June 8, 2023 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[7:18] foreign [Music] good evening and welcome to tonight's study session of the Boulder City Council I am council member Nicole Speer thank you for joining us we have on tonight's agenda two items our first item will be the Boulder Junction Phase 2 update and our second item is the community culture resilience and safety tax ccrs non-profit support program a review of the grant criteria

[8:00] there was a third item inadvertently listed on the agenda for tonight titled discussion on proposed rules regarding Council participation at boarding commission meetings this item was removed prior to Monday's Council agenda committee meeting and should not have been listed on tonight's agenda this item will be rescheduled for a future meeting after Council summer recess we apologize for any confusion this may have caused we'll start the meeting this evening with an announcement the 2023 boards and commissions mid-year recruitment period is now open from May 29th to July 2nd 2023 we are accepting applications for the following board or commission beverage licensing Authority Boulder Junction access District parking Boulder Junction access District travel demand management downtown management commission landmarks board and University Hill commercial area management commission you may find

[9:00] board and commission descriptions and vacancies online at www.bouldercolorado.gov boards Dash commissions if you have any questions or need assistance please contact the city clerk's office at city clerk's office at bouldercolorado.gov or call 303-441-4222 before we go into our work items I will take a moment to outline how the meeting will be conducted we will review staff's presentations for each of the items or subsections of each item and then we will have a time for questions at the end of each presentation and questions period we will conduct our Council discussion with staff if you have any questions please wait for staff to complete their presentation and please save any comments for after our question periods I'll now turn to our city manager Nuria Rivera vandermein to introduce our first item uh thank you so much councilmember and I'm excited to hear and have staff present a little bit more on

[10:01] um this really cross-departmental work that's been happening on Boulder Junction and with that I'll ask uh KJ I think you're gonna kick us off um and if you can introduce yourself and the team as you go forward that'd be great I will do that uh hello city council thank you for having us here this evening I'm Christopher Johnson I'm the comprehensive planning manager with planning and development services uh joined here by my colleagues in pnds uh Chris wranglos and Vivian Castro Wooldridge we also have Rachel shinman and Daniel rebond from EPS there are economic and market study consultants and they'll be available for questions and also Rachel will be doing part of our presentation to give city council an update on some of the preliminary market trends that we have uncovered as part of this project so let me share my screen briefly

[11:06] and hopefully you are now seeing the presentation great seeing a thumbs up excellent so uh as Nuria mentioned uh we are here to provide you an update on the Boulder Junction phase two project uh this is one of City council's priorities uh and we have been really underway since the beginning of the year and have offered a couple of um more text updates and through an information packet earlier in the year so we are excited to be here to speak to you directly and get some feedback on some Alternatives and really direction for a preferred alternative so really quickly and just in terms of overview we are going to provide a brief project overview we do have a lot to cover tonight so we're going to move fairly quickly through the slides we can always pull those back up and go back to them but hopefully you've had a chance to review the memo that includes much of

[12:01] this information but we'll start with a quick project overview we'll go into what we've heard through our community engagement process and and then also have an opportunity for Rachel to share some insights into the preliminary market analysis at that point we'll take a very brief break to just see if there's any questions from the group and then we'll move into our three topics and key questions um so what we are here to speak about uh this evening is the transit Village area plan and really an amendment to the transit Village area plan so um the area is now relatively known as Boulder Junction and that's how we've been referring to it um the transit Village area plan was completed back in 2007 it guides future development within this particular area and uh back at the end of last year in late 2022 there was Council direction to move forward with amending the plan really to update it to where we are here 15 years later

[13:00] and do that prior to moving forward with a significant implementation step so before we would change in land uses or rezonings or look at any infrastructure phasing we wanted to basically revisit the area plan and one clarification I just want to make and something we've been keeping in mind as staff team moving forward through this process is that really this is this is an opportunity for us to just make some very strategic updates to the plan we are we are not Reinventing the wheel or really starting from scratch there's a lot of really great information and um policy guidance that's in the original plan and so we're you know really holding on to a lot of that probably 85 and just making some very key and strategic updates as we move forward uh we're focusing in on three particular areas of the topic uh topic matters um for the for the Amendments going forward so we are evaluating and looking at potential amendments to the transportation connections plan uh the

[14:00] land use that is described within the plan and then finally the Urban Design and character for the phase two area and so we will cover those three items tonight and have a key question for you to discuss as we move forward uh a couple of thoughts to just really set the table in terms of some considerations and opportunities in phase two that staff has certainly been thinking about and has come up as part of our community engagement feedback we've been hearing and also I think it's important for Council to keep this in mind as well that this is a bit of a different animal than the phase one area which was on the west side of the railroad tracks a lot of that area was open parking lots and vacant lands from the original colored motor site and other other kind of large-scale open and vacant areas this is totally different here we have multiple properties multiple owners a lot of existing structures there's very few vacant areas within the phase two Zone there's a very

[15:00] vibrant local business Community that's on site there's there's also not any developable city-owned property if you remember back on the phase one side the city owned a large amount of acreage that ultimately then partnered with them affordable housing developers and others to bring those projects forward but here really the only city-owned property is the area along Goose Creek that serves as storm and flood water management and also some Park and open space multi-use paths and that type of thing uh we anticipate and really expect that this is going to be a fairly incremental change uh over time so we are trying to think about the really the character of this area and how it can react to the market in the future and um and respond to a lot of intermediate conditions so it's not all going to change overnight it's going to be I think a very um more uh sort of progressive and

[16:00] incremental change over time that's going to happen piece by piece as opposed to large-scale Redevelopment the other benefit that we have as staff is that we recognize that there was a three-year process to work through the East Boulder subcommunity plan which was recently adopted last year and offers a lot of very relevant policies and a planning framework that we can apply here the character of this area in terms of its existing uses and what the future may hold um is a lot of there's a lot of similarities there with these Builders of community plan so again we're drawing upon that force and inspiration as we move forward so the key questions for you this evening are going to be around those three topic areas so does council agree with the possible changes to the transportation connections does council agree with potential land use changes that are being considered and then finally uh do you agree with the proposed approach to using Place types and publics and and the approach to public spaces to better Define the Urban

[17:00] Design character of the outcomes that may ultimately happen here through Redevelopment so with that I'm going to pass about the Vivian to talk about what we have heard from the community through this process thank you KJ and good evening council members I'm Vivian I'm the engagement lead for this project and I'm really looking forward to sharing with you how and what we heard through the process about phase one and hopes for phase two and you'll see later in the presentation how this feedback is reflected in The Guiding principles that underlie that teams work next slide so we've made numerous channels available to make sure we're hearing from Broad and diverse voices in the community and at the same time ensuring we hear from those will be highly impacted we have four focus groups with a total of 67 members and we're very appreciative of their time and thoughtfulness in providing feedback we've met twice virtually and had two site tours with focus group members and members include people who live or work in or near Boulder Junction they include phase one and phase two property and business owners they include representatives of

[18:01] various advocacy topics and they also include the development community and the project team is also being supported by two Community connectors one who lives at 30 Pearl and the other lives directly adjacent and the connectors continue to provide advice and additional Outreach and they also participate in the focus groups we've had two open houses and online questionnaires as well to provide options for the broader public to participate and to ensure that property owners and businesses in the phase 2 area were aware of the project and could provide input we've sent mailings and emails explaining all the various engagement opportunities and communication channels and organized a site tour specifically targeting property and business owners and we've also been collaborating with representatives of other departments in the city next slide as noria mentioned the project covers subject matter that spans several of our boards and commissions and I wanted to highlight that this project is piloting a multi-board working group and the overarching purpose is to ensure that we

[19:02] have an efficient mechanism to share information with and seek input from all interested boards but to do this without having to meet individually with each one we had our first meeting at the end of May and the next meeting is scheduled for July and we've already received some initial feedback for example for transportation the working group highlighted the importance of traffic calming measures on roads such as Pearl Parkway for a pleasant pedestrian experience in addition to adding more Connections in the area um there was also some discussion and a hope expressed in the first meeting that perhaps with greater densities and activity here it would make a commuter rail option more viable uh in terms of land use there were comments about how great our flexibility of land uses will help the area evolve over time in response to demands and opportunities and could lead to more interesting character and in terms of public space the as a city doesn't own any developable land in the phase two area there was some concern about how to make privately owned public spaces a success next slide please

[20:01] so these are some pictures of our two open houses we had over 40 people attend the first one and over 60 people attend the second one next slide please and now I'll share an overview of what we heard so I'll start with the feedback on how the phase one area has developed we heard from many people that despite the challenges that we all know about with the halted RTD Services people did appreciate the longer term vision of the transit oriented design with its mix of residential types offered at a range of prices and the mixed land uses and the well-connected mobility Network and improved walkability in terms of dislikes we heard that the architecture felt flat and across the board we heard the desire for more green public space and tree canopy throughout phase one so more places to gather and connect and for kids to play lots of people also expressed that the phase one areas missing a unifying character a sense of place and can feel

[21:00] like anywhere USA please we also asked what people's hopes are for phase two we heard quite a bit about the fear or disappointment at the prospect of losing a beloved business that currently serves as a community Gathering space and the desire to keep these types of businesses here is the area Transitions and generally ensuring that smaller businesses would be able to thrive here because it makes for more interesting or social neighborhood community like we heard for the phase one area we heard about the importance of providing additional green spaces and public spaces in phase two together with more housing in a mixed-use environment we also heard the desire for an attraction that would contribute to Boulder Junction's identity and a sense of community and be a draw and the idea of a Gateway also came up quite a bit the community felt that with its location next to Foothills and um adjacent to East Boulder we should have some Urban design elements that make it feel special like this is Boulder Junction and that would help

[22:00] with the transition from a more industrial East Boulder into other parts of Boulder we heard that phase two should have a better defined character that reflects Boulder and will need to explore that a bit more but characteristics that were highlighted to us for the outdoors and Innovation spirit we heard support for additional Transportation connections by foot bike and car to make it easier and safer to get around and finally we heard that we should ensure the area is well connected to adjacent neighborhoods and amenities like Val monk Community Park next slide please this is my last slide about engagement but I wanted to be sure to highlight tonight that there's other issues we have heard and we acknowledge are of high priority or concern to our community even though we may not be able to address them partially or fully through the planned Amendment we're keeping them on our radar for this next phase where the mechanisms will be explored to address such concerns we've already started conversations with other relevant departments such as Community Vitality for example to discuss how this issue of retaining and encouraging small businesses as the area

[23:01] develops could be tackled and with the recognition that these businesses are social assets we heard feedback from phase one that the retail and Commercial spaces are spread out and that it would be better for for both Place making and business liability to Cluster retail in a few strategic locations and the team will explore this uh we heard over and over again that residents in Boulder Junction would like more spaces to gather including kid-friendly spaces and even the idea of a dog park was and how important these amenities are especially in a denser neighborhood in denser neighborhoods with multi-family housing we heard that concerted efforts are needed to ensure that the area is not a Concrete Jungle and finally we need to plan ahead for all the features that would make the future rail station a complete and functional station so we'll carry forward that feedback into this next phase of the project um thank you that concludes my overview of what we heard and I'll now pass over to Chris and can take any questions on engagement when we pause later thanks

[24:04] thanks Vivian actually we're going to go to Rachel quickly to provide a quick overview of our market analysis perfect thank you so I'm gonna do a very very quick Market overview and we'll have lots of time for questions um but as Christopher said in the introduction I am Rachel shinman I'm a vice president with economic complaining systems um and Dan Dimond senior principal in our office is on the call as well for the conversation um we're based in Denver uh we're a land economics consulting firm you can see what we do there but we have done a lot of work in the region in Boulder specifically um and actually on the tbat plan back in 2007 so it's been exciting for us I wasn't here back then um but Dan worked on it to see how it has built out and now to get to take another look at it um so on the next slide you'll see the framework of the analysis that we're doing so this is one component of the broader

[25:00] um study right now um but what we're really looking at is those initial land uses that were proposed in the original plan and do those still align with the market um and if not what changes might be needed so today we're doing a very high level look and as we move through the process we're doing more detailed analysis specifically within this area to really understand how the market has changed um since 2007 and what changes that might mean for this area and so you'll see throughout this study we're looking at industrial Flex office retail and multi-family as a core land uses and the the market characteristics of those and the outcome is understanding what changes to the land uses might be needed and then also as we look at implementation what some gaps might be in terms of implementing the types of development that the community wants to see and what tools and strategies and policies might be able to address those so on the next slide there's a whole lot of words

[26:00] um but this is a high level overview of market trends in these four areas um city-wide and so in general um the key takeaways are that multi-family has been by far the strongest asset class in the city since 2010 um industrial is interesting because there's been a net loss of space but rents have increased in vacancies have decreased but the the industrial Market has become a little bit more Regional where we're seeing larger industrial users migrate out of the city to where um there's cheaper larger pieces of land to get the types of development that they're looking for and so an adaptation of industrial space within the city um and then retail um has sort of followed the larger broader retail Trends over the last you know 10 15 years um and that and so less new development um and slowing rent growth and then office is really interesting to us right

[27:01] now because we're still working out with the impacts of covid are um so rents are still high particularly in downtown as as we'll see um in Phase One area but vacancies are also very high and and so we're still looking at what that means for the future so in the next couple of slides I'm going to walk through these specific areas for the Boulder Junction area as it relates to the city and so with industrial the key takeaways are that vacancy is very low rents are high and the share of the city's inventory is high but also we've been seeing this net decrease in space and so what we might be looking at is sort of an adaptation or repurposing of these industrial spaces as the current users move out um and the space is no longer suitable for a new user because it's outdated but with land costs and development costs it's very difficult to build new industrial on that space and that's

[28:00] potentially a really big opportunity for this area so on the next slide we see Flex space which are often combined in Market analyzes sorry there's a siren going fast if you can hear it um but we've split it out here because especially as we think about industrial mixed use types development type development that's often more related to this Flex space And so there's a lot of it currently in the phase two area and performance has been up and down but it is a key part of this area that we're looking at and potentially an opportunity moving forward and then on the next slide we see office which has been you can see the increase in the phase one area which is you know as a result of the build out of the plan and the office in that area is really comparable to office space downtown and so it's a very strong office Market there but we're also seeing those higher vacancy rates across the board not unique to this area um and so looking at what that means and

[29:04] also this has been a growth node for office so you can see at the bottom that almost a quarter of the growth in Citywide office space since 2010 has been in the phase one area and I think that's a testament to the success of the plan and we'll see that especially in multi-family as well so on the next slide in retail um that's the probably the the weakest sector in this area just in terms of the metrics obviously there is retail in this area um and it's functioning but it's not a large portion of the market um and often that's more tied to residential and so that comes later on after residential is there and then in this area it's also a question of what retail is available in surrounding areas and how to access that um so that's potentially an opportunity if and as more new residents are added to have additional retail in this area

[30:01] but it's not currently really competitive with other retail spaces in the city and that's something that we've seen sort of across the East Boulder area um as well and then on the last slide or the second last Slide the multi-family this is again you can see that before 2014 there was no multi-family in this area and as the plan was implemented there's a lot of mountain family in this area and so a third third of the city's growth was in the phase one area so that's a huge success um they're also expensive units for the most part because of the nature of new development but it is a really strong opportunity as we look to phase two and how much multi-family was envisioned versus what might be demanded by the market now and how to incorporate that so on the last slide that I have just these initial findings and again this is the beginning of our work and I went through it faster than I probably ever have so we'll have time for questions

[31:02] um but again just emphasizing that the market support for residential really is strong retail will likely be tied to the residential and Industrial and office are changing and so as we look at what we might do within this plan that's where you've already heard the word flexibility a lot that's likely to come up more um just making sure that we have the tools to adapt to some of these Market changes while still delivering what the market wants and the community wants and so as we move through the rest of this process you can see on the right all the fun stuff that we'll be doing on our end um but that's the the super quick Market overview thank you Rachel that was great um Nicole I wanted to offer an opportunity to pause here at this moment before we get into the the really the key questions and and the meat of um what we're interested in hearing from Council about so if that makes sense I can pull down the

[32:00] presentation and just see if anybody has questions great thank you so much um thanks thanks for the presentation um Tara it looks like oh nope you went away okay uh Lauren or Tara did you want Lauren to go first okay Lauren you're up thank you Nicole and thank you Tara and thank you for that great presentation um I've heard a lot of territory really quickly and I appreciate that so one of my questions is about um you talked a little bit about sort of regional industrial and how some of that's you know as businesses look for more industrial property they might be moving away but what about Service Industrial I was wondering if there were any trait any thing from your market analysis that you could share with us on well yeah yeah you know I think the data that

[33:00] Rachel shared so far is is mainly more the the macro industrial influx related information our our next task is to drill down a little closer uh looking at the existing business mix that is in the area and as you alluded to there's a lot more in the way of service commercial or Service Industrial uses in that area so I think we still have some work to do in terms of understanding um the Dynamics and viability of those businesses and uh you know kind of balancing what may be possible in the way of preserving those uses versus maybe the underlying uh land demand Dynamics which you know land values and and such that are made made the result may result or maybe

[34:03] resulting in some of those businesses being turned over as a result of Redevelopment thank you that's it for now for me thank you Tara yes and one of the last few slides when you're going through all the vacancies there was a slide that said that um residential was the strongest and so we should do Residential but then it said something about uh multi-family vacancy being higher did I read that wrong it was going pretty fast so I'm worried that I misunderstood and I'm wondering if you can explain what you mean by that or did I incorrectly read that no that's a great question um it is higher in this area and that's a result of new development still being built and so that's that rate um captures the lease up process and so when a building is built it's empty to start and so over time at least is up

[35:01] and so because the multi-family in phase one is still new and still leasing up um that's a lot of what's baked into that number that's great observation is it um for the multi-family that's already been is already up how is the vacancy vacancy rates on that or do you not know detailed and not macro enough yeah so right now the data we have is at a macro level we can dig into that to look at how you know the the developments that were built in 2014 2015 um and look at you know at least up times and things like that at this point in the process we just don't have that granularity of the data but that's something that we can get Andy Martin thank you Mark uh thanks for that great presentation um my first question was actually asked in its entirety by Lauren so thank you

[36:01] Laura um I'm very concerned about how the uh Service Industrial uh properties are going to be fairing in this uh you know new world but you also noted in the multi-family that the rents are 11 higher uh than elsewhere um and I asked my question is how is that fitting into our overall goals to provide uh attainable and affordable housing yeah I think I think the data is primarily uh or that we presented anyway is primarily market market rate projects it doesn't it it probably doesn't reflect the affordable units that were that are built in the area um I I think I I again we can when we when we drill down into the individual projects we could provide a better uh

[37:03] rent profile of uh of the units by type within the phase one within at least phase one of the plan area and just you know at the beginning when we talked about looking at the market dynamics but also the implementation considerations that's one that we definitely anticipate coming up is when we talk about including residential in this area we sort of know what it will look like if we just let the market go and build multi-family residential and so depending on what we really want to see in the area what you know tools or other strategies or policies might be needed to ensure that that happens um so that's that's part of this is understanding where the market is and if that's the only type of residential we want to see in this area or if there's more of a blend in what it would take to get that thanks I look forward to that analysis thank you

[38:01] thank you any other questions from anyone before we move on to the rest of the presentation all right thank you I think we're ready to move on then all right sounds great let's see make sure you're gonna get the right screen are you seeing the presentation perfect okay great all right um thank you and thanks for those questions we are now going to turn to uh three key questions and the three topic areas that we identified the transportation connections the land use choices and then design a character and we're going to start out with Chris to take us through the transportation component all right thanks KJ and good evening members of council my name is Chris franklos I'm a senior planner in

[39:01] comprehensive planning and I'm excited to talk a little bit about some Transportation connection ideas we have as well as some land use options go to the next slide please so initial feedback through our community engagement has confirmed that the community feels that there could be improved Transportation Connections in the area and given the feedback that you see on the screen staff has evaluated the transportation connections plan and identified additional connections next slide before we jump into what we are going to propose let's just start um with some existing conditions essentially and so what you see here is the existing Road Network and and multi-use path Network in the area and so the dark if you look at the map the dark gray um lines here is the existing Road Network um Wilderness Place sort of a teardrop Road north of Goose Creek and then we have old Pearl connecting to Frontier across Pearl Parkway we see as I mentioned minimal

[40:00] connections throughout the area and in many instances we see evidence of a lot of social child in the area and the image that you see to the top is up Goose Creek looking East and this is a highly used multi-use path in the city connecting many key locations and the bottom image is of old Pearl looking East next slide actually more existing conditions this time from Wilderness place looking North on the top image and then Frontier also looking north towards Pearl Parkway on the bottom image next slide now what's great is as KJ had mentioned already we do already have a connections plan for the area and everything that you see that is in dashed lines is what is already proposed in the transit Village area plan and quite frankly a lot of what we've been hearing from the community is already proposed and supported in the area plan including key several Crossings along the BNSF railroad tracks and over Goose Creek

[41:02] next slide however we do think that there is opportunity to further refine the connections plan with some minor additions and adjustments and everything that you now see in yellow on the dashed line are those additions that we'll be proposing so we'll go through each one of those individually next slide the first is going to be a proposal to extend the month the proposed multi-use path along the rail tracks all the way up to Valmont and this connection is originally proposed to begin at Pearl Parkway and end at the store where the future rail station is considered and feedback that we've been receiving naturally indicates extending this connection all the way up to Valmont should be considered and you also see an additional connection pedestrian connection off of this multi-use path connecting it to Wilderness place next slide the second is to add an additional multi-use path across Goose Creek

[42:00] increasing the connectivity between the North and Southern portions of phase two next slide we also propose additional local Road connections with back alley access in particular along Foothills this helps form smaller blocks in the area more conducive to enhancing The Pedestrian experience and allows for better building access next slide and the final Edition that we're exploring is to extend the already proposed pedestrian path across Goose Creek on the east side of phase two up to proposed multi-use path this is really a minor addition and it's more about filling a gap between the two already proposed Connections in the area plan next slide so I think we'll pause here in the key takeaway for a preferred approach is that there is support from the community to incorporate additional Transportation connections into further study and refine them as perform as part of a preferred approach and our question that we pose to council this evening is does council agree with

[43:01] the possible changes to a transportation connections again I think we'll pause here and answer any questions and get any feedback that we can from Council wonderful thank you so much um so let's start with questions and then we can move into just kind of getting a pulse on where we're at and any comments that folks have who has questions Tara little questions tonight so I have a question did I must have missed an email if possible we had so many about the rail the uh future Rail and I did my own studying in the past few days but I just want to confirm with you what exactly you mean by that did I miss something big in the news I don't know that you missed anything big in the news KJ I might let you or we do have transportation staff available on the call as well provide maybe an update to City Council on the the status of the future rail station as well as maybe the bus station because I know that there's probably questions around that too

[44:01] yeah that's great I'll defer to Chris haglin yeah uh Chris haglin principal planner Transportation Mobility uh good evening Council um yes I can provide some updates on uh future rail service so basically there are two different types of service being studied right now there is the Northwest rail peak hour service that's an RTD study right now they're in the midst of a two-year or 24-month study to look at providing Peak rail service in the Northwest Corridor which would include uh train going uh up to Boulder and then all the way to Longmont right now in terms of a possible start date for that survey uh according to RTD we're looking at perhaps 2030. and that would really just be peak hour service so a a few runs in the morning and a few runs in the evening however there there's also

[45:02] the Front Range passenger rail study that is also happening at this time this is more of a a Statewide effort led by CDOT they received I think two and a half million dollars to study uh the possibility of creating a Front Range rail that would essentially connect uh you know Pueblo to Fort Collins up to Cheyenne so that is a different type of service at this point there's not a future date of proposed start of that service since they are doing the feasibility study and if you would like I could also provide an update on on bus service at this time if that's desired you could maybe just um just give us in a couple of sentences Chris and yes I just want to clarify you said um I think I heard the 24-month study is happening now for the Northwest rail

[46:01] um peak hour um service and you mentioned that the Serv the survey would start at 20 30 and I think okay thank you thank you thanks for clarifying yeah and yeah I think a quick quick update on RTD would be helpful thank you sure so uh as you all know uh Transit service out of the Boulder Junction Station ended in April 2020 as part of their covet service plan um rtd's 2022 system optimization plan or sop calls for the restoration of two of the five routes that had previous previously served photo Junction that includes the Flatiron flyer 4 or the ff4 which uh goes to the Civic Center and also the ab2 which would be the airport ride um right now we're looking at restoring that service uh by 2027. of course that is all dependent on RTD resources most mostly they refer referred to as an

[47:01] operator shortage there is also an upcoming Boulder County Transit plan and this will really be an opportunity to assess additional Transit service options in the Boulder County region through Partnerships with the city and Boulder County so that that's also a possibility for getting service a little quicker there we know we've been trying very hard to get RTD to restore that service yeah thanks so much you're welcome Matt you've got a question thanks for going um Chris thanks for that update on the RTD and the and the rail stuff and communities long overdue want to see something happen in that regard and we're not the only ones on the Front Range so thanks for that uh my question centers around the very sort of South End of sort of TV app to I think it was sort of area three uh referenced in the map and sort of thinking about connectivity out of the South End you know towards the Google property and

[48:01] then ultimately down towards like the grocery store and and and that stuff down under 30th and I'm just sort of thinking that if we are to do housing there it would certainly pose an awkward job for people to have to move strictly West or strictly East to then come down to what maybe another grocery store other than the Whole Foods or just other services so I'm just wondering was there any consideration I know it deals with the BNSF rail and any sort of crossing over that but I was just curious what thought was given in or is that on the table off the table but I'm just sort of curious about that Southward exit out of what might be a bunch housing on the area three part of t-bap2 Matt are you are you referring to the um the crossing that is to the very southern end and crosses the rail on towards Walnut or towards that direction to the far south correct yeah yeah as far as my recollection and as

[49:00] part of a site review uh process that occurred I believe last year that came to city council that that uh underpass connection there was essentially um removed from part of the plan or that say plan was or that say review was approved without that connection I'd have to double check with Charles in the development review team to get an update on that yeah I appreciate I didn't know where the update was on that but thanks if that was the case I appreciate that thank you Bob thanks this is kind of a follow-on to math question um in that same area um I don't know if this is under transportation or under land use so I'll just ask it now and if you want to defer to land use that's fine what is the um what's the flood situation here I know you know we we um we're trying to be careful now as we as new developments come along not to put housing or actually anything in the 100 Year floodplain what what do we have a floodplain map or do we have some idea of what is is and is not a hundred year

[50:01] floodplain and if so are the mitigating um steps being taken yes great great question and I can uh offer an update there so the most of that area that's south of pearl Parkway is within that hundred year floodplain um the primary culprit of that is a very constrained connection right where the North Boulder Farmers ditch and the boulder Slough connect um right at the at the rail line very close to Pearl Parkway so if you can imagine on the map it's basically the Far Western side of that area just south of pearl Parkway and there um and I just haven't had an opportunity to connect with our utilities department um uh just today actually and learned that there is a essentially a letter of agreement for uh City Department utilities the property owner in that particular area and the ditch company to work together to come to some solutions

[51:00] about improving that that area um and essentially getting getting that property out of the flood plain and improving the the drainage there also they will of course be looping in with the BNSF Rail Road just because all of that is interconnected and it's it's a it's a very complicated situation as you can imagine um within the the original Transit Village area plan there is also a proposed underpass for multi-use and pedestrian connection there as well so it's uh I from what I understand from talking with um utilities and transportation and mobility and staff it it's not going to be easy it probably won't be cheap but it is feasible to make those improvements and actually essentially create a new Trestle bridge that would span that whole area and free free up some of the the water storm water issues and also create a pedestrian connection there well that's great Christopher that

[52:00] really kind of ties back to Matt's point about about connectivity to the to the Southwest there it would seem we could kill two birds with one stone many many many years ago Aaron and I put on The greenway's Advisory Board and I know that we always try to put um flood mitigation efforts and and uh you know a bike and pet Transit together because they they um they're often go hand in hand so it seems to me it would be a very elegant solution I I know that we've got a lot of parties involved something like that there's the you mentioned the ditch company Burlington Northern which I know sometimes is um will challenge you to work with um and um property owners and so on and so forth but I would think that if we could get all the all the relevant players together and and both mitigate that flood risk before we start putting a bunch of houses Downstream and um and at the same time put some connectivity in there to Matt's point it seems to me that's a win-win situation so I from my perspective it seems to me that's something we should really bake into this whole project thanks thanks um and Lauren and Tara I saw your hands go up and I'm just going to ask is this more related to the

[53:01] transportation connections or more to land use kind of stuff okay cool Lauren thank you um so I know with both of these connections on the south of the site they've been laid out in the plan is under past connections I guess I was wondering if there's a if we don't do overpass connections anymore or if that's a space constraint issue to me it feels like the most important thing is to be able to connect both sides and so I guess I'm just wondering will you be looking at that both ways if they're is a possibility to do an overpass connection but not an underpass for some reason at one or both of those locations sure yeah I think at this point all options are on the table to explore um and the the area plan as currently written includes some flexibility I

[54:00] think the preference is for an underpass but certainly it would allow for an overpass and in particular if it was more of a pedestrian overpass that the much easier connection to make than any kind of vehicular connection um I will say the one challenge of course that presents itself is that overpasses particularly over commercial Rail lines need to be extraordinarily high and I think they need 25 to 28 foot clearance below them so it's um it's not an insignificant structure to you know to get something across but um but that certainly is an option thanks I appreciate it yeah thank you Mark thank you I'd like to go back to the the transit center um the the two-year feasibility study that's being conducted with respect to Peak our rail Service uh would I be correct in saying that that's simply a study to determine whether we should actually be studying providing the service

[55:01] and that it's entirely possible that in a couple years uh we will come back and be told sorry there will be no rail service uh I I think the you know the vision of of the study itself is to determine when uh service can be provided along the rail court or uh starting with peak hour so I think that's what the key thing is it's an incremental uh bringing on of service of of really looking at just at the peak hour at the beginning and then that laying the foundation for for for regular you know all day type rail service but that that's my understanding that's that the assumption is moving forward with it uh but if peak hour were not to be proved feasible would we then jump to full service or simply say there'll

[56:00] be no service uh I I can't say um anything for certain on that you know um because we talk about this at a lot at the Northwest American commissioner Coalition and uh also in uh regular Communications with RTD on this so I I would say nothing is certain about the peak service right so that that could work out or that could not work out I think the best chance for the rail service here is in conjunction with the Front Range passenger rail where you have some local service and you have some long distance service and uh there are all kinds of activities going on to make Front Range past URL happen right now uh grants from Amtrak and from state level things and so there's there are people who are doing a lot of work on that right now and uh there's some it's it's looking promising and that's probably our best bet thanks Aaron appreciate the update thanks Aaron did you have a question as well okay thank you and Tara I see your hand back up and my question was asked and

[57:01] answered perfect okay um so heading into this next part I think what I'm going to do is just ask a general question about agreement with the possible changes to Transportation connections and see where folks are at um and if people have anything that they would like to change or a specific thing that they're interested in adding I will then ask for people to weigh in on that and then we can have a discussion about any of those changes is that General thumbs up seem okay Okay cool so raise your hand if you are in general agreement with possible with the proposed possible changes to Transportation connections okay looks like we got almost everybody there um so does anyone have any uh specific things they would like to propose changes modifications additions anything like that

[58:01] Matt um I mean I think it was I just just to be for clarity I think kind of just coming back to what Bob really poked on and I was kind of too about just making sure we have good pedestrian or bike um egress out of whatever we do in that southern section of tbap2 out into the South Southwest Direction so if that's through the slew or revamp there or through some other underpass it just we need some conduit to get people out of the south end of there so that's something I'd like to see us do one way or the other great um and then before we go on there um does anybody have any comments specific to Matt's comments okay um who who is uh of similar mind to Matt okay we got everybody there okay thank you uh Tara you're up next I didn't want to double down on uh what

[59:02] Matt and Bob did say I believe it was Bob who said it about the um the flood mitigation situation not just for transportation but also for being able to you know build residential and KJ is that your nickname do you want us to call you kids you you yes either that or Christopher is fine okay Jake you said the words not easy but feasible but wouldn't it be difficult to make retail excuse me residential with the flood plain as the 500 year floodplained uh if the flooded plane is 100 Year floodplain uh yes it would be impossible too okay so that's not impossible you can you can raise it up um you know essentially have parking on the ground level but it makes residential extraordinarily challenging just again because of our height limits as well it reduces the number of housing units that can be created so the financial feasibility of a residential Redevelopment and that area

[60:01] so if let's say residential is housing is one of the most important things that we want wouldn't but feasible be need to be changed to definitely need to have versus Tara can we come back to this in the land use part yeah thank you all right um do you have any questions or points about the transportation connections though Tara okay thank you Lauren I think I just wanted to emphasize something that Christopher said earlier in the presentation which was sort of about a more fine-grained approach to the transportation connections that generally I think we're seeking to um sort of break down some of these blocks and have sort of the weave of the fabric of this area be like a smaller tighter weave and so

[61:00] I guess my just encouragement to continue looking like there might be additional con connections that make sense beyond what is shown and if that were to happen I would be in support of those as Pro most likely as well thank you um can I get uh hand raised if you are all a favor of this idea of adding in some more smaller connections as that seems appropriate as it comes up okay a lot of trust for you all staff great all right Aaron or Matt your hand is up still are you okay thank you um Erin super quick just to plus one the the Southwest connection and the flood importance there and the appreciation the finer grain approach and if you've got a couple more that'd be interesting thanks very much appreciate all you're doing thank you and Mark just a quick question

[62:00] are the expensive but feasible infrastructure projects that we're discussing tonight um already within the 300 million dollars of unfunded infrastructure needs that we have or would this be in addition to what we already have well that is a great question and my uh I I would have to double check with utilities but to my awareness the any sort of improvements on the boulder Slough are we do not have a mitigation plan it's not currently in our CIP um uh six year plan um the as I mentioned there is a signed letter of agreement between the parties to coordinate on understand really in more detail what this would entail and certainly what cost estimates um would come out of that and my my uh assessment at least at this moment is that this would not all fall to the city to um to actually perform that there would need to be some some kind of a

[63:00] public-private partnership in order to do this because certainly the the landowner would benefit tremendously from from improvements in this location okay thank you can I colloqui on that point I mean since we're just we're hitting it right now Nicole I hope that's okay with you because I was going to bring it up later but since we're on it and maybe this question for Joe I and maybe maybe it sort of was already answered to some extent but by by you KJ are there any resources that or is there any Council action that we could take that would accelerate or or add resources to get to some conclusion because as was stated this seemed like it was might be very difficult and we don't have some certainty whether or not it will or won't happen but whether it happens or not will absolutely impact area three in terms of what we ultimately say we can do the land use we put in there and the zoning with regards to any housing feasibility so the sooner we know the answer to the boulder Slough the sooner we can really dictate things assuming the developer can so I'm just wondering is there anything we can do to accelerate any resources we can provide to get that answer sooner than maybe we

[64:01] otherwise would be on a track to receive would you like me to jump in on that that would be great Joe thank you yeah thank you all sorry sorry to be joining late here and I have I don't have the benefit of the earlier part of the discussion but understand and by the way I'm Joe taniuchi the utilities director for the city understand that you're talking about the the boulder Slough and the potential to reduce the flood plain and maximize Housing Development and our utilities team is is aware of that desire and uh just recently here I signed an agreement to advance some work with the railroad and some of the ditch companies that are involved out there to support some of the analysis that is needed so I I don't know that there's any Council

[65:00] action needed at this moment to accelerate things and and may have to follow up with you uh after the meeting on the status and and the details but we we are aware of the needs and and are working forward to uh support reduction of the flood plain and then I heard Mark ask a question about whether the the funding for project development um is within the 300 million dollars and I think it's 350 million dollars that and what he's talking about is what we've identified in our Flood Master Plan as the backlog of projects needed across all 16 drainages I I can confirm but I believe all of the projects across all drainages are are part of that 350 million and I can go back and look at details as the discussion continues and may be able to confirm tonight so again

[66:01] without the benefit of of the prior discussion that's what I can share at this time yeah thanks yeah it seems like we're getting very eager to move on to leonie's discussion but uh Bob any any final Transportation connection thoughts yeah I know it just um this this flood litigation is kind of the convergence between transportation and land use so thank you for indulging us Nicole as we kind of drill into this just a couple questions for Joe uh Joe thanks for that one is do you have a back of the envelope estimate on what this would cost I know the move from clustering between various parties and then second related question is um is this the type of project that we might get some funding from the wildlife flood rustic core thanks foreign sorry about that I don't have the cost uh details I can look I can look into that while the discussion continues and follow-up and

[67:00] for sure any of our uh any of our 16 drainages are subject to us requesting assistance from the mile high flood District so we can look into that as well great thank you um okay I think we can officially move on to uh The Next Step but um stuff let us know if you are missing anything but I think we have General agreement yes to this question you posed to us um and we are especially interested in an exit point in that southwest corner as well as a more fine-grained approach as it as it comes up and seems relevant great thank you very much Chris back to you for land use the the fun stuff the fun stuff okay great thanks next slide okay so we'll jump in the community's preference for land use some Waters transportation is to also update the proposed land uses in the plan to allow for greater flexibility for many

[68:01] different types of uses including maximizing our Housing Opportunity and allowing mixed use throughout given that feedback staff has created three land use scenarios using the guiding framework you see on the screen and we'll go through those next slide the first option that you see on the screen here proposes no change to the TV apps original proposed land uses this is our no Change option essentially and the goal with this is to proceed with the existing plan and introduce a mix of uses to the area while retaining some light industrial and office uses especially in north of Goose Creek this option also identifies high density residential development along Goose Creek taking advantage of that as an amenity this option could potentially yield somewhere between 400 and 600 new residential units between 2600 and 2800 new jobs most community members disagreed with only allowing office and light industrial uses in the north and thought that it could be a better location for

[69:01] residential and or mixed use next slide so option two um taking lessons from the East Boulder sub community plan this option introduces a broad application of mixed use Transit oriented development or mutod to the area and this is a new bvcp land use designation that was recently adopted during the East Boulder subcommunity plan and is intended to be located at Regional or local Mobility hubs and along key Transit corridors the goal with mu Tod and option two is to transform existing disparate uses in the mixed-use transit oriented neighborhoods rich with amenities and services this option would introduce a mix of use to the area while maintaining maximum flexibility to respond to market demand mutod is anticipated to result in primarily attached residential uses with office retail service commercial and

[70:00] light industrial supporting uses integrated vertically within buildings and horizontally across the area this option would yield somewhere between a thousand and thirteen hundred new dwelling units and roughly the same number for new jobs as well and most community members agreed with encouraging a residential focused mixed-use environment throughout all of phase two and like how flexible this land use category could be there was also appreciation for how this land use designation could allow the area to adapt to the availability of Transit and Market needs over time next slide and our final option option three we see m-u-t-o-d once again applied north of Goose Creek near the future rail stop and this would replace the office industrial as was suggested in the original Transit Village area plan again this mixed-use designation places emphasis on Housing Opportunity while also still allowing for a wide variety of supporting uses

[71:01] here we also see Nui or mixed use industrial applied to the south of Goose Creek and similar but differing from m-u-t-o-d mui places emphasis on light industrial uses on ground floors while still allowing for supporting uses such as attached residential retail service office in commercial the goal with option three is to introduce a mix of usage to the area while maintaining a focus on preserving some light industrial uses we place emphasis on housing opportunities north of Goose Creek and near the future rail stop in the nutod and high density residential designations while focusing more on a potential mixed-use light industrial area south of Goose Creek in the mixed use industrial designations this option would yield somewhere between 800 and 1000 new dwelling units in between 1300 and 1500 new jobs and finally varying feedback was received from the community members on this option a slightly more respondents disagreed with the idea of splitting the

[72:01] land use designations up rather than having a more consistent land use approach across the entire area next slide so we'll sort of summarize the three options that we have for us and they all offer varying opportunities to increase residential units and jobs from what exists today so option one would maintain the existing tbat plan and would perpetuate office and Industrial uses to the north with housing light industrial and mixed uses to the South this option would yield the least amount of new housing units in the most amount of new jobs option two again would maximize flexibility and opportunities for residential units and density near Transit facilities in the entire area this option would deal the most amount of Housing and the least amount of new jobs option three would focus residential units and mixed uses north of Goose Creek and still allow for an increase in residential units and density South at Goose Creek as well as potentially a greater range of light industrial uses

[73:01] and this option will yield slightly more jobs than it would housing units next slide so our key takeaways for the preferred approach is allow for greater flexibility for land uses over time in the area maximize our Housing Opportunity and mixed use opportunities over the traditional office and Industrial as well as proposed in the original area plan giving Community feedback in Market uncertainty there is direction to move away from tbap's original proposed land uses and staff is recommending based on feedback and Analysis exploring option two further to establish flexibility for the current and future uses and the question we posed to council this evening is does councils agree with the potential land use changes being considered thank you so much for the presentation let's open this up for questions first and then we can get to comments and talk you through the different options and Bob I saw your hand go up Tara I know

[74:00] you had a question that I made you carry over here so I just want to see if you would like to address that question first you're nice it's actually a new question so Bob can go first okay thanks bye thanks uh just just a technical question for KJ um you talked about jobs are those incremental jobs under each of those options incremental to what jobs are there now or is that just total jobs including what's already there yeah that's a great question it is uh it is total jobs based on some you know assumptions that we would make into our model um uh based on the different Lane juice categories so it's not an incremental addition to what's there today it's just a capture and an estimate of what an overall job profile might look like for housing it was incremental but for jobs it's not incremental is that how we should read those sliders uh actually both are are an estimate of the overall number not incremental but

[75:02] but there's very little housing there right now uh there's zero housing there correct but it is all incremental yeah so I guess you're correct yes on the housing side but in terms of jobs yeah that would that would be an absolute overall number right and then just back the envelope how many jobs are there right now is just if we wanted to back out and figure out if we can do apples to apples on increments both housing and jobs how many jobs are there now so when you say a thousand to thirteen hundred or whatever those ranges were that's um compared to like what do we have 500 jobs there now a thousand jobs there not just yeah yeah it's a great question um based on the data that we have for the entire phase two area it's in the neighborhood I'm 16 to okay thanks KJ yeah me more Bob yes you're up Tara so I'm glad that we have this new mixed use Tod I have a question for you guys

[76:02] if this is the T is the fact that it's a Transit oriented develop um development is that because we have the possible but not definite train coming or is it other Transit not that I I mean let's be honest that we put this whole we you know TV app one was all about the train that you know stopped coming and not only did the train not come but the buses even stopped coming so I guess my second question is if it is all about the train then is there an is there an option to be flexible enough that if there is not going to be any train that we don't have everything kind of you know centered around a train you know what I mean or is it not even a good question because if it doesn't even make sense don't you know don't go there no it's a great it's a great question um so the the short answer is no it's not directly linked to the train um it is it is linked to sufficient and

[77:02] um ideally Rapid Transit that is you know that is offered so for example the mutod land use category um you know was was created through these folder subcommunity plan and was applied for the first time at 55th and Arapahoe where um there is a Rapid Transit facility that's being studied and hopefully will be built soon along that Arapahoe Corridor so it's not specific to train necessarily but certainly would benefit from and is is uh you know essentially linked to the anticipation or or existence of significant Transit facilities being there and being available thank you Lauren thanks um so when I think of land use versus zoning I usually think you know the land

[78:01] use is kind of the bigger broader brush stroke tool and then you kind of dial in and get more specific with the Zoning for what's allowed and not allowed um I appreciate the m-u-t-o-d is more flexible are there any things that we wouldn't be able to do in that zoning that the other or sorry in that land use that the other land use types would allow like is it just that we're by assigning all of it in that category that we really are leaving ourselves open for flexibility or are we cutting off particular directions by doing that sure yeah that that's a that's a really good question and I think it it raises um it's something we as staff have been thinking about and kind of wrestling with in that in them by applying mutod across a very large area it it does open

[79:01] the door too um essentially the most flexibility that we would have and that that flexibility comes in the uses that we would be appropriate in those areas um the uh the intensity of development so the the scale um and height of development that could that could occur there again you're not required to build before or even five stories but certainly the possibility would be there um it also can be refined somewhat and I think to your your description of the land use category is is is spot on and that it's the broad brush stroke mutod is the most flexible of our land use categories that we have available to us where we start to refine that is through and we'll touch on this actually a little bit later this evening is there's um the notion of place types that can be applied essentially to Overlay the land use that start to refine a little bit more about the types of uses that would that would occur

[80:01] there the performance expectations the feel of those places and then ultimately through zoning or even application of the form-based code we can further refine you know the character of those physical built outcomes but to you know to your question about are there things that would not be appropriate or not be allowed within the mutod that might be allowed in some of the others the only thing that really jumps to mind is more of a a true industrial type of function where I could see that being appropriate within that mixed-use industrial or even the office industrial proposal from the original tpap it would likely not be an appropriate land use within mutod and that would be more of a like heavier industrial or are you thinking light industrial as well no more on the heavier industrial side so light Industrial Service commercial those kinds of things that have come up already in the discussion and certainly

[81:00] those have come up in our conversations with the community and with property owners those would all still continue to be allowed within mutod so what what staff appreciates about option two is that it allows for all of the businesses and and the uses that exist there today to continue forward and it offers an opportunity for those to be established again in the future in different locations or for other things to happen as well thank you that great I'm so excited to hear that um also just one more clarifying question in along with that there was a three to five story type sort of I think suggested with that is that tied to that land use I usually think of Heights is being tied to zoning um so maybe you could is that something we need to put apply at this point or is that something that we could um maybe have tied to the zoning and have

[82:02] that for more of a later discussion yeah I think it's absolutely part of the later discussion the you know what we're intending to do by including some of that information and the presentation and in our descriptions with the community is just to try to give everybody a kind of a sense of what could happen there um certainly we can get into a lot more detail as we move through a zoning process or a re-zoning process to identify are there areas that might be more appropriate for that four or even five-story you know type of development versus areas that might be more appropriate at a three-story level perfect thank you so much thanks Rachel I think my question is maybe the inverse of Lauren's first question but if I followed everything correctly our office space use our inventory has increased 71 percent over about the last decade at the same time we've lost a lot of

[83:00] industrial and flex or we've lost some of it especially compared to outlying towns surrounding towns so under m-u-t-o-d we'll might we get more office or predominantly office with this Flex zoning I would think at some point the market would say especially with bacon we don't want it but there must be some reason that we keep building offices I I assume it's lucrative or beneficial in some ways so if we use this uh can we say you know some amount really should not be more offices that we don't need more of or is that coming zoning or are we safe there yeah a couple of thoughts there um so as we'll touch base on there are some place types that again this is a planning framework that was used within East Boulder um and there are some place types that don't allow for office but they do allow for this um integration of light industrial retail that type of thing and

[84:02] residential um the other I would say also certainly within the if there are to be rezonings in the future that is something that we can look at um and and really that will be driven by Market as well and I don't know Rachel if you're still on if you have anything to add to that but certainly I think that there are tools and mechanisms we can put in place to guide um I won't say guide the market but certainly guide some of the outcomes and the direction of the uses that we're interested in and perhaps away from you know pure office uses your office uses like you know percentage-wise what was the question Rachel oh I was just saying you know maybe there could be some pure office but not a high percentage of it like you know a low volume of it given that we have so much right now I'm sorry I cut

[85:00] someone off there no I was just going to add that there's um and this is related to sort of both of the last two questions there's there's trade-offs with flexibility um and Dan could probably speak this a little bit too is that if there is so much flexibility in that you can build any of these uses go do what you want we're going to see what the market is strongest in and only that typically um and so if there's a desire for more than just say and you know I can't tell the future unfortunately I keep trying but let's say it's just multi-family if that's where the market is and there's a desire for more than just multi-family housing in this area even if the others are allowed that's where we get into those other layers of how do we better shape what comes in and so different mixes ensuring that there's some sort of flexibility um to allow for the market dynamics to play out but even some form of you know non-residential use that allows for

[86:00] whether it's Market or sorry office or light industrial or Flex or retail but ensures that there's there's some level of shaping there um just to to get that bookend to the flexibility and when do we need to look at that I assume it's not tonight yes I would say that's not tonight so um just uh as far as quick overview and we'll cover this in next steps at the very end but you know really what we're talking about tonight and where we will ultimately be coming back to you ideally in September is for an amendment to the transit Village area plan that will establish these high-level policies the next phase of the project is to move into that those implementation steps where we will hone in you know much more in much more detail on rezoning strategies um again possible form-based code updates and how how we can shape the things that are actually built in and

[87:00] what those outcomes look like thank you that's all ahead thank you Rachel mark um in a in a zoning category where almost everything is permitted on what theory would a developer ever choose to maintain uh light industrial uses yeah yeah it's it's that it kind of gets to the the Crux of of um what the evolution is going to look like I think in the phase two area and how that might be different than what occurred in Phase One um as I mentioned there's a there's a very vibrant uh existing you know business community that that works here and some of those some of those businesses some of those individuals own their buildings and own their properties and may not have a whole lot of reason

[88:00] to redevelop in the future or at least for a period of time um because their their business May operate you know profitably and they're comfortable where they are and they want to continue to be in in the community there's also you know scenarios where uh those properties are owned by others at least that space too um profitable businesses and again there's there there needs to be enough of a financial incentive to go through the long and complicated process that we have here you know in Boulder to redevelop a property into something else so I think there are many cases of existing businesses that are there today that um will continue for a considerable amount of time before you know Redevelopment pressures may may change that But ultimately would you not agree that in the end all of those businesses are gone and that entire light industrial neighborhood that currently exists will

[89:01] be gone because it will always be more financially profitable to build other forms of uh development such as housing you know I don't take maybe quite as dire of a of a look at it because I do think that there is an interest in the community and if there is residential here the residents that are going to be living in that area to have access to those types of services and businesses and there even if uh you know a business may change or move the really what we're hoping to be able to offer and provide is the flexibility for a future mixed-use building to come forward and offer some of those same types of uses on the ground floor um with perhaps residential above so there may be you know the structure may change the building may change but the goal is for a lot of those types of uses to be maintained and I know our community vitalities Department

[90:00] department is working on a number of ways to be able to support existing businesses and actually in particular support businesses that are going through these periods of transition and change where they maybe moved to a different location within the city but also looking for ways to help support um the new spaces that are created to make those affordable to future businesses going forward and do we have have we identified any such areas where we would be relocating our light Industrial well as I understand Chris is on the call tonight or not oh I do see his name there and he certainly could speak to this Navy a little bit more but as I understand there's a you know fairly informal process right now where Community Vitality help helps to um you know find and essentially connect businesses with property owners that have space available and that's certainly one thing that we are trying to formalize and become more intentional about and Chris if you want to if you

[91:02] want to add to that thank you KJ good evening everyone Chris Jones director of community Vitality um so just to speak to what KJ was mentioning around the work that we are looking at when it comes to Affordable commercial and making sure that spaces remain available for the types of businesses that we want to see able to stay within the Boulder Junction area we're going to be having a conversation with Council on August 10th regarding our affordable commercial pilot program but having said that uh councilman Wallach I think you were asking where um light industrial land uses may be preserved um in the city and I don't know that that is related to the work that we're pursuing as far as making sure that spaces are still available for the types of businesses that we want to see in these areas that are redeveloping I'm I'm merely suggesting that what we're presenting as a series of choices will not really be a series of choices

[92:01] that these industrial will be um eliminated uh one way or another and those properties uh will be turned to a a higher and more profitable use that's simply the the nature of the development business uh can I call a quay on that when you're sorry yeah absolutely so I just want to clarify right now we're talking about the land use we could still in the future when we're looking at zoning select zoning districts that are not nearly as permissive like we could for instance assign zoning that requires light industrial is that true that is true I don't I I'd have to go back and look to see if there are uh form based code or zoning districts that would actually require line industrial but certainly we can use those tools and

[93:00] use those regulations to uh to you know potentially guide or limit it you know the the types of uses that would um that would be available or that would be permissible within certain areas thank you for that clarification I guess that that's my question thank you Sarah hey Jay was there um Outreach to the businesses the uh landlord's tenants in that area and how did they feel about the three options yes absolutely and Vivian and Chris please chime in um on this but I know that uh we so we have a we have a one of our four focus groups is specifically made up of property and business owners in the in the phase two area um we've also hosted a um uh site tour with those groups and had a lot of response to these um to these Alternatives as part of our

[94:02] second round of focus group meetings a couple of weeks ago and you know the the general perspective that um that staff has has received from the business community and the property owners is that they they are very interested in the flexibility they certainly do have um I would say similar you know concerns to what councilman Wallach raised in and are interested in staying there but also we've you know we've heard that under the current um current uh Boulder Valley comprehensive plan land use category that applies in this area in the zoning that applies in this area there's there's actually some property owners that would like to have certain types of tenants and they and have had offers to bring those tenants in but they're not able to do it under the current regime so there certainly is an interest overall to look for some additional flexibility and Vivian please please join them if there's anything else there no you covered what I was going to say thanks KJ

[95:02] anything else Tara hey Bob thanks KJ just kind of following up on the discussion that that you had with Mark and with Lauren uh about jobs and Lead industrial and whatnot if I understood your chart right even under option two um which is the least number of jobs you're still talking a thousand to thirteen hundred Eleven Hundred to thirteen hundred jobs I know that's not incremental that's roughly what we have there now maybe slightly less than what we have there now I I get the fact that not every job is is equal in other words a light industrial job may be different than a retail job or a restaurant job but um I think I always want to make sure that I understood your point and answer to Lauren's question there is still potential for when we get eventually get to zoning here we're just talking about land use now um that um you we could Zone it for things that are job creating whether that's origami preserving whether that's light industrial or retail or office or

[96:00] any other types of jobs is that right that that is correct yeah the again the mutod land use category allows for the greatest range of um zoning assumptions that we could that we could make under 100. great great thanks all right thanks everyone this has been a really substantive discussion I appreciate everybody staying really focused on on the topic and uh we're also exhausted from our 90 minutes that was allocated so uh but thank you I think the comments have been helpful um okay so now I just want to go through kind of a similar thing to what we did with the transportation connections I'm just going to ask generally for each option who was in support of that option and then we can talk a little bit more about any finer grained uh distinctions that we would like to make tonight recognizing that we future Council will have a chance to come back to some specific zoning types of conversations too so

[97:00] let's start with option one is there anybody who is in favor of option one okay we've got one one for option one how about option two and again just general category hey it looks like eight by counting correctly okay so option two and I'm just going to ask it for consistency option three okay um so it sounds like option two is the direction that most of us are interested in going into and so what I would like to do is just open up conversation around any specific things we would like to tweak about this option at this stage Lauren so I'm cheating a little bit it's not something that I want to tweak at this stage but as you move forward with this and we start looking at zoning I you know I share a lot of Mark's concerns and if there are areas where we can do

[98:03] something to preserve our service industrial or make that um you know depending on what our market analysis shows um more feasible for people I would be interested in that thank you um can I just ask for a show of hands of uh who who is also interested in Lauren's suggestion we got a mostly yes so one one in the middle we'll say mostly yes thanks Lauren um Aaron yeah I think you all are on the the right track here and I just want to offer a couple of comments just kind of following up on some of the questions that people are asking and just in terms of like the transit oriented nature well in in general like when this plane is implemented it's going to take a long time to go into effect like properties will redevelop incrementally slowly over a pretty long period of time so I don't think we're going to see like a large-scale Vanishing of existing uses some of them are buildings are really

[99:00] new you know they're not going to go away anytime soon so I I I want to make sure that we keep in mind the the benefit of additional housing you know in the long term um as we're moving to zoning because I think even if our zoning is focused primarily on housing it's not like that entire area is just going to you know redevelop in in three or four years I think it'll take decades I'm sure and and while it does I'll just mention I think the transit will be coming back and we're getting more service to Boulder Junction before too long and while we've been focusing on what exactly has been going into that transit station there are other bus lines that stop very nearby like the Hop is nearby the flex route to to Fort Collins is nearby and we are working on the bus rapid transit to Longmont um along 119 that will go very close to this area and then I think we'll expect to see rtt to come back gradually and there's that uh solid potential for the Front Range passenger rails we look into more of the like eight to ten year time

[100:00] frame so I I'm fully in support of the the mixed use option too and I just want to be careful that we don't dilute that because of the concerns about where we are exactly today because I think the long-term trends will head in the direction that the land use plan is going to be going in thanks very much thanks for those additional comments Erin um and I just wanted to offer just the additional comment I um mentioned to everybody about the mitigation action plan that is probably going to kick in in a few years um to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions along the Front Range one of the things that I really like about this is that it does kind of get us staying ahead on being on having our land um already doing some of the mitigation action plan steps which will help us out in a few years if those restrictions on transportation funding start to come in so I really appreciate it for that as well um okay and uh KJ was there anything

[101:02] else you wanted to add um before we move on to this last question oh I would love to just move on just because I know we're we're stretching our 90 minutes a little bit longer so I appreciate everybody's uh time and patience okay great um then I'm just going to ask the general question again uh it does council agree with the proposed approach to place types and public spaces to better Define Urban Design and character just a yes or no to that very general question that we can move on raise your hand if you agree okay it looks like everybody there almost everyone okay anything specific that anyone would like to add or offer comment on about this only once going twice all right staff do you have everything that you need from us uh I do I I would offer just a very

[102:02] quick slide on next steps if that would be useful so give me Justin thank you get to that yes so uh as um as we've been talking we this is uh really really great and useful information for us so we will be heading back and and pencils down here for a while um through the month of June to develop our preferred approach uh through the month of July we're going to be gathering feedback then on that preferred approach we've got a number of Engagement activities another round of um Focus meetings with our focus groups we're going to provide an update to planning board towards the end of July after all of you are back um book planning board and city council are back from uh your break over the summer uh we are hoping to be able to provide you with an IP around that same time towards

[103:00] the end of July just to provide you with an update of where we've landed for a preferred approach um it may come as a as a heads up or something we'll we'll see how how much time we have um we are going to have another meeting of the multi-board working group so we're going to gather all those liaison from uh our different boards and review that with them and then we're also going to make the draft Amendment to the plan available to the public for public review for about two weeks towards the end of July um before we put any final refinements to that at the planning board in August ideally and then back to you in the third week of September for a public hearing on amendments to the plan and also our hope is to go ahead and bring forward the updates to the BBC land use map as well and run and run currently so that's our goal and and really appreciate all of the time this was really great all right thank you so much KJ and uh thank you to everyone else who came in to give us all this great information it

[104:00] was really a robust discussion thank you great thank you um and Nuria would you like to introduce this second item that would be great and thank you thank you so much council members fear and I just want to say um really thank all of you that was a really great conversation super productive feedback um and uh excited to hear uh some of your thoughts since the team continues to move forward so um appreciate that our next item is one that many of you have heard in the past we've had presentations I'm going to go directly to Mark wolf to talk about some updates on Grant fundings and we have a new grants manager with us so be nice because it's her first time with us thank you um and I just want to remind folks I think I may have forgotten to do this reminder earlier uh can you please introduce yourself as you start talking thank you good evening Council just getting the slides situated here

[105:01] all right everybody see that okay all right so good evening I'm Mark Wolfe I'm budget officer for the city uh happy to be with you again uh to discuss the Community culture resilience and safety tax uh specifically are non-profit uh grant program uh we will be reviewing uh Grant criteria this is in a follow-up to our last touch point with Council on the ccrs grant program back in October of last year where we discussed uh the overall program framework so we've been hard at work developing a program uh filling out that program structure developing specific criteria which will review uh this evening so I'll take you through a very brief history um many of you are very familiar with the history of ccrs formally CCS we'll

[106:01] just touch on some of that just for context uh briefly touch on our an overview of the program structure itself and then I'll turn over to Tony who will describe the Criterion a bit more detail we'll then shift over to some additional program information and pause for questions and discussion so normally we don't get into them the management structure uh per se but we thought it would be helpful context given that the grants function is a is a new function uh in the city um certainly related to our efforts to to continue to to strive for efficiency and how we deliver uh internal Services uh we uh created a new division within the finance department to help support Citywide Grant activities we are really excited to have both uh Tony Townsend who you'll hear from in a moment as our grant senior program manager Annie Scott

[107:01] who has been with us about 10 days now so we're not going to make her present this evening but really excited they both come with um a whole bunch of great experience and will be valuable members to to the team uh how we hope to support Citywide grants activities a focus will be on supporting organize strategy and capacity in obtaining a federal state and other Grant resources and also administering the ccrs program so I thought it would be helpful just to set that context a bit and how we'll be performing the tasks in looking at uh the the history so again voters approved the renewal of ccrs back in November of 2021 this is a 0.3 dedicated sales and use tax primarily for infrastructure investment the ballot language did a few things most importantly for our discussion this

[108:00] evening it created 10 percent of the tax revenues up to 10 percent of the tax revenues to fund a grant pool for non-profit organization projects that that serve the people of Boulder so what that means in terms of projected revenue is about 21.75 million over the life of the the tax that it's 10 and then about a million and a half annually so we can either look at that annually or over the life of the tax depending on the flexibility we need within the program we formed an internal steering committee in January of last year to help explore Grant structures uh that were based off of focus group input from both the lead up to the tax renewal and and also subsequent engagements that we did in 2022 uh within that the lead up uh to um the the renewal of the tax and developing the ballot language in 2021

[109:00] and also the engagement that we conducted in 2022 helped create um a series of goals and intended outcomes for this uh nonprofit Support Program specifically looking at advancing our our racial Equity goals and outcomes addressing critical deficiencies improving infrastructure and advancing Boulder's vision of being an inclusive and welcoming Community maintaining a healthy stable and financially sustainable non-profit base within Boulder to provide services to the community leveraging investment in public dollars wherever possible and then addressing infrastructure needs specifically to ensure Community viability and resilience while preventing higher costs in the future we conducted two focus group sessions uh first in the lead up to the ccrs tax extension in 2021 we received input from 19 non-profit organizations including a couple of previous CCS grantees a number

[110:03] of items were pointed out specifically the need to support planning grants and not just construction costs that a combination of transformational investments in smaller capital projects should be considered that they should have broad reach in support of the entire community that we enhance the flexibility and Grant Administration and ensure a transparent decision-making process we then conducted focus group sessions in March and April of 22 a little bit more focused on small to medium non-profit organizations we had 15 representatives from 12 non-profit organizations the feedback helped confirm the program goals that we went over and lead us to the structures that were shared out last fall the feedback we put in three different categories related a lot to the accessibility of the grant

[111:00] program itself and some of the barriers that were present in accessing CCS dollars of the past and what might be needed in order to to make sure that any resources were accessible to a variety of organizations uh we also heard about the desire to have collaboration opportunities uh with City staff but also with other organizations and looking at opportunities to to partnership either in space or providing service and that there should be value in participating in the grant process itself going through an extensive application can be um and it can be prohibitive for a lot of small organizations and so we heard the need to provide flexible cash but also overall capacity to make sure that there there was value in participating in general so all that background led us to propose a grant structure we received from some

[112:01] feedback from Council in August of 22 and came back in October of 22 to confirm the three different um Grant types that we would be offering Under the ccrs Umbrella the first being focused on capacity building and planning leading to capital investment so that idea of making more grants accessible to a greater number of organizations so the type one is really about the capacity building and planning through technical assistance type 2 is our direct capital investment so that is much more similar to how we have done CCS grants in the past where it's a specific tangible project that is applied for funding through type 2 and then we left the door open for type 3 which I'll speak to a little bit more it's not necessarily the focus of the criteria tonight which we'll talk about but again reflects the the desire we heard in a number of different venues to be open to community-based projects that were

[113:02] really related to more of a partnership with City and community-based Facilities and with that confirmation of the structure in October we also confirmed some thresholds uh for the overall costs of the program and where the dollars were going 90 or almost 20 million 19 and a half million um is focused on Capital Investments the vast majority of which is going directly to capital investment so again these are our funding thresholds or targets for the program so 16.3 million will be direct capital and then that 3.2 million 15 of the overall Capital Investments that's geared towards direct investment in organizations through technical assistance so again that idea of capacity building um where all that red circle there is value for organization so vast majority of program dollars are going to Capital and investing directly into

[114:00] organizations so that is the T up and I get to introduce Tony who will walk us through our application information and criteria for type 1 and type 2 grants thanks Mark pleased to be here uh so as we shift into the new information I I want to point out that this will be our last Council checkpoint on this program before we release the information for applications uh program launch will be focused on that type 1 and type 2 project that Mark was just discussing That Type 1 being that capacity building planning and investment program with that technical assistance we are anticipating an August launch date for that type one and type 2 for that direct capital investment will be more similar to what we've done in the past um to be launched in July and then as

[115:00] Mark said he'll touch on that type 3 a little later on tonight so for a type one this is really going to be focused on making these dollars more accessible to organizations prioritizing organizations that deliver programs and services that align with our Equity goals uh strengthening and providing value to each organization that participates so regardless of whether or not we're able to identify a capital investment we really want to make sure that there's value in participating in the program in and of itself and finally that we're investing in these organizations for Capital funding as needed and identified in the process so what does this look like focusing on small to medium organizations that need that wraparound technical assistance to access Capital funds our goal is to accept eight to twelve organizations But ultimately uh demand will lead us to what that final number is maybe it's

[116:00] five maybe 14. I think we're just going to let the process dictate well keeping it reasonable so that everyone is provided with that adequate level of support once accepted into the program these organizations will receive that initial capacity Grant so some initial flexible cash paired with technical assistance and that will eventually lead into capital investment for many of these organizations um so what will be required you know one of the things that was heard loud and clear during the engagement sessions is that the application needs to be simple and approachable to encourage participation so we'll have Outreach help spread word to organizations that we would like to apply for the program but we want the barrier to apply to be low so we're looking for a simple summary of the organization size Community served and a description of their physical space needs so again that technical assistance will be an important component of type 1

[117:00] grants but we want to make sure that the long-term goal is that commercial space Solution that's sustainable in Boulder the evaluation for these will be based on criteria aligned within the city's sustainability equity and resilience goals uh demonstrated long-term commitment to the community programs and services that are inclusive and demonstrate a commitment to serving historically marginalized communities within the city the ability of the funding to improve organizational and facility adaptation to Future climate conditions and finally the ability to be able to participate in that technical assistance program so a bit of an aside here will be on that third party technical assistance that we've been talking about we issued an RFP on May 26th it will be open for the next couple of weeks um so if there's any organizations that are out there and interested in this we would love for you to apply um this will be to identify a

[118:01] third-party partner to provide technical assistance for type 1 organizations we're likely seeking one firm to be the point of contact on that program and then they will conduct an initial assessment in partnership with City staff of those organizations that are accepted into the program this third party will identify the top needs that the organization selected um have and connect them to services so whether they directly provide that or they subcontract it out it kind of remains to be determined but essentially this will be in the realm of things like financial planning legal real estate board element and other types of assistance that will help Advance toward a capital investment or a long-term commercial stay solution in Boulder findings of those assessments will help us inform the top technical assistance needs that are catered individually to each organization and then lastly we hope that this

[119:01] technical assistance will help just lay a foundation for determining the most successful potential solution for that long-term space challenge that may or may not be a capital investment with City dollars and that's okay we still think that there's a lot of value in this program for all of the organizations to go through the process our targeted timeline for this type one we have a little bit more lead up time while we get the third party technical assistance partner on board we still have some Outreach to do which will be really important ahead of releasing the opportunity for applications we're targeting an August release date for application and then we'll leave a good period of time open so that way we can do more Outreach we can walk people through the application process as needed and then the evaluation and decisions on the program participants and capacity grants will be end of December early December time frame and then technical assistance assessments hopefully Beginning by the end of 2023 continuing throughout the end of 2024

[120:01] and we will be sending out communication as we finalize the dates for these programs so we'll shift over now to talk about those type 2 grants which will require less explanation since it is similar to what we've done in the past next so these are for that specific Capital project for long-term investment within the city the goal for this is that they support Community focused programs and services that are aligned with the city's Equity goals and that they're designed to deliver City resources in a timely manner so this is really getting at that what we don't want to see happen is having grants that are awarded and then sitting out there that have like a match requirement for another four or five years we really want to be able to invest those dollars in real projects so what does that mean type 2 projects are meant for more shovel ready can be executed in that short time frame they should generally

[121:01] be well defined specific without the need for additional planning or technical assistance we don't exactly know when that cycle or like what that cycle will be but we're thinking it'll be about every two years that we would release another um RFP announcement for it and again this will just depend on demand so the grant sizes of this will vary also but we want to make sure that we have enough resources to support both type 1 and type 2 grants and to be able to do this on a cyclical basis we don't believe that these Awards will exceed two million dollars but for anything larger than a million we will require um just a generally greater requirements that we will discuss in a little bit here so general information on these type 2 again we don't want that bar to be too high for organizations to apply but since these are focused on more of an eminent investment there will be more

[122:00] information requested on these applications so in addition to some of those Basics we'll also want some simple financial statements so that we can understand the financial position of the organization and their ability to execute on the proposed investment our evaluation criteria will look similar a few extra things that will be related to the organization's ability to execute within a reasonable time frame we'll also consider the number of organizations that are in a type 2 bracket who are competing against each other for matching dollars or Capital campaigns in similar areas and then this is just important to reinforce what we talked about with those type 1 organizations is that they will be prioritized for type 2 Capital funding in the future um and that some of these criteria might be waived after going through the process and being recommended for capital investment so talking about those larger Awards um will come a greater amount of

[123:01] scrutiny so we want to make sure that their on hand resources are adequate to support an initial project Planning and Development the city funding should generally be one of the last Investments within that Capital stack especially for larger projects that the city is essentially we want to be the last piece that's able to come in and and make that project move forward as opposed to being the base funding where you know there's years of planning in order to raise funds before that project can be executed we want to make sure there's a coherent funding strategy so if one of the last pieces is the city dollars and you need to raise like let's say a million dollars we want to see that funding strategy within their application and lastly we want to make sure that there's a commitment to any matching dollars in a shorter period of time uh for a type 2 timeline we're looking at a shorter period of time so we're optimistic that we can release a funding Opportunity by the end of July applications will be due by

[124:01] mid-september and then ideally we're making Awards in October again these are targets and we will definitely be making sure to advertise these dates once we have them finalized and I'll go ahead and pass it back to Mark and he's going to talk about additional program information thank you thank you thank you Tony all right a few last pieces and then we'll open it up for questions uh so uh Tony alluded to how we will evaluate uh Grant applications our plan is to establish a grant Review Committee that will be comprised of City staff our third party technical assistance partner and then we'll be seeking some outside assistance to fill out that group to make sure that it's balanced including an external participant with direct nonprofit management experience obviously somebody that's not applying for uh Grant funds but could help us from that side of things and then we do plan to engage with Community connectors and residents or Outreach to our broader Community

[125:01] Connector Network to see if there is at least one participant that could help us evaluate Grant applications this Review Committee is responsible for making final funding award determinations again this is something we discussed back in October to help address some of the things that we have heard in feedback from last a few CCS processes uh in in helping with a smoother final award process and um just to say out loud that we will be certainly over communicating those Awards to community and to council at the proper time probably staggered a little bit depending on if it's a type 1 or type two program evaluation is really important again we touched on this back in October but since we're doing something different we want to make sure that we're evaluating this continuously and making changes whenever it looks like we're not meeting our goals so first piece of that is establishing what our goals are and how we intend to measure that measurement piece being in

[126:02] alignment with our racial Equity instrument is really important meaning that we will be looking at to the extent possible where we are seeing benefit and burden across all of the Investments we've made in type 1 and type 2 grants and if there's any opportunity to make tweaks to the program we will do so that'll be a part of the report and recommendations that we will bring back to council at the right time to evaluate how type 1 and type 2 grants went the first time around and lastly we'd love to be able to do this in-house what we think some third-party assistance will be necessary we have included that in the RFP for technical assistance that partner could help us potentially there's also potential for an academic partner to help us with the evaluation so we're looking at some options there and then the last piece are type 3 grants so again we're not focused on um uh criteria for Grant three we're not um officially opening um applications for type three but type 3 grants were

[127:02] specifically aimed at feasibility studies related to Concepts that might be in partnership with the city uh related to a specific type of use so the feasibility is really about does this Gap exist in the community and if so how might we go about addressing that Gap in in service specifically related to more of a community Gathering space so um essentially what we're highlighting here is that we're leaving the door open and so if there is uh some type of interesting or emerging opportunity that comes out of applications uh or comes out of other conversations uh that we have the ability to tap into this type three um it could lead us down to a path on interesting financing models maybe it's not just City dollars maybe there's there's other City resources maybe there's partnership maybe there's establishing some type of other trust or other Financial Arrangement that leverages City dollars so we think

[128:03] by by leaving the store cracked if you will we can respond a little bit more nimbly for emerging opportunities that come into this space so stay tuned on that I think the application process for type 1 and 2 will help inform what might be possible within this realm and we'll make sure to hold back an adequate amount of research resources to help support type threes that may emerge through our process and with that we are done with our presentation and happy to invite questions thank you so much I imagine we have some more questions here um let's see Bob it looks like you're first of all Tony welcome to the city um you you found a great place to work and I hope you're happy with us um it's always great having that handyman money um the uh question for for Tony Amar

[129:01] Mark um what um I know that we structured this with with an ability for the city to borrow against future tax collections so that we wouldn't have to uh pay as we go that we could we could borrow money and then repay with tax collection so we wouldn't have to wait for all the collections to happen and I know that you said that uh for the up to 10 portion uh that would would result in about a million and a half dollars a year or about twenty one 22 million dollars over the course of the life of the tax do you guys have a kind of a preliminary estimate of how how much you might disperse in um maybe this year or next year for type 1 and type two I recognize the fact also that we've collected this tax now for a year and a half so we've got a little bit of money in the kitty but are you in a front end load this or is this gonna be kind of limited to roughly a million and a half dollars a year over the next 15 years yeah thanks for the question Bob but it's a good one um what we plan to do is let demand Drive how we end up structuring the

[130:00] financing um you know obviously if we're up against our full 10 allotment that would be a conversation we would have with Council but let's say we're above that million and a half threshold annually especially within this first cycle given that there's there's probably some pent-up demand for the support we do intend to tap into our ccrs fund as a whole knowing that our our limit is that 10 over the life of the tax not just the 10 annually so you're right we do have some saved up we have about 2.6 2.7 million dollars appropriated for 2023 for the program if we do need additional dollars we'll plan to look at the adjustment to base in November December to help supplement but we have adequate appropriation within ccrs fund to support that for this year and early in the next year um will be budgeting appropriately for the 2024 budget as well great thanks Mark

[131:02] thank you Bob Matt yeah my question kind of I guess naturally Falls Bob's um and I know that type 2 has that sort of limit and not wanting to exceed the 2 million and three and type three is there to kind of be the catch-all for everything else but but my question really centers around those irresistibly large projects that that I you know think that actually I'm pretty sure are out there to be frank and I would just hate for us to be capping off opportunity where someone says look five million dollars from the city and we've got you know a state leading Performing Arts Complex right I mean something like that where you go oh we really can't say no but then have we maybe capped ourselves off based on this so that's where I just I want to know that there's flexibility that if just something that is irresistible that just really strikes the community as a must-have that we have the ability that this can meet that at any sort of magnitude within reason and not really just sort

[132:00] of capped it too so I I just want to know that there's an ability for those people to feel that they could submit a proposal and could look for us to creatively invest in those things um and not be sort of capped off so that's really kind of where my question centers is how big can we go and let the community know that that's available whether we say yes or no is kind of irrelevant yeah thanks Matt um also a good question I we talked a little bit about this in October uh which is why we didn't um come forward with a hard cap so uh to your point we do want to invite all proposals we do want to understand what the demand is uh for grant funding um so our threshold of 2 million was just to to estimate that if we wanted to preserve a few cycles of of these grants over the 15 years at some point we we do have to think about what our maximum award is um is it two is it three is it fours I you know I don't know until we see the

[133:01] full Grant applications come in uh I think it's fair to say that if we issued a significant Grant let's say five to ten million dollars at some point there are trade-offs to that and how far we can extend the tax dollars so that's why we're trying to put some language in there around some parameters but leave the door open that certainly if demand is saying you know we only have five organizations that are in type one we have a couple smaller capital projects and there's this this larger one that we could leave the door open and consider that through the process foreign thank you does anybody else have questions I've got a few but want to make sure everyone else can get them in okay I'll ask my questions um so you talked a little bit Mark about the collaborative aspect of the type 1 grants and you know hoping to kind of cultivate some collaborations and things is there an opportunity for groups that might need um

[134:00] to or maybe open to cooling their type 1 resources to collaborate at that stage of the technical assistance or are you thinking more that people will meet each other in the type one phase and collaborations will kind of grow from there so that they would be collaborating on larger kind of capital grants yes good question uh I think it will be interesting to see who ultimately applies um that'll be a driver and where we might have partnership opportunities I think our hope is to create a space where those synergies those Partnerships could develop uh an example that we talked about during our focus groups with some of the nonprofit organizations were what if three or four of us want to partner on a particular space maybe we're all renting a space now and we we want to own a building I think that is a really exciting opportunity that could come out of the type one and then the focus of

[135:00] the technical assistance is with that group of organizations that are interested in that in getting them ready for that type of investment and you can imagine all the lead up to that between um organizational development and financial planning and eventually a real estate transaction which again the city would be there to support as well but um I I think that we hope would be a nice space for that to happen it'll depend on the organizations that end up applying and where they're at in their Journey but I think that would be a really interesting outcome yeah I completely agree um so people wouldn't necessarily uh join on a touch collaborative relationships those who are successful with their type 1 applications that might then lead to collaborations later yes and I I think it's also important to note here that um we'll need to do Outreach directly to organizations uh before the application um closes because I think it's easier to

[136:01] explain than it is to write on a sheet of paper as we've learned so we'll be doing that Outreach working with our communication engagement folks and our community connectors the organizations that we've already worked with to help support that Outreach prior to to the closing of that type one opportunity thank you um and then my next question this is sort of a few questions together but I think you'll understand the flavor of what I'm trying to get at can nonprofits have addresses that are outside of Boulder like in the mountain communities or elsewhere in Boulder County if they're doing most of their work in Boulder and if so do you just sort of have a percentage in mind or will there be one as to how much of their programming needs to be bolder based to qualify for one of these grants and what percentage of participants need to be based in Boulder that type of thing it's a good question uh we we struggled with that a bit and um coming up with a final answer so similar to the way I answered Matt's

[137:00] question was that we've left the door open certainly to consider organizations that don't have a physical a current physical address in Boulder I think that's with several caveats one is that we want to make sure that this is supporting organizations that serve Boulder residents that's in the ballot language and two I think it is important given it's an infrastructure tax that it's supporting Boulder infrastructure and so we have talked about non-profit the non-profit Network being infrastructure in and of itself I think that's an important Point um I think we would look at organizations that want to establish a physical presence in Boulder as kind of that first priority that would be underneath those organizations that already do have a physical presence that want to stay and serve older residents and so again we'll let that demand help with that calculate us and see what types of organizations ultimately end up applying but I do think if we get in the realm where we have too many that don't

[138:00] already have a presence a physical presence and servable to Residence and we might get kind of in the crosshairs of what voter intent was thank you just a couple more these are all sort of related to some of the equity considerations um that that we'll be looking at using the racial Equity instrument and things like that are we going to be looking at things like diversity and employees as well as in program participants and programming that's a good question we hadn't contemplated that specifically again we were trying to make the application process a low bar however some of the the back and forth with organizations through the um through the application process could invite some of those questions I think our initial Focus was on Who Who Are You serving in the community but that that doesn't prevent us necessarily for for asking for some more specifics from the organizations themselves thank you and then just one last question thanks for

[139:01] indulging me colleagues is the application going to be available in other languages than English and if not is can any of the technical assistants be used to help facilitate translation if anybody would need it uh we can certainly uh do that with the applications in terms of having multiple languages available we haven't picked our medium um yet but uh that is a consideration and making sure that this is accessible as one of our top goals uh and uh as we hope to close out the RFP process for technical assistance in the next few weeks that is certainly a question we will ask is the ability to help some of that great thank you does anybody have any other questions before we move to feedback all right um let's offer staff some feedback I don't think there was a general consensus question you're asking for just some feedback so um anybody would want to jump off with feedback

[140:09] Aaron nobody else's Champion I think you're on the right track you know you've come to us several times on this matter and uh in previous iterations we've given some feedback about maybe shifting in some different directions a little bit and I think you've been very responsive to that and I think you've got a great set of types and criteria and I'm looking forward to seeing this program get out in the community and benefits some of our non-profits thank you thanks Aaron Bob yeah I agree with Aaron I think I think you guys are doing a great job this is probably the third or fourth time we've touched this and and we've narrowed in and you're obviously paying attention to what we have to say and listening to us I really um adding to what Aaron said I really really like the fact that you guys have built in a lot of flexibility here flexibility between types one two and three flexibility on the geography question was just asked even flexibility on how much we're going to allocate per year we're not limiting ourselves to the amount we collect in good years we may

[141:01] front end load some stuff and there may be some years where we just don't see a lot of good applications so thank you for being Nimble and flexible and obviously we'll test this over the next two to three years and adjust any areas that are not quite working thanks a lot thanks Bob and Bob you basically captured everything that I wanted to say just a giant thank you for the flexibility um I I love the creativity and the enthusiasm that is sort of coming forward with those process and just trying some new things and being open to seeing what happens and making adjustments as we go I think it's a really wonderful approach um I think it's the more Equitable approach and I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens with all this any other comments all right thank you everyone um I think we are all good you have what you need from us Mark we do appreciate your time wonderful thanks everyone

[142:01] um does anybody else have anything they want to add on otherwise we can have an extra 16 minutes in our evening all right let's do it then with no other items on tonight's agenda I will close this meeting at 8 14 pm [Music] thank you [Music]