January 22, 2019 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[3:21] buddy let's get started with our Boulder City Council study session of January 22nd we have two items tonight right just two and I'm gonna hand it over to Jane I guess one thing I did want to mention to my colleagues and I'm gonna do better about writing up the results of this but I'm going I'm leaving tomorrow to go to DC for the mayor's innovation project conference and then along with Karla Castillo when we'll also tack on a day of lobbying meeting with our delegation so just FYI that'll be the next few days and I will

[4:02] let you know what happens just do you mean the delegation from this particular district or from Colorado Colorado so so you'll get to speak to Senator Gardner as well at the very least his death the shutdown has made it a little complicated who is actually gonna be there but yeah the senators and congressmen the goose me and Carl Carl and I Karl Castillo and I cool everybody knows that they are welcome to come and they're what now there'll be more opportunities later in the year will be going with the us 36 commissioners and listen mayors and commissioners coalition later and fraud is worth Sam and I will both be in Washington in the second week of March and we will be meeting with our congressional

[5:00] delegation as well so to the extent there are followers feel free to pass those yeah absolutely so if anybody else wants to get in on going to DC please let us know okay with that we're gonna turn it over to Jean to start the first topic thanks very much I actually don't have much to say so I'm gonna ask Sarah and Huntley to introduce the item thanks Jane Sarah Huntley Engagement Manager for the city of Boulder Thank You Council for scheduling some time tonight for us to go over the community survey results from 2018 here with me tonight is - memam an from NRC which does the consultant group that conducted the survey for us for at least the second year in a row perhaps more than that she'll talk a little bit about the methodology and some of the interesting findings that we discovered from our feedback from our community I just want to point out that this data staff is really digging into this data this year and it's important to us for a variety of reasons not only does it show us where we're doing well but also

[6:01] highlights some challenges for us we're also looking at it through an equity lens a little bit more than we have in the past there's some interesting findings there we feel like this is a commitment and honors the commitment that we've made both to using data in a more meaningful way both to per a measure performance and look for successes that we should be celebrating together as a community and also our commitment to our community that they give us input and feedback we're going to look at that and use it in a meaningful way so we're excited for your questions this evening the memo we'll start with a brief presentation then we have three questions to walk through with counsel great thanks so much Sarah as Sarah said I'm Dammam Amman with national research center and this is the second year we've conducted the National citizen survey on behalf of the city of Boulder but we have been working with the city of Boulder for decades actually National Research Center is based here in Boulder and the city decided to make the switch to our standardized Community

[7:00] Survey template the National Citizen survey back in 2016 largely because of the opportunity to benchmark against other comparison communities the level of standardization of the survey has allowed us to create an average rating for each item on the survey a standard question wording if you've had a chance to review the reports this time around or from 2016 you'll see that we organized the reporting around what we've defined as these three pillars of community livability which are community characteristics governance and participation and within those three pillars we have defined these eight facets if you've again if you've reviewed the reports or when you do you'll see these that go throughout as well as I mentioned we've been working with with Boulder for decades but this is the second iteration of the National Citizen survey which provides some there's you know some long-term trends over time but the 2016 and 2018 surveys were almost identical both in terms of question wording and question scales so there's

[8:00] some really great trend data to observe there Boulder chose us to have an expanded sample size bigger than what we typically recommend and it's always great to have more sample size but more sample size basically means a lower margin of error so with a smaller sample size we typically get to about a plus or minus 5% margin of error because Boulder expanded the overall sample size the overall margin of error around the data is plus or minus 3% so it's a higher level of precision it was an average response rate that we typically see and on par with what we saw in the past other options besides the expanded sample we're having online versions of the survey available having a survey available in Spanish we broke results out by Geographic comparisons by 10 sub area neighborhoods of Boulder also by demographic characteristics and also in addition to the national benchmarks that I touched upon we we also are able to create custom benchmark comparisons for Boulder so in addition to being compared to all

[9:00] of the communities in our database Boulder was also compared to all the other Front Range communities in our database and also to other University communities with similar population sizes to Boulder here's just a rough idea to give you kind of just a quick snapshot of how many communities are in our national benchmarking database and the coverage there's over 600 in that here's a snapshot of how Boulder did compare to the national benchmarks those average ratings we've created for each item on the survey we have intentionally made it very difficult to be anything other than similar to the benchmark we've put a wideband around those benchmark ratings it's it's 10 points and the reasoning behind that is to try and make your results as actionable as possible so we would expect to see that most of your ratings are similar to the benchmark and a majority were for Boulder however the fact that 44 were higher than the benchmark is quite notable and only 10 were lower among those 44 many of them were among the highest ratings in our database and

[10:01] I'll get a little bit more into specific findings on that and you know there's there's a ton of data and I have a lot of slides I'm going to try and go through them pretty quickly in the interest of time but there's there's so much data to dig into just wanted to touch on that briefly here's a snapshot of the comparisons over time so this is the 2018 ratings compared to 2016 and there is a detailed trends over time report where you can look at each of these items but broadly we saw stability over time which is what we would typically expect to see 109 items receiving similar ratings from 2016 to 2018 eight we're trending up and 17 we're trending down and again I'll get into some of those specific items this was quite noticeable that all of these different aspects as they relate to public trust and city government increased from 2016 to 2018 it was a statistically significant improvement

[11:01] for the overall direction that the city is taking the job City government does a welcoming citizen involvement overall confidence in city government acting in the best interest of Boulder being honest and in gathering feedback from residents so it's it's notable that there was you know about a handful of increases and the majority of them are clustered in this one area can you pause there for just a second sure are you gonna show us on these ratings benchmark or is that later in your presentation if not could you pause and speak to benchmark actually all of these items were similar to the benchmark they're all rated a majority as excellent or good and most of items on the survey are on a scale of excellent good fair or poor but they're all similar to the benchmark comparison here are those eight facets of community livability again and this honeycomb is from the liveability report and it's depicting a couple of different things here we asked a stated importance question on the

[12:01] survey asking residents which of these items are the most important for the boulder community to focus on in the next two years so the items that are starred are the items that came out as being rated as the most essential or very important by Boulder residents of natural environment and education and enrichment and the dark blue items mean that overall all of the ratings within those facets tended to be higher than the benchmark the lighter blue shade means that overall ratings tended to be similar to the benchmark there's none of that lightest blue shade so that that means that no facets overall had ratings lower than the benchmark it's also interesting that Boulder is one of the few communities where we don't see safety and economy coming up to the top and those are also strong facets as well but it's it's interesting that Boulder residents have slightly different priorities and what we typically see so now try and just briefly go over some of the key findings from the community livability report the first is that Boulder continues to be a great place to

[13:01] live and visit at least nine and ten gave excellent or good ratings to the overall quality of life in the city these ratings were higher than the benchmarks almost all majority strong majority giving excellent or good ratings to Boulder as a place to visit recreational opportunities and fitness opportunities fitness opportunities were number ranked number one in the nation recreational opportunities were ranked number two in the nation well there's a place to visit was number eight out of the hundreds of communities in the data base and then a even higher more highly ranked when looking at the subsets of communities for the custom benchmarks the next key finding is that Boulder delivers on natural environment residents select that as one of the most important community focus areas but ratings are very strong at least nine and 10 residents giving excellent or good ratings to the overall natural environment preservation of natural areas Boulder open space city parks again some of these were number one

[14:01] ratings in the country preservation of natural areas increased that rating increased from 2018 in 2018 from 2016 and it was number one in the nation at least four in five respondents also gave high ratings to recycling drinking water and air quality I did want to note that the rating for air quality did slightly decrease from 2016 to 2018 and that rating is similar to the national benchmark but higher than the Front Range benchmark the next is that while the economy is strong it does pose a challenge to affordability economy ratings were we're very strong at least four and five giving excellent or good ratings to the overall economic health vibrant downtown overall quality of businesses and services older as a place to work at least three and five giving excellent or good ratings to employment opportunities and economic development also at least three and five reported that they worked in Boulder these

[15:01] ratings were all higher than the benchmarks and tended to be stable over time although the overall economic health of Boulder did slightly decrease in 2018 on the flip side these are the excellent or good ratings for some of the affordability issues in Boulder only nine percent saying that cost of living was excellent or good eight percent saying that affordable quality housing was excellent or good 19 percent giving excellent or good ratings to the availability of housing options these ratings were not only they remain stable from 2016 to 2018 they were much lower than the benchmarks and not only were they lower than those national averages and and other comparison communities they were among the lowest so in some places we have to see the highest highs and some some of the lowest lows the final of the key findings from the community livability report is that alternate mode travel is exceptional although automobile travel still

[16:00] struggles Boulder had extremely high majority of folks saying that they had used public transportation instead of driving and that they walked or bike instead of driving they were higher than the norms for that the ratings of paths and walking trails almost all rating that as excellent or good these ratings were stable over time also not on the slide rates of carpooling was up we're also except exceptionally high in Boulder and among the highest we see nationally then on the other side of that fewer than a majority giving excellent or good ratings to traffic flow public parking and ease of travel by car ease of travel by car did decrease from 2016 to 2018 and these ratings are lower than the national averages one of the benefits of doing the National Citizen survey is that while there is a high level of standardization there's also some room on the survey for some completely custom questions one of the questions as

[17:01] developed with city staff had to do with information sources for community events such as City Council meetings and other kinds of meetings and events it was a pretty long list and you can see that full list in your in your detailed reports but these were the items where a majority said that they were very likely or likely to use and that was mailings to their home address the city of Boulder website and the daily camera and this question was also asked in 2016 in the proportions that shook out we're very similar in 2016 and in 2018 this question is kind of a lot of data to have on the slide and I apologize for that but this this question was asked in an agreed disagrees scale it's a series of statements and asking folks to agree or disagree there is a neutral midpoint neither agree nor disagree so a majority said that they strongly or agreed that they inform themselves about major issues in the city of Boulder and that they felt included in the boulder community and then down towards the bottom you can see that a majority said

[18:02] they neither agreed nor disagreed that their input when they give it is reflected in recommendations to council and other city leaders or the City Council considers their input before making the most decisions and so I think what's telling about those data points is that it's you know we know that the average resident isn't giving direct input so I think that's what that neither agree nor disagree or reflects there it's not that when they give it it's not they're not being heard it's it's that they're they're not likely not giving it at all so if we want to continue this question we already discussed perhaps changing that on the next survey to try and maybe first see how many people said that they have tried to tried that level of contact do benchmarking especially on the third question you know once like about 20 percent of the people say that they or engaged or involved you have comparisons on other cities on that I don't for this question because it was one of the custom questions we do ask a couple of questions that have to do with rates of contact on the survey that we

[19:00] have benchmarks for so I could take a look at those we asked if folks have I believe we asked if they've watched a meeting online and if they've attended a meeting and if they've contacted a city official so we could take a look at that and see how that compared the watched and attended was at about 22% for each question and I think that they were similar to the benchmark I could I can double-check for you but that sounds kind of on par it's usually less than 30% in most communities so just quickly wanted to highlight some challenges and potential opportunities for improvement that Sarah had highlighted these in her staff report as well in terms of equity I mentioned one of the additional reports that Boulder selected was the demographic subgroup comparison report and that broke results out by some of the socio demographic items on the survey one of which was breaking out residents that said that they were Hispanic and or any other races versus

[20:02] those that said they were white alone and what one of the patterns that we saw was that residents that indicated that they were Hispanic and/or any other race did tend to give statistically significant lower ratings to many items like employment opportunities shopping opportunities participating in community matters social events and activities the ability to start or grow a business the government being honest openness and acceptance of their communities some public safety items and you know obviously these are these are important issues Boulder I can tell you anecdotally this is also not something we do a benchmark on but I can tell you that Boulder is not alone in seeing that non-white residents are giving lower ratings to many things than white residents but it certainly doesn't mean that Boulder couldn't be you know the first one to be successful at moving that needle and changing it so definitely something interesting to dig into another had to do with some of the

[21:01] safe ratings overall safety ratings and safety services were positive almost all indicated that they felt safe in their neighborhoods and in downtown Boulder the overall feeling of safety in the city was rated positively by at least four and five respondents as was the rating for police and sheriff services and those ratings were all similar to the benchmark however there were some safety ratings that were trending down from 2016 to 2018 the decreases aren't huge but they were statistically significant so it could be just an area to note or potentially for watchful waiting depending on priorities but ratings did decrease for crime prevention and also more residents said that they had been the victim of a crime or that they had reported a crime in the last 12 months those rates were all still similar to the benchmarks though they weren't they weren't lower than in other communities so just to wrap up what I've got here overall you know Boulder continues to be a great place to

[22:00] visit and live natural environment ratings are extremely high and it's also clear that that's very valued by residents the economy is strong but then on the flip side it poses those challenges to community affordability alternate mode travel is is great although the automobile travel pieces to it is still a challenge and there's definitely some opportunities to improve and challenges that exist with an equity and safety now I'll turn it back over to Sara thanks to meme' so that was a quick run through you do have much more detailed information in the reports that's part of your memo but we did want to give you an opportunity while the memo was here first of all if you had any sort of technical questions or specific questions about the data that you'd like to ask her otherwise we can move into more general questions and observations that you might like to make thank you for that is very informative can you talk to us about any waiting that was done and how that worked yes we

[23:02] do statistically wait the data so it's a it's a multi-step process first when we're creating the mail sample all households within those ten sub areas of Boulder are eligible to be part of the randomly selected survey we take a look at the split of multifamily and single-family homes an intentionally slightly over sample of multifamily units in in the sampling process and that's an attempt to help address some of the non-response bias we see in surveys like these then when we get the data back we look at the most recent census data available for the city of Boulder and then scientifically weight the data back to that as as much as we can without applying any weights that are too high and there is detail if there's a waiting table in the technical appendices report but I believe we were able to to weight it well to make it as representative of the community as possible without needing to apply you know overly high weights or anything along those lines thank you and one other question so know we did the non

[24:00] scientifically valid version of the survey that's open and at the time of the memo we hadn't quite gotten into that do we have any preliminary results from looking at that we do actually I have some talking points here we were able to look at that survey those survey results over the weekend we had 241 residents complete that surveys compared to the 12 hundred or so who completed this survey approximately 10 percent of those responses were based on intentional engagement team outreach to community members and less connected communities we use to partner organizations fo and BHP to help us so I've got about 24 extra responses because of that those who responded to the opt-in survey were more likely to have lived in Boulder for a longer period of time more likely to have lived in single-family homes be homeowners be age 35 or older or to be female overall they were less diverse interestingly the rates of lower-income respondents were similar between the optin survey and the scientific survey the optin survey just

[25:01] for folks who don't realize this it was online near the end of the of the response period for the statistically valid survey which is what our consultants had recommended we do to try to provide duplicate response I'm trying to eliminate duplicate responses the opt-in survey participants responded with much higher rankings than the scientific survey participants in two areas accessing information sources to obtain info about community events so they're obviously pretty comfortable looking on the website and looking at technical places where they can get information and they're people who actually found the online survey not surprising they also rated themselves higher in terms of being participants in community engagement generally however the opt in survey participants responded with lower rankings to approximately two-thirds of the questions than scientific survey participants the areas where there was no statistically significant difference had to do with these priority areas of

[26:00] education and enrichment recreation and wellness and natural and built environment but what this tells me is that the statistically valid survey in doing that survey for this type of a community-wide polling and sent sentiment type gathering is really valuable because we were getting people who might have who did have a different perspective than folks who are participating with us regularly online thank you for that sir that wasn't in our packet what you just read could we get a copy of there absolutely we can provide we had a subsequent report and I can provide that - oh that would be great thank you my questions were similar to those of Erin's I wondered about the you know the other survey and where did you notice that was it only on the city website that it was noticed it was a reach that you said that you did it was on the city website it was on the be heard Boulder page even though it

[27:00] wasn't a survey built in that tool we put a link to the page and I believe it was in the press release and our colleagues and communications pushed it out on social media during the time window that it was open okay I just wondered about that and also with the traffic and use of alternate modes that was a fairly high percentage across those did you ask the question of frequency it's acid a frequency scale what we're reporting is the percent that said at least once in the last 12 months but when you look into the report you can see it more chopped a little more finely that's what that's what I wondered because it did seem high so but once in the last 12 months not necessary and so that's that's what we need to do to calculate and create that benchmark rating for it to but you can see it broken out a little more finely thank you so wouldn't you say you're gonna be digging into this I'm just kind of curious this is more in the weeds here but some of the data showed from the non-white respondents there I guess

[28:05] felt like they had longer wait times for mr and ambulance services and and things like that and I'm curious when you're digging in are you gonna be working the police and a.m. are you know that keep records of everything and so I'd be kind of curious to see how the recorded data aligns with their feeling versus the recorded data for white residents and their feeling so is there data showing that they are receiving longer wait times then you know white residents are are you guys gonna be looking at things like that so we presented this information these findings to all the department directors a couple of weeks ago now and we've encouraged them to look at the reports and dive into their particular data I know the police department for example when they got the perception sistex back about people saying that they were reporting crimes

[29:00] and feeling victimized or had witnessed crimes more they went back to check felony filings and sure enough those are up during that time period so it would be up to each department to look at other data sources they have but we have in the past year and a half or so almost every department has a data steward who can help department directors and project team leaders sort through the different types of data they have to see if they're seeing contradictory information or or if the information is consistent didn't saying that we could just contact the department heads kind of you guys aren't gonna know it's at a department level we're helping them identify data points that might be of interest to them but then we're counting on the subject matter experts in those departments to make sense of the data and apply it great thank you would it be possible for us to get a report back all of us rather than have to follow up with specific department heads yes if there are particular thing items that council is interested in looking at then raising them now or

[30:00] sending me a list then I can get them to the department directors they can have their people look into it and we can get it back to Council in fact I'm writing down the one that Mirabai just brought up thank you so thanks Sarah for the presentation and Gemma so thank you and I have a question about the Spanish translation and I was wondering if that's done by the National Survey and you only do the the specific to the city ones or if the whole thing is done locally for the National Citizen survey for the Spanish translation we do have we've gotten the template translated and then for Baldur's custom questions or if there are any specific language items that were specific to Boulder then we then we get those done on a case by case basis and and brought

[31:00] in and then the city does have a chance to review it typically we don't get edits when we work with other with communities just broadly but sometimes we've worked with communities and other parts of the country and they say you know this we need to change this in the cover letter or the paragraph or you know this dialect doesn't seem to work for us so you know we're happy to address that if needed well I just wanted to comment that the the translations that I looked at were very good okay so yeah great I just wanted to comment so I had a question about air quality and that there was a it's like decreasing people's thoughts about air quality and I was wondering when the survey was done and had the new air quality analyses come out with respect to the amount of fracking and everything that's happening in Boulder County having overall not such high air quality well it's definitely true that you know if

[32:01] something is a big media story it can impact resident perception the surveys were mailed in mid-september and we collected data through early November so I'm not quite sure when that would have been right at the end of that window at the end of the window yeah thank you does that cover question one and two you know that I think that's - please yeah so I had one under - okay I got my technical questions in okay but I actually wanted reach out I see bill over here a transportation question because one of the the metrics that went down was transportation by car

[33:10] and so I know that we do tracking on travel times by car in the city what one was is that that's an annual thing right and when was the last time that that was done so we I'm sorry Bill Cowher and I'm your principal traffic engineer don't actually track travel we track travel times every three years okay and then we track traffic counts every year in a cordon around the city and internal to the city and it's a combination of those two metrics that we use to assess performance car city so the traffic the travel times where people actually drive the length of the city that's only every three years correct and only on three three specific north-south quarters and

[34:01] three specific east-west Quarter and when was the last time that was done the I believe it's the north-south corridors were are being done last year and this year and east-west quarters were done the year before that I believe but I would have to check to be sure okay and how about the annual traffic counts what's the currency on this week again we count those every year so we would have data in 2018 last year 2017 okay and I'm much more familiar with how those are changing well if we could get and follow up with some information on the hard data I think that'd be really valuable to see how that compares to the survey results so certainly we can pull that together thank you so much the people have other items that they think staff should dig in deeper not that we can't email them to Jane afterwards but

[35:01] the folks have other things on their minds well I think the equities issue is quite important and so you know following up on both what nearby asks but also just generally speaking the perception and you know comparing it to reality is important but the perception itself is important so yeah I'd like to make sure that we track that one closely as we're going through our care work so the final question is that we and analyzing the priorities and the work plan discussion you had just on Friday night staff feels like we have quite a few work plan items that address the feedback we received on the survey we just wanted to make sure that council either concurred with that assessment or could point us to unaddressed data points that you'd like staff to do more analysis and work planning around okay great we have some great work ahead of

[36:01] us we'll be very curious to see how the numbers roll out in 2020 which is the next time we'll do the survey and obviously we'll have some opportunity actually quite a bit of opportunity to get community feedback on how we're doing between now and then thank you and you're gonna send us the other report I will make a point of sending you the online report okay thank you very much thank you so the next item is our study session on the hill hotel and earlier today at the

[37:00] council agenda committee counsel asked that we start off with a little bit of background regarding how we even came to be working on a hotel and I asked a vet Bowden to present that for me as we kick it off so a bet good evening Council Yvette Bowden director of community vitality thanks for your attention this evening and for your conversation and you've pulled us a little closer sure so the conversation about hill revitalization has been going on for many years most recently in 2015 there was quite a bit of council conversation about the hill there was a concern about development and revitalization and whose living and working and visiting the hill there was a temporary moratorium put in place at that time on development particularly residential development with an exception of course of and David

[38:00] can speak more to this later of affordable housing but there was an overall consensus that improvements were needed in the hill corridor over the years there have been few opportunities for the city to consider a partnership in particular and we haven't been directly invited to participate in particularly a partnership there have been conversations ongoing and there are members in the audience tonight to address some of those issues the reason we're here this evening is a follow-up to a conversation you had in the fall to specifically talk about this partnership proposal this catalytic considered project in the hill hotel in the hill area which would include a hotel project the partnership is being considered because it specifically utilizes city-owned property in the pleasant street lot other efforts in the hill are always ongoing and considered and this evening we're going to have a

[39:00] presentation by Sarah we've been sitting from vitality and Joel Wagner from central finance there are members in the audience from you can't see the hill reimbursement working group the property owner and development team representatives thanks for your attention I'll turn it over to Sarah so so actually event I'm gonna jump in sure at this point and say some things that I said at the council agenda committee meeting so the question was how did the I how did the idea of a hotel ever come up and the implication that we've heard from some in our community is that some House staff generated this idea that is not accurate this came up when a developer or owners of the property approached our staff in the 2015 timeframe I believe and suggested that this would be an appropriate use whenever an owner or developer comes to

[40:01] our staff we always listen to them and work with them to to address the question that they have and to address a development proposal that they put before us and so that's what we did in this circumstance so the clarification that I think CAC asked us to give to Council in the community tonight is not that staff dreamed this up but this is a response to a proposal that in fact met some of the important concerns of the hill revitalization study which is that a catalytic site was one of the things that was called out highly in that Hillary investment study that we had presented a council was accepted by Council a number of years ago and so this seemed like an opportunity to address a concern than a property on her head and further to meet one of the manger criterias of the Hillary Investments study so hopefully that is

[41:02] some clear information Thank You Jane for that clarification and you're right I also wanted to acknowledge that the conversation this evening is a jumping-off point from your fall conversation staff heard loud and clear that you wanted us to go back with other members of the community with the boards and commissions that are charged with this review with the development partner with the property owner and particularly with the tenant and neighbors in the university to talk more intensely about the people on the hill the place and placemaking and also the price so we hope that the review that you see this evening which just expands upon the memo that you have before you provides that information thank you I'm gonna run very quickly through some slides that just explain to Jane and Yvette's points the

[42:01] background of the proposal especially for viewers watching at home starting with the University Hill general Improvement District you can see at the north end of the site that's the area that we'll be talking about tonight but this is generally located at the intersection of Broadway and University Avenue extending southward this is the the University Hill general Improvement District which was formed and not the 1970s to provide parking for the district there is a University Hill commercial area Management Commission which was formed to advise Council on matters related to the district but the council is the board of directors for the district itself and when the Hilary investment strategy was formed in 2014 one of the mandates was to create an umbrella governance structure to craft ways to find mutually beneficial solutions to pursuing the hill reinvestment strategy and that's the Hilary Investment working group so we'll be referring to those different entities

[43:01] throughout the presentation in 2014 the council named the Hilary investment strategy as a priority with the goal of improving quality of life on the hill for its visitors residents and businesses progress with the initiative has included a temporary development warrant aureum that resulted in a district study and a change in zoning to no longer allow new residential uses that are market rate this did result in successfully attracting more office users we also introduced the Eco pass in 2016 to address the Hillary investment strategy goal of reducing parking demand that resulted in a 20% shift change of the use of 80 spaces of parking within the district by introducing a free regional bus pass for all full-time employees and lastly in 2017 we constructed the hill event street with the community culture safety tax revenues which introduced new energy-efficient lighting landscaping

[44:01] and more amenities to attract users to the district year-round one strategy from the 2015 study that has not yet been achieved is the use of these catalyst sites as Jean mentioned to bring in an anchor use or major attraction anchor uses are typically a destination retailers such as an Apple Store or Trader Joe's or a major attraction like a movie theater since the start of the Hillary investment strategy staff has reached out to the broker community to ask whether these typical an anchor uses would come to the hill and the answer has largely been that the district does not have sufficient foot traffic to meet the selection criteria for those types of tenants in 2015 the city did receive a proposal from a developer that would leverage the youjin Pleasant Street lot one of the identified catalyst sites to assemble a large enough parcel to construct a hotel use with the potential to bring in 200 users a day to the hill

[45:00] commercial district a hotel use they indicated would create its own foot traffic and provide a captive audience for the hills existing shopping and dining businesses the hotel operator would be sage hospitality and they have a representative here tonight which has constructed similar projects and university towns such as the Elizabeth Hotel in Fort Collins which is pictured here they offer efficient but high design room concepts large publicly accessible lounge areas and innovative retail concepts at the September meeting staff was sorry council have reviewed an initial concept for the partnership in which the city would lease the Pleasant Street lot into the land assemblage in exchange for being able to construct a 200 space parking garage beneath the assemblage the purse base cost of the garage however as he that mentioned was much higher than average both because it was

[46:00] underground and because it was on an irregularly shaped site there was also a desire to assist the existing tenants with remaining on the hill Council requested that staff returned with additional information and asked that the developer consider several requests since the September meeting the developer has provided a written commitment to each of these requests namely a penalty for early sale of the project creating and administering a transportation demand management program providing student employment opportunities in the new hotel and creating a tenant relocation assistance fund since the September meeting staff has also continued to provide regular email updates to tenants and maintained a database of each of the tenants relocation needs understanding that the details of each tenant relocation plans and their financial considerations are not public staff was asked for an order of magnitude to demonstrate the ability of the district to absorb the potentially displaced tenants the existing businesses are in spaces that

[47:01] range from 500 to 2,000 square feet with rents that range from $14 per square foot to $28 per square foot triple net of the four tenants that varying sizes that indicated to the city that they would like to remain on the hill if the project were to proceed today there's 14,000 square feet of available space in the district which would be sufficient to accommodate their relocation its staffs understanding that some of the rents that are currently available in the historic core are within the same range as the current rents at fifteen to seventeen dollars per square foot triple net as far as relocation cost the developer's relocation assistance fund would aid those tenants efforts to remain on the hill the developer indicates to the city that the revised concept for the project however is not feasible without the inclusion of the pleasant street parcel and some level of support to offset the city contributions anticipated as part

[48:00] of the partnership concept that was presented in September the current financial support needed is three million dollars which would be sufficient to fund the construction of the public realm improvements on the site including 1.2 million dollars for the streetscape improvements sidewalks bus shelters and benches along University Avenue Broadway and Pleasant Street as well as 1.8 million for the public plaza and pedestrian paths that would connect University Avenue through the project site to Pleasant street after the September council meeting staff was asked to provide additional information on parking demand in the district to better understand the need for a parking garage if at all the city commissioned a parking study in November and the results are in your packet these were also provided to you Camp C for their input on how to best proceed you camp C suggested that the city sell the Pleasant street lot since it was not performing well as a revenue generator or in the right location to attract high turnover customer parking at its

[49:00] quarterly meeting the hill reinvestment working group also suggested that the sale be contingent on two conditions to ensure that the asset is retained if the project is not approved and to ensure that the loss of the sixty two spaces on Pleasant Street is offset by future investments in alternative parking solutions in the near term the city also hosted a public meeting in early January to test the ideas from the two stakeholder organizations those in attendance stressed the importance of continuing to look at I'm sorry continuing to look at the need for parking including a number of unknowns in the future as well as supporting the earlier momentum of the Hillary investment strategy improvements and coordinating with Cu as they move forward with their proposal for a conference center hotel and parking garage across Broadway and Sarah how many people attended this public preview there were seven people in attendance and it followed the Hilary Investment

[50:01] quarterly meeting which had 20 members in attending thank you good evening Council again my name is Joel Wagner I'm tax and special projects manager for the city excuse me I seem to be Lisa losing my voice but because we're looking for counsels guidance I don't have a lot to say so hopefully it stays so the revised proposal for the from the hill Hotel partnership and that's presented to Council on the memo it significantly reduces the city investment in public improvements the twenty two million dollar garage and associated COP issuance and interest costs costs has been eliminated and essentially replaced by the development teams request for a three million dollars to fund the public improvements at the site if funded out of the accommodations tax staff estimates that it would take about three to five years of tax revenues to pay for the entire amount if the entire

[51:00] amount of taxes were dedicated to the repayment this is for just this hotel or for all hotel this just this just this hotel and the center point of the revived home I had a quick question so three to five years is that like three years is best-case for years as middle case and five years is worst case is that how that would go essentially yeah thank you and we have a slide a little bit later on but that's that's years of attacks and that's not counting essentially two years where the property is being redeveloped as long as we ones we interrupted you and is there a legal or financial reason why we wouldn't take the pleasant street proceeds and use those to pay for the improvements I know that it's not what the hell working group recommended but is there a reason from staff why we wouldn't simply take the money and move it around the corner well let let me answer that one no it

[52:03] has to be consistent with the purposes for which you you two'd was created and one of the purposes is to increase the add to the aesthetics of the district along with all modes in parking so we could include parking in that as a part of the general Improvement District and it's not a hotel and that's the reason we couldn't put it back into the the pleasant street if it was sold for three million could we put that back into improvements yes and so that would eliminate just be cleared that would eliminate then the diversion of the accommodations tax for three to five years we wouldn't need to do that correct okay clear wait so now that you ask the question why didn't they recommend that the Hilary Investment working group recommendation the hill reinvestment working group feels

[53:00] strongly that the district still needs parking and so their recommendation is that those proceeds be reinvested in the Pleasant Street good could could the accommodations tax be used to fund parking I know that goes from to our general fund but we can always bring general fund money into huge it right I know so so I'm money's fungible but we could we determined that was a parking need down the road we could take some of that accommodations tax from that's generated by them if there is a new hotel towards parking is that correct correct okay thanks right just just like during the original proposal the general fund would be paying the co P payments for most of the the 30 years that money could be moved so so the center point of the revised proposal that we're seeking councils guidance for tonight is whether council is supported of selling the pleasant street lot to the development team based on the development teams offer and internal estimates we think the market values between three million

[54:01] and four and a half million dollars if council direct staff to proceed we would hire an independent appraiser to come up to value that that land and come up with a price for negotiation we're also seeking council guidance on whether council wishes to use the proceeds from the sale to support those public improvements on the site or recommended by the Hilary Investment working group reinvest those proceeds in the 14th Street parking lot so it's disgusting the memo the to surface Lots generate approximately one hundred seventy six thousand dollars in revenues for ujin the Pleasant Street lot is about a little less than half of that and to put it in perspective the street meters makeover generate over four hundred thousand dollars in revenue for for you Jake the council has asked for for about the long-term financial sustainability of ujin so we would reduce the revenue from the Pleasant Street lock but that would

[55:01] be offset by increased you did property taxes through the mill levy and would also be offset by reduced operating and maintenance costs it wouldn't necessarily be a pro rata share but again if council asks us to proceed we would come back with specific analysis of the you did financial sustainability based on counsels input tonight ahead of that full analysis do you have a rough ballpark of what a mill levy increase might look like for a hotel like this be interesting just for a ballpark to know because you said it was about half of one hundred and seventy seven thousand that we would lose in revenue to YouTube from that is correct and there'd be a result and there would also be a decrease in operating in operations and maintenance which may not be a one-for-one but the hotel would pay higher taxes that's Mike that's correction okay exactly so both property taxes and the improved through the improved site as well as the mill you're not talking not enough both

[56:04] the property taxes to the general fund as well as the mill levy which is applied in addition to that okay so we estimate that over the 30 years I'm sorry can you can you apply can you differentiate mill levies between different districts in this community yes yes you can you know this kind of goes into the comments that I was gonna make later but maybe I'll just make them right now so a general general Improvement District is basically another governmental d and as such it has the power to tax and it does so there is there are property taxes that are imposed within ujin on the YouTube property owners those funds have to be used for ujin purposes and in the memo I laid out what the purpose is for you to is on page 176

[57:01] so yeah they're they're imposed differently they have to be spent differently and then I guess the last thing that I would say is that you know the governance of the city of Boulder and the governance of ujin look very similar because the council acts as the board of directors of ujin but when you were acting on behalf of you Jed you're wearing a different hat than your city of Boulder hat and you're you know you have a fiduciary obligation in that case to the taxpayers within the general Improvement District so the reason that I ask that is because I inquired about reducing the mill levy in the cajon district and was told that it could not be done without reducing it across the city as a whole I heard this from the city attorney's department so I was just curious about that it's yeah thing to hear otherwise yeah I'm not quite sure

[58:00] what that advice would be based upon although I am guessing that it's because Cajon has outstanding bonds and we pledge the revenues from the tax to pay the bonds off and I think that there are there are generally bond covenants that say you will not reduce taxes until you get the bonds paid off but although it increases in things like the mill levy that there was a seventeen percent last year one would think that those bonds could be paid off earlier actually if they were actually applied to the bonding that's a budgeting issue yes sorry sorry didn't interrupt Joel but this is to me that since the two entities are somewhat similar also in terms of but very dissimilar and how they're run in terms of the benefits they get so the doubt the Cajun seems to be the hill seems to

[59:03] be the stepsister here I suppose not at all and just to be clear what we're talking about here as far as increase in mill levy revenues is is not increasing the mills or the number of mills it's just from the development of a new hotel and the resulting increase in property value on the site yeah sorry if I wasn't clear about that increasing so my question is still waiting for that answer there right right so based on your for this initial analysis the incremental mill levy would be in the in the range of 20 to 25 thousand dollars a year right here so it helps offset some but not all but maybe a quarter ish of the okay thank you that's helpful and I assume you guys who didn't talk about the piff later or now if so yeah I can talk about so on the pit why don't you tell us what that a plant investment fee I asked a question

[60:00] and thank you for answering whether that would apply just to the retail in the hotel or if that would apply just to the hill and you said it's just to the retail in hill I mean in hotel so how much does how does that affect like a customer does that mean the goods at that retail are gonna be more expensive than elsewhere right so to pay for that fee yeah thank you and sure I can I can help answer that so you getting gonna get to that and later in your presentation no actually I wasn't intending it was in the memo discussing the memo so I'm happy to talk about it now so public improvement fee is has been proposed by the developer as a way of helping close the gap and it is a yes it is pretty specific and the developer would would set that rate we have representatives from the development team they could talk about that but if counsel directs us to proceed we'll do some additional

[61:01] analysis on that it is a fee on sales typically around Colorado these these range between a half a percent and I've seen two percent at the high end it's pretty like what uses a lot of them for Colin's it has used it's relatively common way and it does to answer your question it would increase the ticket sale of whatever somebody is purchasing and it is not a tax so it's actually the city would tax the total cost of that those goods that were sold so how would it appear on somebody's bill would they ever see that piff yeah they would improvement fee they can't show it as a tax because it's they can't show it as a tax but it would be itemized as a fee similar to the sugar sweetened beverage fee that retailers

[62:01] passed through it should be item II it's often itemized on the receipt as a as a fee and because this is just a tip if is only meant to capture a capital outlay by the developers I understood from the memo does this piff gonna have a certain life in other words give me in place for three years or five years it'll sunset at some point in time they typically have a life yeah I know math on what that would be based upon assumed sales in these 10,000 square feet of retail space we haven't yet but if council is supportive of moving forward we can work with the developer to do that analysis okay thanks yeah okay so when you finish because I'm sure there's a lot of questions I think I'm finished for now I'm gonna come back up when we pose the council questions but and then David I don't know if you wanted to add anything in addition no no I think I've made all of my points already and I'm just available if you have any any additional questions about YouTube's authority so then we'll go straight to the questions

[63:00] which staff has broken out into two parts the first question is the most fundamental to whether the project would proceed and the second question and the options presented within that are only relevant if counsel wishes to proceed with the first question it's worth noting that any approval of proceeding with the sale of the property does not constitute any sort of approval for the project so if preceded if the project proceeds to the next step it would go through the normal design and entitlement and review process with all of the Associated approvals so on the first question does counsel wish to enable the project to move forward by selling the Pleasant street surface parking lot for a fair market value Joe Joel mentioned earlier that would mean directing staff to Commission an independent appraisal of the property to establish its fair market value in the second question if you agree to question one then we would ask whether you wish

[64:02] to enable the project to move forward by funding the public approve ins through either of the following alternatives the first which has been discussed is by reinvesting the proceeds from the sale of Pleasant street into those public improvements or alternative B which was reinvesting portion or all of the accommodations tax generated by the new hotel for a certain limited time if directed to proceed staff would prepare analysis and add additional information for council consideration for either of those scenarios and this was the slide we mentioned that as far as reinvesting accommodations tax we have projected out the same incremental cash flow over the 30 year case and I don't know if you want to add anything too sure sure and so in response to the the hotline request yesterday we put this slide together you're welcome so the accomodations and sales tax

[65:00] numbers that are above are the same that was presented to Council following the September meeting and request for additional information but we we stripped out the other impacts to more to better align with the revised concept which is the three million dollar investment and repayment through accommodations tax we did leave sales taxes in there the general fund portion to show that because the retail square footage of that site is reduced there is an impact to sales tax but as you can see it's more than offset by the accommodations tax and then to the to the question of when the general fund would be repaid assuming a hundred percent of the accommodations tax were essentially dedicated to refill it would occur here you can see between years five and seven and that includes two years where the property is being redeveloped and not generating any tax revenue but just to be clear this is relevant only if we decide not to reinvest the sale of the Pleasant Street

[66:00] lot on the public amenities and instead park that money someplace and then take the accommodations tax that's generated by this hotel and repay ourselves correct if we don't do that then we don't have to pay attention this correct got it so we'll go back to the first question well could we have some basic questions first yeah so um sure but just remind us you give us the flow of all the questions we have the first a second and then let's is there another one after the just two questions the first is only separated out because if you don't wish to proceed then the project cannot happen so that just frames levy okay so if we have questions about the project at large this is probably a good time to do it and then we'll focus in on what do we want to proceed okay so I have some questions and I put some out today and I thank Mary Ann Mahoney for getting me the hotel data and Thank You

[67:01] Joel for answering but you weren't able to answer a lot of them the question I mean you answered them all but they're all dependent on the developer and I guess my question is has there been an independent third-party financial analyses of what's being proposed no no not at this point so when you look at what this feasibility gap is that's something that the developer came up with right and so we haven't had an independent analyses to determine whether that feasibility gap of six million dollars is actually correct and as I understand it that particular number is quite sensitive to what you're going to how the development can happen so usually I

[68:02] was told usually a third party independent financial analyses is done and that usually cost between ten and twenty five thousand dollars and is usually paid for by the developer but is an independent from the developer and it seems to me that before we can really go forward we need some basic questions that would be answered by independent third party analyst that is not the city and is not the developer and so it's very difficult for me to move forward with the scenarios without knowing how that gap was determined and if it's real or not and my understanding is a lot of times when you have the third party it's a number very different than what the

[69:00] developer has put in right and we can certainly work towards that if counsel is in support of moving forward if this revised concept shows enough promise that we can move forward and we would certainly be willing to work on spending the money but we didn't want to well usually it's paid for by the developer not by the municipality it's my understanding so I really need to have that gap defined and how that gap was defined I need to better understand and it's just thrown in there and a bunch of numbers and it's like oh look we're six million dollars short but there's no real definition of what that gap is and how its defined well so

[70:01] that's I have a bunch more questions and probably all the questions that I answered I would like to get answered so at least I certainly get your point about the utility of having a third-party validation of that yeah but conceivably we could move forward and say assuming these numbers work out similar to this I mean maybe the city contribution only needs to be 2.4 million or maybe needs to be 3.2 million we could come back that's fair but the option of moving forward while doing some additional validation as part of the problems right and you know I've just been asking for this for some time and haven't gotten anywhere and so I'm asking for it now and certainly it could go forward but I think it would be dependent on what this independent

[71:01] analysis shows me the other piece of this that we need to know is what's the Pleasant Street law worth right well exactly right so that's a second component that if we move forward we wouldn't necessarily commit to anything it would say we want to see what the third party says the gap is and we also want to see what we would get for the lot and both of those could be important elements and making a decision well in also I'm still interested in looking at other options and I recognize the developer doesn't have to do those other options but I'm very much interested in an idea that we got today about maybe doing a rape X and then doing something you know with the food court and stuff and then having middle-income housing on a second third fourth floor and so I'd like to know the if that well so let's talk a little bit

[72:00] about this because I think that that's kind of the crux of the matter and you know we've been talking about how to revitalize the hill for a long long time it predates me coming on council and I think some of the tenants in this you know of the solution have to do with increasing foot traffic alright and year-round foot traffic because the student population provides a lot of foot traffic but only for a portion of the year and it the businesses struggle when the students are gone and so that was a core element that we need to address and whatever we do is year round increase foot traffic so housing on that site doesn't get us there well it does now if you have permanent residents there 24/7 that's ice on the street and yes it does it can but we're talking orders of

[73:00] magnitude so so anyhow I think that that there's a lot of housing around the hill and that idea is that we have this small node we're talking about and you know how we were just talking last week how do we keep our neighborhood nodes vital and one of the reasons we put a moratorium on student housing on the bookstore was we need to preserve enough of the area as retail in order for it to operate as is a help so as we look at what is the hotel the right solution I think these are things we have to think about is replacing we have some retail there now the retail is all struggling because it needs more foot traffic so if we do a ray back it's just adding more retail it doesn't necessarily help the existing businesses get more food track it just foot traffic it just adds

[74:00] competition so I guess as we think about is this the right solution it needs to hit those so anyway I just want to say I'm just saying just free backs I'm saying ray backs Plus middle-income portable housing very well that raises the question have during this process was some sort of catalyst project considered on just the pleasant street lot thanks for your question the hill reinvestment working group and you can see are can always considering as well as the neighborhood other things and I think there have been some efforts including the communities investment in with councils direction on the event Street but I think the approach has been to look at all of the things that come to the table and this is the one that

[75:01] has come to the table as it relates to this site earlier Lisa you mentioned that you know could we just look at something else as it relates to a pleasant as an alternative one of the things that we want to point out is the reason this is all kind of bundled together is to achieve this project the staff has not approached another anchor use of Pleasant Street in and of itself for other purposes and nothing has been brought to our attention in the time frame we discussed earlier in the presentation no I appreciate you okay so so that would be something that I think would be worth looking at is something on the pleasant street lots didn't they perhaps something like what Lisa described is because as I understand it the new zoning that was put into place after the student housing moratorium was

[76:00] for affordable housing and and it couldn't be honest on the ground floor so it would have to be some other use that perhaps could be something that activates the street and gets more people coming up there so that would be perhaps something to explore and I guess the other thing is so the hotel as as Jane explained earlier came to us by the developer that has wanted to assemble this and has was part of this process in bringing this hotel forward as as something that was needed needing the city support to go through was the hotel considered to be smaller it seems quite large 189 rooms it would make it the

[77:02] fourth largest hotel in the city than the hotel Boulder Otto so I'm just wondering if they have explored anything smaller and maybe with no parking underground since you know there is some the parking could work out that they wouldn't need to so I'm just wondering asking that question so I certainly don't want to speak for the development group that's here this evening I would welcome their opportunity to give input if they were interested in doing so this is a scaled back version from what was originally considered and I don't know we have been responding to councils direction so far I think we could consider to look at that but I can't speak on behalf of what would then be appealing as a project to that entity yeah and and I guess since

[78:03] can I just ask this is a colloquy since I guess I'd like to know the basis of the 189 and that's all in this developer's report so it's it seems very out of scale with what you see on the hill well today let's back up so we asked Cu to put their conference centre on the hill right we asked them and they changed their plans to do that right and my understanding this is the part because one of the questions is okay let's talk about the feasibility of a hotel do we need another one in town and how does this work and I guess can you speak to my if I remember correctly Cu likes is not going to have enough rooms as part of the conference center

[79:02] and needs us to do this or there's some synergy here I guess can you can you talk about how we how this all works together as a package because we did sort of lead to you write down this past and we see you planning to build its own hotel right so thank you for that the Cu conference center hotel project they were considering two sites and they entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the city to build the conference center in hotel on this side on Grand View between you know at University and Broadway quatre corner to this proposed hotel say they are proposing a hotel of a certain size that would not be large enough to meet the needs generated by the conference center so there is a synergy same with if there was any additional parking across the street additional hotel rooms additional parking supports the conference center being in that location it was felt

[80:00] during the discussions at that time that the hill location would allow conference goers to be in a more walkable environment that they would be able to take buses from the airport similar to this proposal being on Broadway and on that transit corridor was preferred so rather than seeing it as competing hotels it really was beneficial to both similarly for this project having the conference center across the street year-round means they would have a customer base beyond just families visiting students and and you know professor visiting professors and things like that there would be a year-round synergy between the two and does that get to the when you think about the number of rooms can you do the math for us in terms of conference center needs so many rooms and how did the math work yeah the conference center has not yet put out publicly exactly how many rooms but what they have told me is that it's I believe 800 to 1,200 visitors coming to the conference center and so if this hotel had 189 they would need to have their

[81:02] own hotel rooms as well and you know that they're trying to provide enough hotel rooms within walking distance to serve that population so I recall the number similarly from the conversations we've had before it's a thousand people at the conference center plus or minus and I think they were talking about something like 250 to 275 rooms on the Cu side and so this would be a complimentary number to what's on the Cu side and you know I just want to remind us in a lot of ways we worked really well we'll see you to cite this you know they agreed to do something near Broadway so that we could have this synergy be a possibility and I guess the other thing I want to say is that for 30 years forty years now boulders been arguing about a convention center and

[82:00] this is a different beast I really like it it's a conference center so it's aimed at academic mission and some of the other things that go on in Boulder that I think you know our labs would be able to leverage off of and see you and so I just want to keep the context that this conversation is in because I do think there's going to still be hotel demand created even outside of the two hotels that will be in place if if the numbers are right yeah yes so I think that just to kind of combine a couple of points that you've made you know the thing that we've been looking for is the catalytic use on on the hill to get non-student daytime traffic in year round and and then and and then systems in addition to yes the students are great I'm very glad they're there keeps it you know keep going there but in addition to the students are there already to add additional day time

[83:00] foot traffic and that we have a willing partner who's bringing a really intriguing concept to the table that has the synergy with the conference center so you have a lot of pieces kind of coming together the conference center that we asked to be in this location that we really worked with you to be in this location so it was in a walkable part of town that there be synergies with the hill reinvestment and also our downtown area as well which would be walkable too as well so I think we have a lot of really positive things coming together also remind folks that the previous version this proposal had some significant issues in terms of the cost of the parking that I think all of us will we're balking at to one degree or another that have been solved by this revised proposal which I really appreciate I think we have a real winner I'll just say in this particular proposal so I think it's it's accomplishing a lot of the goals that we've been trying to accomplish on the hill I mean literally for decades so I would hope that we could we could take the next step on this project you know with some additional analysis as it's

[84:01] going along to make sure that the numbers work out we have to do your due diligence but I'll just put out there I think we have a win-win here so just maybe picking up there were left off if you'd be helpful for us to understand a little bit about the timeline because there's sounds like there's lots of um requests for information I asked and have some requests for information as well but I'm wondering if some of that stuff could be happening in parallel so let me ask about three or four questions and you can kind of blurt it all out in response so with the question you're asking us right now is you know should we go out and get an appraisal and start discussions about price with the developers there's no been no agreement no me and the mines yet and that will presumably take a period of time I don't of weeks or months and then if there is an agreement reached if there's a meeting the mines in the price presumably that agreement would be contingent upon the ultimate entitlement of the property because presumably the developer is not going to just plunk down a pile of money let's developer knows that you can do it

[85:02] and conversely we're not gonna want to sell the property the parcel unless we know that something's going there then there presumably is gonna be a period of time where there's a concept review because we haven't seen haven't seen the design yet right so the presumably at some point in time we're gonna get a concept review that will go through the normal planning board and maybe call a process and then if that goes well personally it can be a site review right because I assume that this property's gonna require site reviews that have for assumption among those of you on mister complain board so you kind of walk us through the time timelines you know the appraisal the negotiation when you come back to us to ask us if we really want to sell this lot because we're not deciding that when I say anything tonight and then concept and that timeline and then the site review and that timeline can you just kind of walk us through so we understand we're talking weeks or months or years because there's a lot of data being requested tonight and I'm just wondering to Aaron's point whether some of this can be gathered in parallel with some of

[86:00] that work I think we need to look into how much time it would take to do the independent appraisal and if the council wishes for us to also do the third-party analysis of the gap we just need to put out some feelers for how long that would take but to the second part of your question with those four other steps what we have heard from our owners rep and from the developers and others is that that's generally in eighteen months to two year process from the start of you know if the sale is negotiated starting with the design and entitlement process ultimately if the hotel for example is not entitled I don't want to presume anything more another if it's not approved by Planning Board or ultimately by Council the deal would be off so to speak with respect to the sale the pleasant lot is that right it would be contingent for that 18 to 24 minutes that was the recommendation of the Hilary investment group okay thanks Cindy so talked about the parking dilemma being solved because the

[87:01] city said it didn't want to pay as much as was requested for the first iteration of the parking but what happens to the parking demand is it just evaporated I mean this is a parking study done right well the the parking study so if the parkings if the parking as the hotel said that it will be building how many spaces below is it the hotel has requested 50 spaces to be constructed below which they do anticipate would be largely available during the day mm-hmm so that does help offset part of the loss I think you know the parking study findings that were a surprise was who is using the Pleasant Street law that it was largely employee permits users rather than the turnover customer parking that we were finding that not many customers knew where that lot was located and that's where you can see yeah if I could just piggyback on that

[88:01] in addition the current lot utilization which the information is in the memo we were careful to think about those customers and their utilization so in conversations with Cu we believe we negotiated a place for the permit holders to be during the construction of the process and then would continue to work with Cu on updating both parking and other needs throughout the area including those who would be recoded relocated during this time frame perhaps lucky for us and not so much for Cu or we were at the timing of the end of an MOU related to nearby parking that would allow us to accommodate the current permit holders but I guess my point is particularly after hearing how many rooms that the Cu is between 250 and 275 and then if there 189 on this slot

[89:01] that's a lot of traffic generation even though we'd like to pretend it's not going to be there at the corners of Broadway and University and I understand that those were mostly with another question in terms of the efficiency of how the parking we keep building parking and yet it seems to be for employees who are paying a very low rate for the cost of the parking spaces itself but my understanding was also that there was some concern by the is that you can't see people about the 14th Street lot and wanting some of the money possibly from the Pleasant street lot to go into doing a joint venture on that lot has that just all gone away or is that still the purposes of this evenings conversation we do want to recognize that input from that body at the same time it wasn't necessarily locked in to this proposal but it is something that if council wanted to give some input or direction regarding we certainly welcome

[90:02] an opportunity to learn what you're thinking about that the dynamic around parking on the hill is something that we continue to work with the University and with neighbors around and would continue to do so because the lot that the university now has open on 13th Street is not because it belongs to the University they don't necessarily need to be using that as well in the future for parking so I think it's just something to keep in mind as all of this goes forward and I have a question since the hotel has been the only thing that we've heard about whether or not when this anchor these anchor concepts came up whether there was talk about Lisa that mentioned this there was anything else that came up but has it always just been hotel Hotel hotel and has there been anything like an area plan done on the hill for example when all when the rezoning happened and has anyone looked

[91:01] at the hole as the council has used it has anyone looked at the whole entity to see how we might best be able to help you nihilist AB lished some of the sustainability that they'd like to have rather than just doing it piecemeal this light here that right there this light over here so I think the best answer to that is the 2015 so with the Hillary investment strategy initiating in 2014 that study in 2015 did take a holistic look at the hill it took a look at what councils priorities were and it made recommendations for the best approaches to achieve that so that's where the idea of the catalyst sites came out I mentioned earlier that we have been in communication with the broker community and those other types of anchor uses just simply won't locate on the hill for the most part they don't have the foot traffic well so one of the things that's also interesting is that the was it - the art supply that was just sold to the university is now out

[92:00] of the public realm again the university generally doesn't sell its property back that it has purchased because they look at a very long view and so that's yet another sort of isolated piece of the hill and I wondered if that kind of thing had been taken into consideration if the owners up there had talked about that if Cu wants all over the property along Broadway well everyone sell and what kind of effect does that have and what will those uses be so it's difficult I think from the place where we're sitting until we have some more answers from the university to be actually determining more for the long term where the hill may be financially so I just throw that out there understanding that I have going into that space that's you just bought his offices you know what they have talked about is that

[93:01] being people that they're moving from their main campus that are overcrowded right now and their university administrators so there's there's what I've heard so far about what's used plan is I didn't want to point out one of the interesting things we learned in the traffic study about the hotel parking is that they say about 20 percent of the guests bring a car for downtown hotels like this so if you believe that that can give you some kind of ballpark on on what the demand will be and I think that's one of the reasons that they're looking at doing a person garage because it's gonna be 30 some employees and then leave space for another 20 guests or something so the other thing I think we've heard from the university is they intend to put a garage sited where the conference center is and they were willing to discuss building it bigger than they would necessarily need for their hotel and conference center so that we could park some people if there's demand on the

[94:00] hill over there and the last thing I'll say is we have a lot of option ality here with the 14th Street site that we could do something with so another way to proceed if this were to go forward would be to see what the demand actually is right so we have a parking study and we can do another parking study once development may happen and then you can go to the 14th Street lotta we kind of have control over that if we wanted to put a garage in above-ground there which is a lot less expensive and the garage below the hotel was so I want to step back a little bit here right now and wonder the I guess a couple of the questions I had asked had to do with the size of the spaces that the tenants that might be displaced hadn't you said Sarah that it was between 500 and 2,000 and

[95:02] then and that the I missed the one of the ends of the range of the the per square footage price that they're paying was like $14 something I think it was 14 to 28 14 to 20 X site and 15 to 17 are two of the available sites in the existing historic core okay and I also noticed on the page where you have all of the vacant sites there are they all exceed two thousand square feet so I guess my first question is how would that provide an existing business a place to move to if none of them are the size that they currently need and be is you know how is that

[96:01] $200,000 determined if they have to move over and things have to start over I remember with the barber shop that they had put in like seventy thousand to get it to the place that it was usable for them so that's like two businesses and you're 2/3 of the way spent so so I'm just wondering how that number was determined and how those existing vacancies would serve the people that would need to move so I'm gonna let Sarah speak to the point about how the number was determined and then I'll speak about what is being explored in terms of some options do you minister and there's different users who are being relocated and so that 200 I assume is it is average but it says in the Nichols proposal it's up up to or maybe

[97:03] it's just 200,000 but some are restaurant tours some are simple shops some might have refrigerators with them other things so how how does that so it's just a preliminary response from the developer to the September request from Council but the request was could they do something to assist because one of the barriers to remaining on the hill was the cost of relocation so what they have put out there is a two hundred thousand dollar fund that would be administered by the city so the city would actually develop the criteria for who would be eligible for that an example of what you might say is we would not provide you with assistance if you leave Boulder so we can develop criteria for who would be eligible and how that would be allocated because as you say different types of businesses different costs to the question of size if I could you know we've been talking

[98:00] since the downtown retail study about divisible spaces to try to create more affordable commercial I think there is a lot of opportunity for that and similarly this is only a snapshot in time of what's currently available the timeline is such that it would be two years out so we're more trying to give order of magnitude of who would want to move and relocate but also just a snapshot of what's available at a given time we have a food court on the hill where there are very small affordable spaces for the smaller restaurant concepts to relocate if and when anything becomes available there but it's just a constantly evolving marketplace are there any spaces on the hill that you know as things are evolving 500 square foot spaces that you said like the the food court would be one of them so the food court I mean this is a concept that's being introduced all over but it's a great opportunity for entrepreneurial restaurant small and independent

[99:01] restaurants where you don't have to pay for staff or build-out costs you move into an existing restaurant space and you can operate very affordably like a permanent food truck basically so the hilltop building at college and 13th has an example of that one-story down and there may be about six spaces down there that occasionally open up so in addition we recognize that this is a time horizon and that council has already directed part of our work in the retail study and as we look at the assistance of the city and direction of the city and supporting small and independent businesses of all types in on the hill and beyond the hill so one of the things if council directs us to go forward would be to again go back in that outreach to the individual businesses to understand their plans and needs some of which might include for example to your point commercial kitchens or other things of other sizes we could then reach out to the available

[100:02] commercial broker industry locally to find out what's available either on a small temporary basis with a plan to be there for a long time or on a more longer basis based on the needs of those small and independent businesses um thank you I had another question and this was this is one that I had included in my set of questions on the hotline post which were I just wanted my memory refreshed about I know that we're not speaking about the 14th Street thought tonight but it does provide context for a decision and the 14th Street lot was to be assembled with mr. boyars development just to the west of there I believe and for some reason and that was going to be a parking lot and what happened and I I don't remember what all have transpired so there was a letter of

[101:03] intent back in 2013 and just in the time that we had before tonight's meeting we did not have the ability to go back and research exactly why that did not move forward but it was around the time of the moratorium and my initial recollection having come in the next year was that in part the market rate housing that would have been required to help pay for the development as it was conceived would not have been allowed under after the zoning change so that's one reason I thought it was that we wanted it to be affordable and there wasn't a way to pencil that I would correct yeah that's how I remember okay are you if we finish because you're done so I want to follow up on Mary's questions on the relocation and so this has to do with if and I would think some

[102:03] of the businesses that would be relocated would go into the floor level of the hotel is that correct or is that not correct they're in the developer can speak to this but I believe they there's one tenant that has a right of first refusal to relocate back in and they may be open to negotiating that with others but yeah there's ten thousand five hundred square feet of retail proposed and so my question is is that so whoever's in that retail space is going to have an additional what did you say half percent maybe two percent of app if added on to all of their goods and so the question to me I mean we can't be responsible for business's success necessarily but now there's an additional cost to their customers with that piff and so the

[103:05] services are going to be half to two percent more than they would be downtown or another place and so I wonder it's a question I don't know how that piff actually would affect what we want to get activated which is retail so if you can't answer but I'd like to have some analyses of that I'm just that just when you were asking and just crossed my mind so my question has to do with the payment to you to in event of an early sale and that was something several of us brought up in September and we were concerned because of past practices on other properties and in this particular thing and thank you for answering that

[104:01] the developer wrote this and I guess I knew that in this one it says if the hill partners sell the project within five years of a certificate of occupancy then they will agree to pay circle payments so my question is why why would it be the starting point be at the certificate of occupancy because my understanding is that's the time when you can legally occupy your your building and that you could start operating so you'd be fully operational and why would that not start at the point of a partnership potential partnership my concern and it well the city really wasn't involved in the daily camera building and it's redevelopment that property flipped like at least three

[105:00] times and significantly increased in value and that's why I was asking about the land value and so anyway I want to make sure that everything is in any kind of partnership that they cannot do that they cannot flip the property and then I don't understand so it would have to be from the point of partnership not from certificate of occupancy and then they have this formula and I don't know if it's a normal formula but they say well the amount payable to you JIT would be reduced from 3 million which is what we originally give to them right in year 1 by 20% per year so that in year 5 it's down to $600,000 and there's still potential flipping and you know

[106:02] somebody's going to make a lot of money by flipping potentially but not the hill so I need to understand that formula the 20% decrease how does that work sure and we can we can ask the developer to come up to talk about their logic behind it but I think the formula is just 5 years essentially it reduces 1/5 right until they get to a whole period which they proposed currently as five years it's great input on the the holding to the point of certificate of occupancy we can yet we can invite the developers down to talk about but I think the the point that I just want to make sure that we convey is that I think most of these items are jumping-off point for a negotiation and so these are all negotiable deal points well my

[107:01] understanding on the gap is also a negotiable thing and since it's developed by the developer and they're asking for leverage from the city we can negotiate that value as well and that's why it's important to have a third-party independent financial analyst on this okay Bob and I'm gonna jump in just a fault delete the least is line of questioning on the pith is that something that the council would have to approve or or can anyone can anyone just impose a bit I believe anybody cannon hose a pith okay council would have to approve it if we wanted to administer at the City of Lakewood administers there okay so there's administer did not administer pips right everybody administers it a lot of organization a lot of groups use a non-profit or a third-party administrator but I do know that the City of Lakewood administers several of their pips so is not

[108:02] administer if it's just a price increase right now and there's Cosmos charges seventeen dollars for a 14-inch pizza and if they impose a one-percent if it's seventeen cents more so now they charge seventeen dollars and seventeen cents but how would anyone know or care i guess i'm struggling a little bit about what what's different than a private price increase i think it at the base of it there's not much of a difference it's just a matter of how it is and it's just specifically intended to fund the public improvements on this right or the landlord could just charge an extra few cents per square foot in other words in charge instead of charging $20 a foot they can charge 20 dollars and 20 cents and crew coop the money that way right but rather than charging i our red they're saying to the retail tenant you charge your customers a little bit more money and then you give me that to reimburse myself for a period of time is that right correct but consoled the city is not necessarily involved in those discussions list we're administering it right I believe so we'll have to council wants

[109:03] us to proceed we'll make sure that we no longer on the City Attorney's Office it's so in terms of process I think you would be useful for us to now decide whether we're going to move forward we have a good list of things that if we do we want research we want appraisals we want to understand more about the piste and these are good things but I think it would be useful for us to decide now do we want to move forward and then we can keep growing that list of things we want to but we can end the conversation sooner if we don't and so I guess I would like to put out there my feeling which is that well this is my neighborhood right I've lived here almost 24 years and 23 of them have been I think within 10 blocks of where we're talking about and the hill is both a delightful place

[110:03] but very struggling police and has been for a long time and the trajectory is not good I don't know how many of you have spent money there recently but I do and we need to do something and I feel like we've promised the group of people that have been working on this for well over a decade that we would do something and this is I think the best idea we have seen yet that would meet the catalyst the the things that we think we need in terms of more foot traffic especially year round all those elements that this is the best we've seen the closest we've got and so I guess I feel compelled I'm not a big hotel proponent and yet I am convinced by some things that we've set in motion around the conference center and what I'm told about hotel rooms and what we need and

[111:01] the fact that it brings in year-round traffic that it is worth moving forward and that if we don't move forward we don't have we don't have a better option and there's a lot of people many of whom are sitting here who are counting on us to do something and have been waiting for us not this council but the council in general to do something so I guess I am ready to move forward I think there's some work Lisa and Mary you're raising some good questions of things that need to be addressed and I think our negotiating points including making sure that the businesses are their land well so yeah but I guess I would put out that I'm ready to move forward and let's figure out what we would need to move forward so that's my thinking I'm with you I you know we could we could have a long debate about whether a hotel is what we need or whether something else would be really swell to have there but

[112:00] right now we have no plan B it's it's it's this or status quo and it's gonna take a long time for a hotel to be in you know go through concept review and entitled and if something wonderful comes along and then the property owner wants to do something different than a hotel we can certainly have that consideration but the only thing that's in front of us right now is a hotel we're not making any irrevocable decisions right now we're making a decision to instruct staff to go forward to get an appraisal and try to negotiate a deal for the sale of the land and even after the strike if they strike a deal that would be contingent on concept review insight review and so we're not approving a hotel we wouldn't be able to a hotel for quite some time 18 to 24 months but if we say no right now we're disapproving a hotel and we have no plan B it will be exactly what we have right now and to zanza point I think most of us would find that unacceptable

[113:04] yeah so I think a hotel is a fine idea and it's the only thing before us however I am not willing to give up a city parcel for that not at a time when we have a shortage of housing to give it up to essentially subsidize is not something that is actually within our community values - it's not provide some affordable housing and I spent a little bit of time this afternoon speaking with quote about how that could happen and it's possible that it could be middle income housing with some other use on

[114:02] the ground floor that would perhaps be a catalyst so I'm not willing to sell that parcel for those reasons and then they should come forward and just I think it's useful for everybody listening to this as well the need for that lot for the hotel is for the space of it is there a scenario that has been foot four is where they don't need that space so okay the site just would not be large enough to accommodate okay okay just to be clear we are proposing selling at a market rate developer what you see here

[115:00] oh just that we're proposing selling it at market rate to the developer I mean the other thing that I think along those lines Mary would be if we could we know that the housing fund has been short of funding it's something that we've heard from Kurt perhaps if we sell that a market rate to enable this catalyst project we could instead of using it to pay for amenities there we could use it to pay for affordable housing and then take some of the tax proceeds over time to pay off any public amenities that we do there I wouldn't look at taking the next step here as saying for sure we're going forward like all would say to me is we're not stopping it here because I think some of the ideas that you just put out could be very you know very useful ways to fund affordable housing I'm not sure if that site is the best site for it it's awfully constrained but I do think that putting money towards housing would be something consistent with our community values that we could do with the proceeds from the sale I you

[116:01] know I'm not here to tell that either and I wouldn't mind seeing this scaled back somewhat to be honest with you as well at the same time rate is a catalyst it is something we've talked about for a very long time and you know I'm if we were to go forward with it I'm really committed to the design being good you know one of the conversations I've had is that I I want the design if anything does go in there to be something that is an enhancement to what we have on the hill I mean there's a lot of buildings up there that are you know in need of some TLC and if there's something we can do with this project that makes that more likely for building owners be investing in the people they're building I think it's worth us thinking about it as well but I agree with you about community values and I agree with you about the possibility of maybe taking some of the proceeds from whatever happens here and making affordable housing happen so if I just might add to that I think that that's probably beyond

[117:01] the scope of huge its authority so the property the property does not belong to the city of Boulder it belongs to you Jed and it was financed by the taxpayers in ujin so if you were to do something outside of the boundaries of what you just thority is now you would need to change the powers of ujin which is it there's a process that fourth in the code but it requires getting that property owners to participate to petition to ask the council to give you two different powers but there were quite a process involved that wouldn't involve the property owners but David couldn't couldn't some of the accommodations tax though I get the fact that the huge in money is saying you did but if this hotel if it's approved generates a million dollars a year in accommodations I guess we can do anything we want with that money that's correct Sam's point we could take order that money half that money all that money and dedicated towards affordable housing

[118:00] either on the hill or someplace else if we wanted to go right okay and just one other point and I don't have the number with me but I can follow up is that hotels do pay considerable affordable housing linkage fees so that that would come in doesn't seem like such a bad idea now does it okay this is helpful elders want to chime in I can chime okay so I do like hotels although I think we have way too many right here I'm in Boulder and as a child I had a lot of fun in hotels and exploring them and going up and down on there elevators seeing how fast which were the fast ones and who had free candy but anyway to this to this point I

[119:02] do like hotels I don't mind a hotel up on the hill but I have a problem with the scale of this hotel and I think it needs to be scaled down we haven't seen concept plan but I think Mary or somebody maybe Cindy said that this would be the fourth largest hotel in the city and so I'll just put that idea out next week bigger than bigger than Hotel bull Dorado which is five stories is one whole block so I guess from my perspective I know we're gonna meet with see you next week next Thursday I think is it anyway sometime next week and no week from Tuesday anyway we're meeting

[120:00] with them soon and I am very much looking forward to that because we have a lot of discussions primarily on what's going to happen in this part of town I think Cindy's concept or idea suggestion of some kind of a sub area plan and I would think in those discussions if we move forward with some development here on the hill and development at CU it will become more clear in terms of what what's complementing what and you know what they might need but Marianne Mahoney sent the hotel some just statistics on them stats and and which kind of I just added it up and I think well right now we have and so I don't even know if this is over or below but we have approximately 2,500 rooms hotel

[121:04] rooms in the city of Boulder right now and we have 900 plus short-term legal short-term rentals and if we really did a good calculation on the number of illegal short-term rentals it's probably about another 500 and then if you add what CU wants to add plus this now would be over 3,000 rooms and that just seems like an awful lot of hotel rooms when I see a lot of the hotels the new ones I think wow it's too bad that those aren't housing units but those were developed by right and this can be developed by right as well so I'm not interested right now in selling the Pleasant Street without a whole lot more answers you know and I

[122:01] want to have this discussion with Cu so it's not like I'm not not but right now I'm not and it's just the sequencing of these discussions I think and I'll feel better once we have that discussion we'll see you and once I get a little more understanding about the questions that I've asked tonight and on hotline and I really do think and I'm kind of amazed we've gotten this far but maybe that would be the next step not having an independent third-party financial analysis I think that is critical just tagged on to what Lisa said about the analysis coming first before we can really decide what our options are it seems that we're kind of shooting in the

[123:01] dark here and I'm still I'm extremely concerned about the amount of congestion that will be at that intersection and possibly in talking with the university we may be able to find out more about how they plan to deal with it how we might do that in conjunction I am sorry that this has come this far without consideration of anything else it seems to be hotel was the first thing caught and that that has just had a life of its own when I first saw the site I was told that it was a boutique hotel and I asked how big it was and I couldn't believe the number of rooms so boutique seems to be an expanded notion here I also am concerned about the selling of the Pleasant Street lot until we know more about it ironically enough when I first moved to Boulder back in the day I lived in affordable housing where that parking

[124:01] lot is now I think about three houses came down to make room for cars on that lot and cars have not abated even though those lights may not be used as heavily as they are the perception remains that there isn't parking up there and so I and that could be part of the problem with people going up there now what traffic is needed I don't again I'm not persuaded that this is necessarily the best way to do it and moving ahead I would not see this as any kind of I don't want it to be like if we agree to move it ahead and get the analyses done that that means that this is a going going concern doesn't mean that I'm fully supportive of whatever may be happening until I know what the analyses are linkage fees a little over a million dollars what the linkage fee

[125:00] and 189 room hotels a little over a million dollars so this is just another for me unfortunate topic I guess in terms of you can see council once again it's pretty split on this I will just say initially for someone who grew up here and attended see you I think it's incredibly sad to see a hotel go into this area I think that this is a really special area for Cu students to have the hill this be something kind of funky have places like the sink where Obama stops by I think this is I don't I don't know if this is the right word but for lack of a better word almost like gentrifying the hill a little more even I understand it's the only project in

[126:01] front of us and we keep saying it's our best option what is that mean we're supposed to move ahead because this is the only project in front of us or you know I just I wish there was almost like a pilot project to come out and have people bid on inventive new ideas but again that's not our right to do with the land so I understand that I guess I kind of sit where Cindy Mary and Lisa sit in terms of I'd be okay with moving forward seeing as this is our only option right now but only in terms of I want to see the analysis I don't find making a decision without the analysis that's been requested to be a smart decision so I understand there's many people on the hill who would like to see this and that we've been working for a very long time and I want to see these businesses succeed I want to see them flourish and so I guess the next step for me is seeing the analysis and then we can keep going from there so what if we did do

[127:11] that and I guess without committing ourselves I think the deal is it's kind of carton horse we need more information before we commit they need to know we're interested enough before they spend money to do analysis and I think I guess I would propose that if it's if it's in the realm of things something that we would consider pursuing that we take the next step and do the analysis because it is the best option we have because a lot of people have been working on this for a long time in including our some boards and commissions who have brought this - I mean who have weighed in in the positive multiple times around this so I

[128:00] know you guys care a lot about and a neighborhood neighborhood input what we have a lot of neighborhood input saying would you please move forward Council so would people be willing to move forward with doing the analysis getting up for fate of appraisal and there's a few other things we mentioned but there's enough they're there to take that step could we at least do that well I mean I would support that but I'd also support including ideas about affordable housing funding has a link to this because I think well first of all we have the linkage fee but then there's any perfectly legitimate strong case to be made that if we're going to give up this parcel for money that we should put money into some kind of affordable housing because that's an opportunity to lose so I would like that included in the analysis like whether some options

[129:00] staff could bring us around affordable housing funding either on-site or within the sorry either within you cam C or elsewhere and I think Lisa made some good points about in addition to it taking a look at the feasibility gap and whether that's right looking a little bit more into the if it gets flipped we get the money back and what that would look like you spelled it out but I think Lisa underlined some with what feels like gaps in that proposal but I would I would totally agree if it's if somebody's gonna make a bunch of money flipping this then we want our money back if we were going to again so I think that would be on the list of things to look into further I would like to see the hotel reduce substantially I don't see how 189 room hotel isn't going

[130:02] to be completely out of scale that's part of my problem too is that this is just when you look at the hill it's pretty fine-grained all the architecture and stuff and Sam you talked about the design the design is critical and it can't be a big modern hotel it has cut to look like the hill but it's also the scale you know and and like Mary said the boulder Otto is a square block and five stories high in most places and 160 yeah so it's I don't see why they couldn't scale it down significantly and I appreciate they've scaled it down I'm curious as to what they came in with

[131:00] first does anybody remember yeah it was it was right around 170 180 rooms I believe we should probably talk square footage you know because I yeah would imagine that the square footage-wise it wouldn't be bigger than the hotel bowl or bowl Dorado there's not enough room yeah right the concept that's being proposed are these efficiency rooms so the number of rooms is not as we say the square footage is what we might want to compare to some of the other kind the other thing is that and I put that out this after or this morning about what other subsidies have we given to other hotels so we had three other hotels that were just built and if my memory is right we didn't give them any subsidies and there may be another hotel that's coming in on 30th and parole or someplace they killed it drew that

[132:03] that's good so anyway you know we've it's been very rare that would the city has ever subsidized a hotel and and actually saint-julien we did have a partnership but that was really a Cajun thing it wasn't just like this it wasn't owned by the city of Boulder and so while there's benefits I think to st. Julian and that we didn't anticipate when it was first built that do bring a community benefit I guess I'd wonder what the community benefit beside revitalization of the hill yeah yeah exactly revitalization I think it's part of you hearing some concerns about size and scale and things like that I mean I think it's really important to the the

[133:01] what determines the bulk and the mass and the size is the square footage not the number of hotel rooms right so it sounds like they're concerns around that the folks would benefit from getting more information on so it's sounding to me like that's going to be important and a next go around to get comparisons not just a room numbers but the size and also maybe some preliminary sketches to have some so not a final nod of design I agree we have we would have to have really good design here we're not gonna get that in a preliminary sketch but just a little bit of a sense of massing might might be helpful I know it is multiple buildings the fine grain thing is important too but some some more information on that I'll just say a word of caution about in terms of reducing the scale I mean part of what we're looking for is well what is the the absolutely validated affordability gap if you reduce the scale I'm sure that will go up and the feasibility of the project will be reduced or require some more inputs from the city so I think I don't think we can have our cake and eat it too here to

[134:00] reduce the amount that we contribute and also have a smaller building so those are a little bit of dots and the only thing to piggyback on that is as you've directed it as Sarah shared earlier final design or any kind of you know would all would all be going through the regular city processes so I'm not sure that in a short timeframe we'd be able to answer some of the things that you're requesting but we will certainly it's gonna have to happen through the thing but I think the first question is do we want to sell this off and I and what we're saying is or some of us are saying is we need some basic questions and I think we do meet with the university pretty soon the 29th and next Tuesday and and so I think we'll get a lot of answers and so I think it's okay not to decide anything like tonight but to get these answers

[135:00] from Cu to get some of these analyses done I think it's really important to get this third party that we're not just getting it from the developer these it knows just one caution I'm not sure we're going to get a lot of answers from Cu Cu is out again looking for a contractor for their conference center they aren't sure how many rooms it's gonna have how big a parking structure they're going to have so they're still in very preliminary stages they wrote a letter today indicating that they're still supportive of this private hotel but they really can't provide any details about their facility so I just don't want us to think that we're going to get a lot of answers from them we'll get assurances from them of partnership but probably not a lot more Jayne I think you've probably got a good

[136:01] assessment there because they can't read the tea leaves either as they're putting this together one of the things that I wanted to say is that it is my belief that I heard way back again in the day that the city of Boulder built the hotel Eldorado as a destination so that people would have a place to stay when they came here at the end of the line so there was a big subsidy for the beginning at the beginning there whether or not we need to do the same thing now is is a not in question I think but I would also like to add Susanne though people did write to us and call us in support of this there were also persons concerned about the very things that some of us have brought up tonight in terms of yeah absolutely so that that that's also part of the neighborhood area piece of it it hasn't all been one-way yeah and I wouldn't want to imply that

[137:00] but the folks that have been at the table for a long time have urged us forward here right yeah there is no development without some naysayers absolutely yes so one of the things that came up in the memo with respect to the pleasant lot and it's low occupancy I guess was that a lot of folks it seemed like a lot of folks aren't aware and so I'm wondering if an easy solution that may be quick I don't know would be to put up some wayfinding signs to the lot we hats been considered right we have signs on Broadway in multiple directions but there's always more that could be done if that ends up being the direction I would just observe that it's not just

[138:01] the Pleasant Street lot though that's underutilized we don't reach the 80 fibers at utilization for on-street parking either and so while we could divert some traffic from four meters over a pleasant street if you look at the 301 spots in ujin they're simply not used we have some spots of higher usage and some spots for lower usage but we're not not any more close to maximum except for it certain times when what is used is is the free parking just little farther west so I mean but in all seriousness I think what that says is that people are looking for free parking not just parking so that that does send that message okay so to sum up where I think we are you had two questions we've [Music]

[139:02] we're not committing to anything but we are can I say willing to consider enough that we would like some additional questions answered that's fair enough to say and I think we've been you've got the list and depending on the outcome of that but we could then revisit this question is that fair to say that's maybe not as clear as you'd like what I think that's where we're at the appraisal of the lot and the third-party analysis were kind of the two things we talked about affordable housing as well about what our options could be around how to use proceeds from that and was there out of the pith we were gonna try and figure out a little bit more about that I think also sharpening sharpening the the sale agreement how them the money comes would come back to the city

[140:01] in the case of sale reducing the scale of the hotel right but I think also understanding I think we are being we need to understand the square footage and compare that to other things so that we get a sense of the massing because I think we're being a little bit misled by the know and I think Aaron's point was right on when he said you know and these are my thoughts one of you guys said these are micro units or micro I don't know what they are but there's small hotel room and and so you know how that translate into the bulk in the mass is really important but and that will be important to me but also the five years or the event of early sale and where that's triggered it needs to be triggered at the point of writing a document if we go forward with a

[141:00] partnership not at the certificate of occupancy it could also be a longer time period yeah that's right I had another question in my things about why we decided on five years how did we pick five years where I guess they picked five years no okay and then maybe I forget the second question on number one yes so if you'd like us to come back with more information we could return with this question as well but this was really more about the financing mechanism I think counsel has already given direction that within these thoughts you wanted to hear a little bit more about use of proceeds and connections to affordable housing so we we heard that as perhaps an iteration of question number two is that correct and and also just this whole thing of the 200,000 and

[142:00] relocation I'd like a little better understanding because there are a broad range of different users and some might be able to chain move very cheaply and relocate we'll give you some concepts as we continue to do that other work related to small and independent businesses with an eye on the flexibility because everything's dynamic forever right the businesses in for the commercial available properties both on the hill and elsewhere that would be greatly appreciated thank you thank you okay thank you anything else all right well thank you very much then I appreciate this conversation thank you

[143:23] [Music] - Parris enfant bank at her regime fighters were killed in those Israeli airstrikes