking permit plans or something that would need to be done about a year ago I met with Bryan Muller from cedar and we talked about doing something where there's surveying of people that are parking and where they

[128:01] came from and where they're going because one of the things that we see a lot there is people drive up and pull their bikes out and then ride downtown and it makes me wonder if that trip is a bike trip is it a multi-modal trip is it a car trip so it would be good to know what's going on with that and and to really understand what the impacts are going to be of course if it's true that the that the impacts of parking aren't going to be as great as they would be with office uses then maybe it's a moot point but I think that it would be great to leverage cedar in any kind of way that the students would be helpful in really identifying what's going on already okay and yeah I think I addressed the

[129:01] flood mitigation already so that's it so I agree with you and Bob Suzanne and Bob about the need for more information about exactly which buildings would correspond to you know the first priorities to put into the specific use space I'm probably inclined to be on the low end of the civic use space of a hundred and ten hundred and twenty thousand but I still really do want us to be able to get those two municipal buildings out of the high hazard flood zone it's something that we committed to a long time ago and kind of like moving the fire station three it's something I think we should follow through on because we have this opportunity which you know we we created consciously to do that like Mary so I would say you know I want some civic facilities but it doesn't have to be a lot and I definitely want the housing there I looked at the scenario three also and liked that one nice balance and that it has a lot of

[130:00] housing now maybe the mix of townhouse uses isn't exactly where we want to go but I also think that we've had kind of an aspirational goal for this project that it'd be mixed income and that it'd be some ownership and some rental and so I would not want this to see we're not wanting to see us going down a pathway that's all rental I would like to see some ownership as smaller's better less expensive is better and maybe it can be permanently affordable if if we do the ownership units that way and then part of the rentals so I think that answers most of number one I think you know it's pretty clear that mix 35 to 55 foot is something that a bunch of the community supports so it's you do have some 55 foot so that you can get some additional dwelling units but I think that varying that across the site and where it steps down towards the back so further from Broadway is where the lower buildings

[131:00] are I think that makes a lot of sense access and mobility I think Mary said a lot of really important things about that I definitely don't want to add so much Civic space that we would ever trigger having to build a new garage that is absolutely I think would be a huge mistake and a waste of space so whatever that number is we definitely want to stay below it so that we're not having to build up a garage and you know with this additional population that's going to be here it certainly is gonna call out for more transit and so I think we're going to need to take a look at do we buy up more routes on Broadway or how do we do how do we address it so that this becomes the transit oriented development that we've been talking about and then flood mitigation I have to say I'm really just very ambivalent about this I think you could do it in the way it's shown on three I guess the one thing I'm not ambivalent about is I would like to see

[132:01] a serious look at flood detention in the park because it reduces the amount however much that is of transport of the water that we have to set aside land for so I think that's about it I mean I'm I know that there this hearing this study session raised as many questions as it answered but I think it's really good to be focusing down and getting real specific on kind of what we want to have answered next so that we can make progress thanks okay Cindy so I really agree with Bob's questioning along these lines and the value of the property and how much of it would be civic I would like to get some answers along those lines before making any final decisions so as Sam just said we're asking as many questions as but that's I take it what this is about I

[133:00] would have a couple of questions before getting into any of the rest of it about the spaces on north and behind the the brenton building is that the new Brenden built the Brenden building they're too big space is there that are also empty at this point they're used for parking but it's surface parking which seems kind of like a waste to some extent and then I wondered if it's if anyone's looked into or if it's possible to put another deck on the parking structure that's along Broadway and Alpine I can answer the first one on the on the couple of small parcels there's the Breton building parking and then there's the other a little little parcel there they're not of a size or configuration that we can do too much with as far as yields so they're personally on hold for this round of scenario building and I'm

[134:00] sure that they would be being play regarding the economics we could we're in the red house there and I'll let a Michelle answer the parking deck question wait I'm not sure I understood your questions you're saying we're not gonna deal with it now I mean we've the purposes of mix of uses they're not big enough to develop into but but they're obviously relevant to the site we have to figure out what happens with them so you're saying that we would maybe sell them off is that what was implied in answer to Cindy's question about the the existing parking structure we don't have a ready answer to that but we will look into that so that when we come back to you with you know more refined scenarios we have we have the information as to whether we can meet our party needs by potentially expanding that or other other needs up above that as well right right beater support of course the

[135:01] structural issues as well as hydrogen right yeah and will we will arm ourselves with that information as we continue to work forward and get back to you that'd be great because one of the the things that stood out was how much it was gonna cost to do the deck the pavilion building to put on that extra floor up there and again going back to what Bob said about the value of these the area itself I'm wondering if I mentioned it the last time we went through this that might be a nice way to recoup some of the value that's going into this to put out some kind of housing up there that would be market rate so and in terms of preferred scenarios I like some of the others I like the third one in terms of how it looks and feels the most but I'd like to see a mix of housing somewhere between this 140 units and the the larger number of units 330 and to see if we can't get

[136:01] something a larger mix of housing that would still not be as crammed in looking as this number five which and I'd like to see a variety of heights and I think that it can the height can be mitigated when it goes up if it's set back or even as the hospital is closer to the street on Broadway it's just everyone just seems to be used to it I'd like to see more workforce housing because it seems to me that this is one and senior housing the workforce housing is what's really being forced out of the city and causing the the in transportation that we see I'd like to see senior some senior housing and I'd also really like to see some housing first there some way housing first just because it's so close to all of the

[137:00] necessary things and if not there then up at the iris site but that we really start addressing those kinds of needs as well if we're gonna be looking at parking like something like a neighborhood parking plan east of Broadway I think we also need to be looking west because those people are really going to be impacted as well if there aren't enough other ways of dealing with the parking with a flood detention pretty much I agree with dealing putting the north older Park using it as a detention space it seems like one of the cleanest ways of dealing with the flooding that may be happening and with putting as much given all over the things I've just said keeping as much green space on the property yeah that's why we're calling this trade offs okay I have near my Lysa Arryn bill Jill

[138:02] 30 okay so with regards to civic use I guess I agree with Bob and I just like to see the trade-offs in terms of on the monetary amount more clearly because if this is going to in the long run save the city a lot of money as well as be safer for the employees and more efficient again that for me weighs a little bit more heavily and I almost would be curious just just in terms of your guys's thoughts you could have anything you wanted what would you guys choose would be closer to the hundred or would it be around the 250 just again out of curiosity because you guys are I think that we had all agreed that this was the site that we wanted to use for civic use parking for me is a concern just having heard from some of the neighbors again getting the area parked out more on the infrastructure and I guess caring for

[139:01] the needs that we have already instead of dis cramming in more things again I think this is an excellent site for workforce housing and for senior housing and mixed-use housing I just need to I guess remind everyone that there are set neighborhoods here already that there is risk to impact and I'd like to just make sure that we are aware that they have a quality of life already and so to continue pushing more people in and making it denser they will have some impact so I just like to take into account the fact that that they do live there and again I think there's going to be a really nice way that we can add that and hopefully do it seamlessly but just an awareness in terms of the detention I mean I love the idea of North Boulder Park but when I look at the I found it in the packet when I look at this split in terms of people saying yes use it or don't use North Boulder Park I guess my question becomes the

[140:00] people saying don't use it are those neighbors or are they people living in other portions of the city because the way I would think about it is if I was a neighbor and I use that and I'm closer to it and have a lot more use for it I would say no but if I lived in other portions of the city and it had no effect on me I'd be like oh yeah of course use it so I kind of would wonder how if we have data on where those people lived when they put those numbers in I think the housing again it needs to somewhat match the neighborhood so I know that there is high density and there's more medium density in the area and I think again this is a great area with the transit to really put some wonderful workforce and hopefully senior and mix housing in there so I do support that I like the idea that Sam brought up in terms of it would be nice to have some units available for purchase just because I think there's and again if we can try and figure it out with your your plan your in Bob's plan with the down payment assistant would be marvelous and

[141:01] then in terms of height for me again looking at the surveys it to me shows that the majority of people are not interested in 55 foot story buildings um again 57 percent no more than 35 percent and that's a decent majority for me forty seven point seven which because of the way the pie was split was a majority where they didn't support foreign five-story buildings on Broadway and sixty-two point four percent said no buildings taller than 35 percent in again this is in the survey I like what Cindy's idea was and maybe fifty five foot if it had setbacks and so that it looked like almost had the Google building I think they actually did a pretty good job of not looking like a 55 foot story building and again I know part of its due to the land but just cognizance of that we don't want it to be imposing as much as feeling airy and open so I think that's my general ideas Lisa so yeah knowing what are the

[142:06] buildings are we have a diagram in here where we have 14 buildings and then it shows like a hundred and ten is has five buildings and I'm just assuming those are uses or something I don't know what they are and then there's a hundred and fifty square feet and you have ten ten little buildings and then 250 with all the buildings so I just I'd like to know what it is but I still am a little nervous about building more office space given that we have kind of a saturated market right now and I personally think the last thing we need is more house more office we need more housing so I would I would like to see I think

[143:01] I'm agree with Sam in terms of I would like to probably dedicate that south-east corner of the site to city uses I'm not so interested in in pairing with the county and in reading the memo it doesn't seem like the counties either sees that as a high priority so I think that's great I I do think if we can find some synergies in departments that might be helpful but I'm not I'd I am I'm mostly in favor of the housing on this site and for me I I wouldn't put all housing and we keep talking about oh well let's put or some people it was put all the commercial over at Boulder

[144:01] junction or all the commercial up at I were some Broadway I like transit oriented development I like to see nodes so I think that County site on iris and Broadway will continue to be office space for the county I imagine it would be somewhat and that there would be some retail but for this site I would like to see a mix of heights I'd like to see 35 going all the way up to 55 so that we avoid the big boxy kind of everything's the same size so that we get some architectural interest in there I I like I guess scenario three very much but I'd like to see if we could go up above a hundred and forty units we could do better than that couldn't we I I think we could and I agree with Cindy in terms of a lot of the different

[145:03] mix of uses housing types so I'd like to see some market rate housing for sale housing and housing first and permanently affordable housing but I think this site should be mostly housing while serving the city's needs I also would hope I don't want to see another parking lot our parking structure so what I would like to see is what we did up in the North Boulder sub community plan where we put a lot of the parking on the street so we just so I'd like when you guys come back how much additional parking do we get for putting it on the street and I like Mary's idea in terms of manure bin' scale and so I

[146:03] would bring the buildings up to the street and have the amenity of the Greenway kind of if possible through the middle of the site and I would restrict it to 50 feet but I think it's nice and a good idea good practice to start daylighting it so that what goes downstream can also be delighted at some point it's I think just a preferred practice and I think that's that oh and I think I'm fine with North Boulder Park but I think in terms of mitigating some of the flood detention there but I think we want to be careful that we do do clay tiles or something to make sure that we're not now creating a mosquito breeding area for this part of the city

[147:02] well I think Bob for bringing up those issues about needing more information about the city facilities I I'm concerned about the what are cracked with the practicality is of our different options and I feel like we don't know enough right now so I think the feedback that we're giving is I think hopefully really helpful but I think we're at the point where we can narrow down to a scenario and the I'm I'm really very concerned about the costs and the feasibility of accomplishing some of these options I think I don't know where we would find two hundred and forty million dollars and you know looking at all the different other things that we're working on how expensive they are and that when we have something costs a few million dollars that's relatively doable within our various resources but 240 million I honestly I don't know where that's coming from where we would find the dollars for that and so you know if you say if we say oh I mean we're not saying this but if we were to say put every single city facility here and then that puts it on the top end of that I don't even know if that's feasible so so

[148:03] I really need to know more and so I look forward to the next stage to have something that gives us a little bit more of a sense of our trade-offs if we say hey we want to do kind of more of this scenario and you say okay that's fine that'll require you know a percent and a half sales tax you know and then we can do that whoa okay that would be a problem so so I think we really need more information but and given given that I agree with what other other folks have said that I do think that the focus of the site should be more on housing I do think we should have some city facilities here but it seems to me like the in terms of how much we have that may be the minimum amount is the bretton building plus the medical pavilion with the extra floor and that may be that to me is sort of your minimum amount and then I would look for the case to be made oh well but if you add fifty thousand more square feet gosh that gets us out of XY and Z building that costs us all this money and it would really work out really well so to me I'd like to see more housing

[149:03] but I would need to see the case for it in terms of what it gets us what what advantages against us it sounds like the County colocation isn't necessarily going to be feasible but if we are straining to put a program on the site the working with them could still be an option but I would really like to see a vibrant mix of uses the housing is mentioned but I I know the retail isn't maybe the highest and best use from a financial standpoint but putting say on the north east corner a couple thousand square feet of retail as a wrap I think that served some of the city facilities and the residents and things like that I don't think that would be a huge competition I think it would be very doable and I think it would add to the walkability and the vibrancy of that location so I'd really like to to see that maintained in the in the mix of options in terms of the housing I agree with what's been said about mixes of

[150:01] incomes and mixes of tenures owner and rental mcc's of incomes you know we could extend deed restriction could go well into middle-income ranges this could be a place where we play with some housing options that we haven't done before because we have control of the site so and then in terms of the how much housing growth what's been said that some most of these options to me even when they were mostly devoted to housing didn't have enough units and so that that fifth scenario bookend I think was too intense but I think we could back down from that some but still get up closer to those number of units I think Cindy said that in terms of Heights there's certainly room for a 55-foot buildings here the existing buildings are taller than that but I wouldn't put them on 9th Street said to me this sort of the kind of obvious thing to do is to put the shorter

[151:00] buildings over on ninth Street maybe for that first when we only have half the block maybe that's the section that's you know 2 to 3 storeys 35 feet and then going east from there's where you have the the taller buildings and and you can you can relieve the density of those taller buildings with a really well done site like folks have talked about with a variety of heights so it's not just blocky and boxy but also of getting the green space interior to the site so I'm like the currently there's this as this comes from suburban setback feel on that North Side the way it keeps being done and I get that you didn't want to reduce the development potential but I think you could make it part of the open space for the housing so that if greenspace starts in the middle of the block it could go through and not and just be part of the program not loss of developable space you could also and then as you hit maybe the more intense buildings to the east it could divert

[152:01] you know maybe that's where you put it to the north maybe that doesn't follow the topography but you might be able to dig a little bit and make that work so it doesn't have to be linear you know you could make something beautiful and sinuous that I think really adds to the the neighborhood amenity so I consider being being creative with that I'll agree with what's been said about getting that some flood detention in North Boulder Park too so that you have more flexibility with what that green space looks like is it I'd really emphasize you know doing in such a way that it's it's beautiful and and contributes to the site and then tweak what flood conveyance in detention because we're kind of work backwards from that maybe one of the thought on the on the site layout there's some of them that had multiple connecting streets which seemed like a little bit too much space devoted to right-of-way and loss of space I think permeability is really important but I think it should focus on bike pad permeability I think you can really

[153:01] minimize the amount of space that cars drive through and it'll make it more livable and also give you more space for amenities and for the residents and the last thing I'll say is just about schedule which you addressed to the beginning thank you Jim that was extremely helpful but when I talk about sort of the practical issues and the feasibility I think the finances and the program and the schedule all need to tie together so I think you made a really good case for why deconstruction needs to move forward and about all the things that we can do in parallel while the deconstruction goes on and that makes sense to me and so just we need to keep planning for that and lay that out in terms of not having the site be empty for two years both for the cost to the city but also all those businesses that depend on activity and and things like that but the financial piece is an important part of that because if at some point we're going to need some

[154:00] really chunk of money that could be something even though we got all of our other ducks lined up in a row that made us sit there for two or three years I'd hate to see us fully deconstruct and have an empty bathtub and then we don't have the money maybe it's dependent on a vote and we're left empty for a long time so I think it's really important that we keep all that in mind as we move forward to the next phase we still do bobbins in it renewed some great comments so I'm gonna agree with you and a lot of points and then I'll Devere off a little bit so agree with Aaron on timing and scheduling on civic use issues on flood detention on some retail rap and then on the height in terms of not being you know 55 feet at ninth Street but as much 55 feet I think is we can get in beyond 9th Street would would definitely be good I mean keep in mind it's so pretty low height all things considered

[155:01] well I understand why the vast majority my colleagues are leaning towards number three it's definitely more in keeping with our vision plan but I have no interest in a bunch of luxury townhomes in this area honestly this is our land this is our chance to really make our mark and sort of like make a statement as a city of what we want to see and the reality is that if any of those townhomes along nice salad market rate they're gonna be in the millions of dollars it's just what it is and there's a lot of those going in around Boulder in between mics camera and that gas station there's a ton of new townhomes that are gonna be 1.2 1.3 145 going in there's East pearl there's spark I mean there's just so many of these products and we don't we don't need to be putting that in we don't need to be like sanctioning that so I like number 5 a whole lot more

[156:00] I think maximize the housing maximize the intensity build more smaller units the other thing I think that we should really you know keep in mind here is whether it's us developing it or you know private developer partners through our pieces but really let's get interesting buildings you know maybe we veer off of our traditional code that sort of lends itself to square brick buildings and and you know really try to encourage a mix of materials and forms and shapes and turrets and Gables and you know all that I think that connecting it over to East bookend would be wonderful I don't know if that's at all in the plan but you know that 13th Street corridor already has a nice it's a nice cycle way and a lot of pedestrians use it and there's KC middle school work tons and tons of kids ride so if we can't like really enhance the four 13th Street connector you know it's

[157:01] not even painted green that would be at the minimum but like I think to really make it a true cycle way with with some separation from the road would be great I wrote jobs that could be efficient I you know but as high as I'm willing to go on the civic office space 110 thousand feet and that's only because that's what the size of the bread and building the pavilion are and that's kind of stuck with those anyway I think anything more than that I have to be convinced on we need all the information that I asked for and even on the pavilion building I agree with Cindy I know I need to understand the case of a building that extra 20,000 feet or whatever on top of it if it makes sense from a return on investment standpoint that's fine but I still need to see that

[158:01] case and why we need to add that extra 20,000 feet so I may be at 90 thousand feet right now which is the existing footprint of the the two billions that we have to load that we're already using you know we have to use I would like to see just as an interesting data point whether we could build to the south of the Brennan building I know gene you were a little dismissive of that and maybe you've got some good information on that middle of that there's a pretty big the land right immediately south of the Breton building and it's an existing building I just wondered if we can expand the building to the south maybe there's a good reason that we can't so if you if we do need that extra 20,000 on top of the pavillion I'm just wondering if that's an alternative maybe it's more expensive Verdun doesn't work you don't answer the question now I'm just curious I'm with Lisa I don't know that I don't want to add any more office space than where do you have right there if you need to add office space so there's an economic reason why we need to add office space let's look at other parts of town but let's just go with the bare minimum here is kind of where I'm at I do like Mary's idea of co-locating with the county and Irish and Broadway I don't think you're hearing a whole lot

[159:00] of enthusiasm here for raddion County space at the hospital site but I think Mary raised a good idea out at extent that we do have facilities around town that are costing us money or inefficient or whatever let's talk about flipping the proposal back to the county and saying how about we move in with you I agree with Aaron that I'd like to see housing kind of in the zip code of the 140 to 330 I don't know what the right answer is there but I would like to see more density in there I'm agnostic about the height at the moment because I think that's gonna be dictated by economics and design so I don't have any strong feelings other than the obvious point that Aaron raised which is it should start tall on the east and get shorter as it goes to the west I get your point about you know get as much affordable housing and there as possible but I do think that we have to have a mix of market and affordable because the market pays for the affordable you know I think Curt can correct me if I'm wrong but roughly affordable housing cost about three

[160:01] hundred thousand dollars a door to build and tax credits and financing take up about two thirds there but still cost the city out of pocket of a hundred thousand dollars a unit so we were 200 units at $100,000 a door in there that's 20 million dollars has got to come from someplace and so maybe we do build a couple of nice townhouses or whatever they are along ninth Street to fund the other housing so I don't want to take that off the table I don't know what the mix is but it's got to work out economically I agree with everybody on flood mitigation if if this is our number one priority in the city and flood mitigation then let's do North Boulder Park I kind of feel like this is more opportunistic which is hey were digging things up so why don't we fiddle with this but I'd like to preserve as much of the land in in the footprint before housing and in offices as we can and if flood mitigation is necessary then let's look to look to the park so with all that said I suppose if I had

[161:01] to pick one of the scenarios scenario three is closest but I would do it with a lot less Civic space because I think that has 90,000 square feet of civic space and finally on economics Jim if your goal was to scare the children you succeeded those numbers are just absolutely mind-boggling I don't know where we would ever get that kind of money you can tell us where we can find you under million dollars those numbers are just mind-boggling so I think you know before we get too far down this path I think we need to have a better understanding what our funding sources or maybe it's selling a bunch of really big condos on Main Street I don't know what it is but I you know I don't want to spend a whole lot of staff time on this stuff and then and then run up against a brick wall of an old economic

[162:00] so I'd really like to understand the economic sooner rather than later okay I get the last word so I agree with a lot of what's been said but not although it's been said I guess so yes mix of uses I guess I am interested in Caloocan co-locating with the county there's no way they're gonna let us move into iris and there's a quid pro quo there so so if we want if we like the idea of affordable housing up on iris then we should think about it yeah I'm just saying to me it's really interesting if you've been to the hub in Longmont I also hope we're going for kind of the new office space so if you've been to Google I'm not the historic everybody has their office space I think those days are over but the idea of some synergistic hubs whether it is around transportation which is true we work very closely with the county on those issues or Human

[163:01] Services I think that that's interesting would be compelling and as in keeping with kind of the kind of civic space I think we're trying to create on that we mentioned earlier incubator space I don't think we need that here I think that's East bookend material not here just that that was mentioned or they on the the flood mitigation well the Civic's I totally agree was Bob on we were talking about I want to understand the whole picture of the different city uses the buildings what we would a couple scenarios if we moved this amount here what we would guess we can actually picture it both the finances and what it feels like for our citizens terms of flood I guess I need to it needs to make sense in terms of the whole picture but I'm getting anyhow I think we need more information on how this would work I

[164:00] like what people said about let's make the green space work within the space let's not make it linear I I see where we're headed with using North Boulder part but I would just specify that is a huge public amenity that is very well used and so I wouldn't say it lightly I only you get to use it for flood detention if you preserve the magic which is that Park so I guess to me I want to understand it's amazing to go there after it snows it is stilled with people cross-country skiing and I'm not saying that's more important than housing but it's one of the delightful things about Boulder so let's preserve that as we move forward I guess absolutely mix let's get a lot of housing there let's make it interesting absolutely none of these yeah I'm done with boxes let's let's think about the places where we've done housing right that people like and learn those lessons and I guess

[165:06] on the Civic end I hope that whatever we build and I do think we should I I'm embracing the civic use they're more than you are but that that space should soar as well it should be interesting compelling and absolutely no more structured parking I think that's universal is that correct nobody wants to trigger yeah we're done building parking garages so there's a lot more you can say I guess I feel like before you bring us the final scenarios could we have some could we is it possible that we could check back in on the civic use piece feels like we need to bring back a little bit more information about those types of those types of trade-offs and I just wanted to say that while them I didn't want you guys to have the impression that the memo was shutting down the information

[166:00] in the memo was shutting down the cooperation with the county I think we've probably got a little more turn again with our Civic uses or others about what that might achieve what the the potential for housing is I think what again we're hearing is a lot of support for housing and we can come back with I guess what I'm trying to say is when we've talked with the county staff and commissioners they are very quite supportive of housing at iris with a potential trade so there may be some more well then can we fold that a little bit more into that conversation if we're gonna have another check-in is to say in the scenarios if they're willing to look at both sites just to see what we get collectively and maybe people aren't interested but let's be let's understand what we could have or not well if I can respond to that that that's one thing but I think we don't want to move people

[167:00] farther out out and out we want to keep people centered so from my perspective if the county wants to have or office space that I was in Broadway that's great but I think we need to use this site for a bunch of housing and so and that's what I was talking about when I was saying you know transitory or you know these nodes of development so we should have I think a lot of housing here at the bottom Alpine site and also do housing up at the iris okay they're both they're comparable sites in terms of size but I mean went about 80 I'm one of the only county owns have a conversation we yeah but I'm not interested okay I just wanted to say something about financing I sent an

[168:01] article to the council and to hotline about proposition C and that at that time was pending before the San Francisco voters and it was put forward by corporate folks saying that they thought it was time to have some of the big corporations that made X number of dollars takes some of the burden for housing and it passed in San Francisco and it also passed in Mountain View so I think this is something that we can look at we have enough big corporations of that caliber by that I mean X billions of dollars who have moved into the city that the citizens in this community might be interested in having some of them pay their own fair share for some of the impacts that have been caused not as a penalty but just to be good neighbors with the rest of us and that's one of the ways that we might look at

[169:01] financing this kind of redevelopment on at the Alpine balsam site and so I would like to get some information maybe a memo or something from the city attorney about what happened in those communities in California where it passed and didn't it just pass it just passed in this election both in San Francisco and in Mountain View I believe so well and in general we've been trying to look at creative financing ideas and so maybe this is a good one yeah okay so I think maybe a request to do it some sort of check-in before you come back with a final proposal so okay so with that in the interests of getting on to the next issue apologies to the people that are waiting the next issue is 6400 Arapaho I am recused from that so I am leaving enjoy thank you all for bearing with us and giving us some good

[170:01] feedback yeah thank you very much it'll be more interesting with the wine I'm sure everybody's leaving 6400 rapo is really interesting stay area kirsten be here

[171:04] and we'll appreciate that maybe just give it a minute for counselors we'll just take a moment my term as mayor pro-tem ends in a couple of weeks so this is my last chance to play mayor tonight for a few minutes you 00 we'd really love you nine minutes that's a I don't know if we can quite give them one more minute

[172:04] um it's always freezing down here on the other hand I'm sure they've read the memo so maybe we just dive right in pull that pull that microphone in tight and on and turn them there you go there we go good evening members of council so thank you so much for actually fitting us in at the last minute here it's an opportunity to get this council's thoughts on zero waste and where we are and where we have been and where we're going and also to introduce yourself yes I'm Kara Mertz thank you and the environmental manager for the city of Boulder managed the zero waste team so

[173:04] tonight we are here to just look for some very high-level feedback I'm gonna actually because of the hour I'm going to scale back the questions and really just ask for general feedback on the city's role in kind of furthering zero waste and moving toward what we call a circular economy and then the general support for the concept of this reuse focused innovation hub and then the final key question I think for tonight is just is there anything that you all would like us to do prior to meeting with the county commissioners which is scheduled for mid-january on this topic and actually you know what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna skip ahead a couple of slides and then just finish off with this video because it's a quick

[174:00] three-minute video and it really does encapsulate a lot of what we're aiming for and so picture's worth a thousand words I can save at least two thousand by just using that as long as I could figure out how to skip this there we go so as I said the questions for council tonight is really the role for the city of Boulder in kind of fostering a circular economy or acting as a market driver to create markets for materials that are recyclable in our community we're going to skip over the parking and site flow questions because we really aren't at the level of developing options for the site that are specific as as you looked at for the Alpine balsam site we're not really yet at that part of this project

[175:01] so I've heard that we're not interested in any parking structures I can take that away from the prior conversation site flow we are just trying to balance customer experience with preserving the existing buildings as much as possible on the site and fundraising we are in a very interesting situation with this site where unlike the Alpine balsam site there are actually quite a few private sector and potential funding partners for a site like this and a project like this so it's not two hundred and fifty million dollars it's a mere twenty million dollar project this is perfect timing really after massive project to make that sound like very inexpensive so really as I said the discussion tonight can just focus on the role of the city

[176:01] and whether this council supports us moving from managing our waste materials after they are created as waste materials and moving toward creating and fostering a circular economy so with that I'm just going to go back play this little video and and then we can open up the discussion I might have one or two backup slides but nope isn't working it's not coming up up there I tested the technology and the council chambers earlier but the screen was not on at the time the I did

[177:10] oh great perfect yep that'll do it perfect rescue yes this is the city of Boulder twenty five point seven square miles a melting pot of creativity and entrepreneurial spirit climbing brewing tech about organic food all over town all the rights are a passionate group we

[178:02] take zero way seriously there's been progress made with recycling and reuse but we don't just settle for good around here there's still great materials being wasted and clever people doing uncommon things with reuse in their homes and businesses sadly these paths don't always cross with this challenge we hope to create a new community space [Music] a hub for upcycling and waste diversion if you will we already have charm and the resource yard but how could we expand these as a center of reuse innovation which brings us to 6400 Arapaho Avenue could our waste me to different fate one business has tires being sent to the trash how about that rubber becomes wallets for carrying cash could that

[179:00] dying ash tree in your neighborhood Park become beautiful lumber instead of infested bark could you sell bikes that are built from scrap metal turn one companies waste into wheels and pedals I think these ideas are crazy or unrealistic while businesses in Boulder are thinking holistic it's great to start small but now it's time to think big instead of wallets what if that rubber became thousands of road counts or if we took that ash tree lumber and built a new home every day Boulder businesses send good usable materials to the landfill roofing shingles blocks medical pipettes porcelain toilets the list goes on instead of becoming trash what if we could play material match imagine a hub where we could identify these waste streams and pair them up with people and

[180:01] business ideas who can use them connecting lonely with [Music] [Applause] so there's my presentation now so really I think the gist of the presentation that would have come if I had a little bit more time was just that in the 25 years or so that I've been with the city we've gone from about 15 to 20 percent waste diversion to just over 51% but we are really starting to recognize that the zero waste climate solution goes way beyond recycling and it's about fundamentally redesigning what and how we produce consume and dispose of stuff all our stuff so we are looking at kind of ways that the city could play a role in a circular economy the notion of a circular economy is that a business would be would build their processes so

[181:01] that they're efficient and make as little waste as possible in the processes their feedstocks can be made from something that would otherwise be wasted and products can be remained or it can be manufactured to be disassembled at the end of their use then the question arises what can we as the city of Boulder do about any of this it's really up to the businesses themselves to address the inefficiencies within the system to create less waste but we can as a city identified the materials that flow in and out of our region and identify what waste is created and try and figure out ways to remanufacture it locally it's a resilience solution it's a climate solution and it's a zero waste solution this just talks about all the different recycling and composting facilities we have the ones that are built by the city and the county and the private sector in our in our region and Lisa you'll be happy to know I heard this morning that

[182:00] by the end of December the county is identifying a site-to-site a construction waste recycling center so with that all of the facilities that are needed though we we do have need to have a compost site a little bit closer to Boulder because right now it's in Weld County but really there is the infrastructure to handle all of our waste once it's waste and the question is how do we really become a zero waste Society and this slide here shows how successful the site at 6,400 Arapaho has been since its inception there's been between a fifty and sixty percent increase in the number of customers coming through this site and about six million additional pounds of material that have been processed through the site since it opened and really we want to build on that success at that site and be able to have synergies where

[183:00] we're already bringing used materials into the site and how can we really use that to identify problem waste materials create both community based programming which as was explained in the memo as kind of an advanced makerspace and subsidized retail space for up cycled materials and then also industrial scale programming where there's mid scale manufacturing which has been identified as a void in the whole front range area and business services to support startups that commit to using our local problem waste materials as feedstock in their businesses and the idea being that we would launch those businesses off of the site after a kind of an entrepreneur in residence program and help them locate elsewhere around the Front Range or around the state of Colorado and there's actually quite a bit of regional and statewide interest in us helping to seed those businesses here and then the

[184:03] truth is we know a startup business after they're here probably won't find space and folder to locate but that's okay because if they're reprocessing our materials as long as they're doing it somewhere around the state or in the region it's going to help us here in Boulder so that's pretty much I think I'll stop there these were just very high-level bubble diagrams but I promise you'll hear about it as we try and balance the customer experience and the parking and the site flow at the site and really the idea that we would be developing once we sorry once we finalize or put more detail to the site plans I guess I'll just go back to that slide once we put more detail to the site plans we will break it up into

[185:02] discrete development phases so as we begin to explore funding as funds come in we can develop the site building kind of one section at a time toward the ultimate site vision but kind of starting off with the immediate needs of the two existing nonprofits and building from there so as money comes in we could develop in phases and as I also just mentioned there's many people that are interested and potential collaborators and funders in this site unlike the Alpine balsam project potentially there's the maker community there's foundations and businesses that are investing in circular economy work entrepreneurial startup and material science organizations Boulder Valley School District Career and Technical Education is very interested in not only Co developing curriculum they're located right next door at 6500 rapaho but also

[186:02] helping share facilities and access to the site and also talking about funding boulder county state of colorado so there's really quite a few interested parties that we'd love to be able to pursue if council was supportive of city staff looking at shared kind of funding strategy for this and here's the original questions for council which I think if we just kind of focus on the city's role and support for exploring this reuse of focused innovation hub and then if there's anything about the county prior to the county meeting in January I think that would be a good focus for the conversation this evening so do we have any clarifying questions then maybe we can get a little feedback clarifying questions Lisa so Kara is very happy to

[187:00] hear what you just said that they've identified a site for deconstruction so is has said did they tell you where this site is and is there a way that we can easily take the deconstructed materials and bring it over to this innovation hub or makerspace the deconstruction materials from houses oh I see yeah well part of the expansion for resources to be able to accept more materials deconstructed materials and I don't know where the site is they said they had they have it narrowed down to I spoke to Darla from Boulder County land use this morning and she said they haven't narrowed down to three sites and they were going to have an announcement at the end by the end of or a decision by the end of December as to we know in our memo it said something about they weren't gonna make a decision until 2020

[188:01] so that's not so I guess it's a two-phase process for the county Darla was speaking from a resource conservation division perspective and she's making a recommendation to the boulder county commissioners Boulder County Commissioners are not going to make a decision final decision about funding from the county sustainability tax until 2020 but by the end of December she will have put together a proposal for zero waste infrastructure as kind of a you know first priority for sustainability tax money good any other any other questions so maybe I see some really easy things to to bite off here I'm guessing that we all support the the city of Boulder helping to create a circular me people like that idea yes right on a shared fundraising strategy sounds like

[189:01] a good idea yeah innovative parking strategies yes good thing okay maybe we'll talk just a little bit more about so the innovation hub people generally supportive of the idea of innovation hub I had another question Karen that was that are you working with the small what is it Small Business Development Center or yes they've been in on all of these early Taylor says she would be very helpful in helping people get I was gonna stay the university yes definitely yes we actually have a meeting with their material science and technology transfer lab or something next week and I just had one thought on the innovation hub I love the idea and I look forward to us pursuing that and just one thing to keep in mind is we implement new programs here's just the sum of these

[190:00] are bigger ticket items than others and just to keep in mind how much waste we're saving you know as we implement things and just sort of keep you know cost-benefit in - we move forward on that that was just my one thought on the innovation of other thoughts on the innovation I have another question and so Kari you had put out option a and option B and when uses the existing builds we're gonna get to that under this out flow so just innovation hub other thoughts on the innovation hub how about the site flow let's talk about the site close Lisa okay so now you have option a which uses the existing building and option B which has new buildings and so you're talking about phasing these in and if I read the memo right there's about three to five million dollar difference between doing option a and doing option B but it

[191:01] sounds like option B would probably be more energy-efficient and have a lot of other places where you make a decision on go no-go on option a option B it has to do with your fundraising I think it has to be early on actually I think we need to finalize our site plans and obviously we wouldn't do anything before going to planning and development services staff and planning board and but I do think that we need to go through the concept planning stage and the site planning stage before we beam not full site review but we need to have a firm site plan before we can even think about how we would phase it whatever site development we do we will try and maximize keeping open the existing activities on the site the

[192:00] existing nonprofits need to stay open and have little disruption as possible to their ongoing operations as we develop it so it might be a situation where we keep the existing buildings as we're building other ones and then dismantle them but you know we haven't really figured out the full strategy yet I have a thought on this I'll just chime in i I think we can certainly consider taking down the existing buildings but but I guess the the the warehouses seem to me like a less of a loss as opposed to the office building which while I know is not a brand new current building I just maybe put a bigger emphasis on looking at ways to reuse that engineer existing site plan I noticed that option B still I think that's a blue thing that's a so I'm not sure so I know your buildings in that area in your reconfigured site plan so I just encourage you to look closely whether

[193:00] that could be reused thank you yes other thoughts on that Erin I like your suggesting to the reuse people that they look at reusing things I think we would reuse the parts of it certainly yes No what I thought when thinking about them whether if they have to dismantle and that they would do the best job possible right with whatever it is that they're gonna be putting up in other thoughts on the site layout I think then the last question was whether there was anything we wanted you to research before meeting with the county in January anybody I guess I'd like to know you know I'd like to know more about the deconstruction site and and what's going to go on there how big is it what the county is going to put in towards it on from the sustainability tax sorry just to clarify

[194:03] Lisa sorry I don't mean to interrupt your thought there but what they're talking about building is a mixed waste mixed construction waste recycling site so it would not be deconstruction it would be bringing mixed waste from a construction site or a demolition and sort it and send it off to different markets yeah okay that's that's fine it accomplishes the same thing reusing so so and then one of the other things have been looking for is and it's in the report about composting and you talked about we're using some of our restaurant grade food for the digester out at the wastewater facility or we're thinking about doing that where so the wastewater treatment plant has just commissioned a study to look at upgrading our digesters out there and so

[195:01] we've been talking with them about whether there's a kind of pre-processing and post-processing step that could be added to what they're already planning to do out there to allow it to accept commercial food waste they're not doing any of that yet okay okay so I guess I'd like to get the county you know are we ever gonna identify a composting site in the county that's closer to than going where we go now so the site that they've identified for a construction and demolition debris is also being looked at it's large enough according to Darla to also do composting okay I guess so I'd like to know if they want to contribute anything to this facility well so that might be a question you all ask them you know but

[196:01] if there's any preliminary research you'd like us to do we can certainly come armed with that provide that to Council in advance or anything yeah I mean I think if you go back to the whole history of this site and I don't want to bring it all back up but the city wasn't really originally looking for this site this was something that the County Commissioners did in an executive session and actually we were excited about it because it we had been looking for one site where we could Co locate all these uses but in the end the county's real purpose in getting that site was to deal with the construction waste and there was a lot of pushback from the surrounding communities on saying no they didn't want that and so

[197:00] said which is also fine but these communities are in Boulder County and so I I it would be great and if the county would contribute to that perhaps some some data on city users versus I wanted to ask about a1 organics so I know that right now that's our only option for taking our compost and there was a time when I believe that the Weld County Commissioners had shut that operation down as I correct no they had a hearing because there's a neighbor by a-1 organics that was complaining about blowing debris off the site and so the county well county commissioners had a hearing about it and the outcome of that hearing I believe was that they're allowing Bob the owner

[198:02] of a1 organics site there to or the president I guess to build a fence and keep the blowing debris off the neighbor's yard and they're putting several other site improvements in place to address that but there was not a as far as I know there was never a threat to close them down the weld County Commissioners did close down the Heartland biofuels facility because of neighbors complaints of odor right and that was the joint project with EDF is that correct yeah and so that one was was it taking compost to be biogas how was it making biogas was it from it was a combination of dairy manure and food waste commercial food waste but so that is no longer in operation that's correct yeah okay right now mothballed there keeps people are interested in potentially

[199:00] getting it running again but no serious and did that impact the amount of compost material that may one could take well they started taking a lot more when Heartland closed it doesn't impact how much they can take because they still have capacities my understanding they are very very careful about what they accept and they're very happy from what we've heard with boulders compostables a lot of the reason for that is frankly because we pre grind it before we send it to them so not as much blows around when they're turning the compost piles but it's also a higher quality material then they get from communities around Denver up in Fort Collins area that's we've been pretty lucky in that regard but it it's a vulnerability because it is the only place we take our compost right now and do they accept it do they charge a fee to take it they do there's a tipping

[200:02] fee okay great thank you that's the I just wanted to follow up as well on the composting and see whether or not the county would be building it to the standards of the composting that we've been able to get done and it sounds as though that's true well it's an excellent question for them too and we can do a little bit of preliminary research I'm not sure the compost technology they're looking at in that right that's the question right any other comments for Kara before we let her go yes everybody I guess I would just say if if we are having discussions with the county and it is surrounding composting just from personal experience over the last five years having moved into a home and being able to compost it's just been incredible for me just on a personal level to see how little trash we now throw out I mean the fact that

[201:00] well the paper towels from cleaning up Kathy Acker you know whatever can go in the compost it's it makes me feel so good or I can get scoopable litter from the cats and I'm not wasting now and so if we can try to I think this is the future it's such an amazing way and now I've been reading a lot of articles about towns stopping recycling because China is not taking it anymore which is devastating and so if this could be our future and I mean the more we can promote it the better is what I would say so just a way of decreasing our waste right on so just a comment and I sit on our cab the resource conservation advisory board and so to the point that China is indeed really up to their purity requirements I have to compliment our recyclers here in the county for having managed right through that I mean there's very capable recycling going on

[202:02] which keeps the material and acceptable and so we haven't had nearly as negative of an impact here in Boulder County as many other communities have as a result with this so just compliments and kudos to the county folks yeah and I think that's there's multiple reasons for that one of them as we are very good at sorting we've been doing it for 40 years here we do it better than most places in the country also because eco cycle is a mission-based nonprofit recycler that runs our recycling center and they have always marketed to domestic markets they don't market to China so they didn't have to set up new markets when China decided to stop taking materials they also always try and market sort materials to their highest end used to preserve as many lives as possible if you will of the material so they sort office paper to make new office paper

[203:01] newspaper to make new newspaper and in a lot of parts of the country they just mix everything together don't sort it very much and make all the paper into say cellulose insulation or something that's kind of a low-grade product and because we've been so careful and they really are not looking at just the bottom line at our recycling center they're able to kind of weather the markets when they you know when the rest of the country is kind of scrambling and holding onto a lot of materials that they can't market anymore we do having said that there's the fact that all of our now domestic markets have a lot more material coming to them the prices are lower so we're getting less money for our recyclables that we sell but we're not sitting on any of them so no I just had a good question about a circular economy that would do away with the need to export to China because everything

[204:00] would be a closed loop exactly so the city and the county could say here's a problem waste material that we're having an issue trying to market we could put out a call if you know businesses can come up with an idea to create a product out of this problem waste material then you right there but hereby granted two years in our mid scale manufacturing space and wraparound services to help you start your business and launch it and then we don't have to worry about that anymore right yeah any a huge thank you to eco cycle and resource our to nonprofit partners on the site because we couldn't come close to reaching our goals without them absolutely good okay this is very exciting is our zero waste goals or key ones for the city it's great to see the next phases coming online so we look forward to seeing it continue to come forward to us thank you all we are adjourned everybody

[205:18] [Music] - Parris I'll fold like that