March 11, 2026 — Design Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] Another project. Jeez. Right, and I have begun recording, sorry, I was, okay. So, we'll do the… we'll do a roll call then, I'll just go through that again. So, Rory Billow, Dab, Vice Chair, just chairing today in honor of Brendan's recusal. Harry Ingham Dabb. Steven, you wanna go? Yeah, Steven Eckert with Dab. And Brenda Nash on… for the… on the record. quit that. And Matthew? Matthew Schechnyder, Dad. Great. We have Quorum, that's good. Right? You get a little city action introduction here, with all these wonderful faces and black screens.

[1:00] Yes, my name's Amelia Harvey, I'm the DAB Board Secretary. I'm Kalani Pahoa, I'm the board liaison. I'm Shannon Moeller, I'm a city planner on this project tonight. And we've got Laura joining from playing board. As well. Not sure if she's there or not. There she is. Nice. Hey, happy to be sitting in for Mark McIntyre from Planning Board tonight. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thank you. Alright, we're gonna roll into the rules of decorum. I think, Amelia, this is your court, correct? Yeah, I'll take the mic. So, thanks everyone for joining us tonight. We have a few, rules of decorum for public participation at city meetings. I'm going to read through these, and I have a few instructions for the meeting tonight on Zoom. The city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive, meaningful, and inclusive civic conversations. This vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members, staff, and board and commission members, as well as democracy for people of all ages, identities, lived experiences, and political perspectives.

[2:16] For more information about this vision and the community engagement processes, you can visit our website. The following are examples of rules of decorum found in the Boulder Revised Code and other guidelines that support this vision. These will be upheld during this meeting. All remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business. No participant should make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person. Obscenity, racial epithets, and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited. Participants are required to identify themselves using the name they are commonly known by, and individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online. Currently, only audio testimony is permitted online.

[3:04] So there will be a couple different opportunities for public participation at this meeting. The chat is disabled in the webinar format, but when we do indicate it's time for participation, you're going to use the raise hand feature to indicate that you'd like to speak. If your, Zoom account doesn't currently display your full name, please enter it into the Q&A if you know that you're going to want to speak, and I can change your name, in Zoom so that you can be allowed to speak. And then when it is your turn, we will unmute your microphone, and then you're gonna have 3 minutes to speak. And there will be a timer that will be displayed that you can see how long you have. To find the raise hand feature, you can hover your mouse over the bottom section of your screen to show the control panel. You can see it here. We could also press Alt-Y if you're on a PC, Option-Y if you're on a Mac, and I don't think we have anyone joining us from the phone tonight.

[4:05] But it would be star 9 if you're on the phone. And here's a few other screenshots of where you'll find it. You can also see it in the reactions panel. A few other tips. There's a couple different portions of the meeting tonight that are going to be timed. We do try to stay on track. So, there are going to be different screens that you can see. If you look at the very top of your Zoom window, you will see different tabs to see different views. You can see the gallery of panelists, you can see, if anyone's sharing a screen, you'll see it there. The slideshow will be up, for the remainder of the meeting, just so everyone can keep track of where we're at. And when the meeting is timed, you're gonna see a timer in the corner of my screen on this side, and I think it displays a sound, too, when the timer runs up. So, that's my spiel, and we'll move on to the approval of the minutes.

[5:07] We didn't see any feedback on meeting minutes, so does somebody on the board want to make a motion to approve? Yeah, I move to approve the minutes. Do we have a second? I second. All in favor? Bye. Alright, minutes have been approved. We will now be moving on to the public participation. Of tonight's agenda. Yeah, so… only public participants. Yes, if anyone wants to speak, use your raise hand. I'm not seeing anyone at this time.

[6:09] Okay. Not seeing any raised hands, so I think we can move forward. Wonderful. Okay, so we're moving on to our discussion topic. the project at 2801J Road. We've allocated an hour and 15 minutes here. I think we will be starting with a project introduction from the case manager, Shannon Moeller. And, afterwards, I think we'll have a… applicant presentation, where you guys, we want… we really encourage you to limit that to 10 minutes. It can just become… it'll chew into the feedback time otherwise. Then we'll have some questions for you guys that'll just be clarifying questions.

[7:03] After which, we'll open it up for public comment. Anybody who's raising their hand or joining for public comment. We'll have 3 minutes each, and I believe they can pool those. Is that correct, Amelia? If someone wanted to pool multiple 3 minutes among multiple participants? Or a maximum of 10 minutes. For a maximum of 10 minutes, which is not a variable of 3, so that's interesting, but… And then, we'll have our board discussion and recommendations. and summaries that go along. We've broken down the discussion topics into two sort of larger groups, one of which has two components, so there's really three items that we'll be focused on tonight, outside of broader discussion, pending time available. I think with that, we can move into… Shannon, if you want to take the floor here and give us a project overview.

[8:03] Alright, great. Thank you so much. So, I'll just quickly introduce the project before turning it over to the applicant team. So, I'm Shannon Moeller with the City of Boulder Planning Department. So as you know, tonight we're looking at, the project at 2801J. This project is a proposal to create a new residential neighborhood with 82 attached homes, including market rate and middle-income, permanently affordable homes. So this is being reviewed under the site review criteria. It's here at DAB tonight because it was referred by City Council during an earlier process at the concept plan review phase. So as Rory mentioned, we do have, slides for the different, topics of discussion and for the City Council referral. So that's it for me, so I'm happy to turn it over to our applicant team. We do have Michael Noda with Neo Studio, who can take it away with the applicant presentation.

[9:02] They're moved and promoted to panelist, so they're… Loading up right now. Great, can you hear us? Yes. I can hear you. Perfect. Alright, I'm gonna share. our presentation. So I'm Michael Nota with Neo Studio. I think Margaret is the… I don't know if Margaret is on. But Margaret is our developer, and then Lucy… is, a new employee also. So, to start off, can you guys see my screen? I think you guys said yes. Yup. you could see that this is a perspective of our J Road project. I think you probably got up a little collateral. So, right now, it's on the corner of Jay Road and 28th Street. It's a 4.6-acre site. It was annexed in 2025. The current zoning is RMX2, which,

[10:08] in terms of the requirement of the unit types, only 50% of the units, or no more than 50% of the units can be of a certain type. So you could have a duplex, a threeplex, a fourplex. But a duplex can't be more than 50% of the… of the units. I think we have 28… buildings. As Shannon said, we have 82 for-sale homes, 33 of them are permanently restricted middle-income units. The other 49 homes will be kind of the missing middle-income housing. It's a combination of two- and three bed… two-story units, and two- and 3- and 4-bedroom units. As part of the annexation agreement, and I'm going to quickly go over this, this is the north property line, south property line, east and west.

[11:04] Jay Road is here. Toward the east and partial north, as per the annexation agreement, we were required to have pitched roofs with buildings no higher than two stories. The other requests from, Town staff was along J Road. could we have some, I guess we'll call it transitional housing that is more urban and fill? So you could see, the corner of J and 28th, we have a low slope roof, but it's a more modern appearance, and I know I skipped in front of me. The site plan, again, this is kind of showing that the red is a vehicular circulation, so again, 28th Street. J Road. This is our new access point we call Road A.

[12:01] And the one thing that we… We, during the annexation process, I believe, is that the city requested a 30-foot easement. to create a collector here. So, immediately, we lost 30 feet. Off our property, on the east property line, and then on the west. We have a multi-access easement for future multi-use path. So that's what we're showing here. So again. The existing neighborhood to the east, two-story sloped roofs. the existing neighborhood to the north. The first four buildings have a sloped roof. In terms of the overall layout, and this is very, very similar to what was approved during the concept design and annexation, in terms of both vehicular and pedestrian circulation. and including the open space concepts. So, you could see, running east to west, Connecting, the future

[13:06] Multi-use path, And all of the units, both Permanently restricted middle income, which is buildings 1, 2, 3, and 4. 5 and 6, 33 units. And the rest of the for-sale products is we have an open space Circular, or, kind of a park, linear park running through, running east to west. With… Two larger play areas. Here, off to the west, and one in the middle, for all of our residents. And then off… To the south, we have a green space, again, all connected via via walks. And then we also have, for the residents, a community garden. And I'm gonna go back here real quick.

[14:01] You could see Community Garden, open green lawn space. Excuse me? and our… Linear open space with our parks are all connected via sidewalks. That's kind of the planning aspects of it. Let me make sure I went over that. Central open space, yep, perfect. Oh, the one other thing is, what's really wonderful to create neighborhoods is we have parallel parking. For all guests and residents, and we, you know, have some parking, but we spread out all the parking throughout the project. So we don't have one large parking lot for the entire development. We've dispersed the parking throughout the project For use, and again, to not… to create a very nice… or not to create a sea of asphalt for parking.

[15:05] You can see some renderings again. We've already looked at the overall bird's eye. Again, the western edge, the northern edge. This is a perspective from Jay Road, again, looking at the more urban concepts. So you could see that it's a little more contemporary. And then looking down here, We actually created another fourplex, Kind of to break up… the gabled roof forms and the shed dormers. So, again, this road, really, the linear road connects the two, or the styles of architecture, the contemporary or urban-style architectures. Shown in this particular rendering. This is Building 7 through 10, which are these buildings right here. You could see, gables and hips and two-story forms, adjacent to the existing neighbors.

[16:02] You could see the future pathway here. Facing west. And then this rendering is basically showing how we Broke up a duplex with smaller gable forms and recesses and porches. And one thing that we didn't mention is Each one of these units has, kind of. A fenced-in personal open space For dogs and, open porches. But we tried very hard. To have personal fenced-in either front or rear yards for each one of these units. This is buildings 1 and 2 facing east. These are two stories of our restricted… middle-income units. Again, this is facing east toward our next-door neighbors.

[17:03] Each one of our entrance porches is kind of… We've created a gable roof form. Change the materials. Not showing it very well, but we've created a front door with a small front porch and a little fenced-in area to, again, create Private open space for each one of the units. One thing that all 82 units has a single or double garage. So every unit has A vehicular garage and storage for trash and for bicycles. And these images are basically site sections. Again, this is buildings 3, 4, 5, and 6. 3-story, restricted units. And what we try to do here with the architecture and the colors.

[18:01] Is to use vertical elements, and this time, instead of gables, we used a shed element. To… to, again, have complementary architecture But still provide, individual entrances with, again, fenced porches. And use both materials, changes of materials, and bays to, one. Show the entrances, and two, I don't want to say break down the massing, because it's only 3 stories, but to show that we have a base A middle, and then a sloped roof. You could see the first floor has a minimum of 60% glazing per the, Requirements of the code? Again, another slide. This basically shows a view looking west.

[19:02] Down our open space, and you could see one of our little park at parks with some play areas. So we do have two areas, again, with play areas, and then we have a larger open space For grasses for kicking soccers and playing ball. Oh, Michael, that's… that's 10 minutes right there. If there's any other, sort of, final thoughts, I think we would allow you to… I'm sorry, I veered off, but no, Margaret, no. I think my final thought is… Lastly, I'm going to go to sheet, is the two things I want to say is that the, more modern, urban feel are both on Jay Road. And then on the middle, between… Between… here it is.

[20:01] Yeah, so you could see on the north property line, we created another more transitional building that's a little more urban between two-story gables and three-story gables. Got it. Thank you. Amelia, is your… That's it. Thank you for that. Amelia's screen, can we… can you scroll through your slides there so I can keep pace with… Our allocations. Sorry, I was muted. Yeah, if you… can you see my screen if you go to the… to the. Yeah, I can see it on the other tab. Yeah. we're on the… I just see the 2801, the cover sheet, the J Road. Yeah, so we just finished with the applicant presentation, so this would be the time for board general clarifying questions. Oh, there we go, okay. Okay, does the board have any general clarifying questions? I do, southeast corner, is that detention pond?

[21:03] Yes. Yes. Okay. Great. Not great, but great. And I'm just, I'm trying to promote Lucy so she can show the model, but, Lucy, if you accept the promotion? That would be helpful. Let's see a promote to panelist. Yeah, and this is Matthew. I have a question on the, the new right-of-way. Easement of the 30-foot right-of-way on the east side runs north to south. That joins to some existing residential lots further back and northeast of the site, is that correct? Yeah, it looks like it's just a couple of… maybe 4 or 5 homes up there, 6. And, just because I don't have the site plan in front of me, some of the units face… face east of the last row of

[22:00] units on the east face that right-of-way? And if so, do they have a sort of detached sidewalk? Relationship to that new right-of-way. Yes, can I grab the screen real quick to show that? Yep. So, east is to the right. You could see these are our two stories. This is our Road A. This is the existing neighborhood to the east. There is a detached sidewalk. I'm sorry, that's not showing for the public. There we go. There we go. Okay, can you see it now? Yeah. North is up east, so buildings 1 and 2. We do have a detached sidewalk with parallel parking and our new Road A. Okay, thank you. Yeah. I just wanted to understand that interface there.

[23:01] Yeah, I'm sort of with you, Matthew. So, this road A, is it a widening of the existing dirt road that accesses the residential homes or properties to the north, or is it independent of and fenced off from? You know, Rory, that's a… because we're calling this a collector, it… because the town of Boulder wants it as a collector, it is… We dedicated a 30-foot easement as part of it, so there will be… I don't believe there's going to be a barrier between here. In the future. Coach Shannon, is the intention that they're gonna widen that road, and that all those… to a typical 60-foot right-of-way, that's where I'm going with this, is this… 30-foot right-of-way, is this half of a right-of-way for a future expansion? #Margaret Freund, Applicant: Yes. Okay. Okay. Yep. Because 30 feet does not seem wide enough for… two lanes of traffic. #Margaret Freund, Applicant: It's, it's a dedicated right-of-way. Okay, thank you. I just want to understand, really, what that… how… what, technically, how that was gonna be laid out.

[24:06] #Margaret Freund, Applicant: And it does have a detached sidewalk, tree lawn. Okay. I got a… Rory, I got another clarifying question, and it could be… It's probably a Shannon question. Just trying to understand the annexation agreement, and the detention pond, you guys are trying to create an urban condition here, so it's funny that you have requiring urban… condition along… Jay Road and the architecture, but yet. there's a detention pond on Jay Road, and what… how, why, and how the city. Yeah, I think that was… Because we see this a bunch of… I've seen this all over, and it's really, like… kind of weird. We're trying to create an urban condition. I mean, there's not a whole lot of detention ponds in urban conditions on the

[25:03] Principal Street, so I'm… Just trying to understand that. So, yeah, that… Just to correct the understanding there, the annexation agreement doesn't, relate to either the detention pond or the design of the units along the southern edge there. So the, the site review criteria, has criteria that's related to areas of the city where it's transitioning From areas of the county into the city, and it has a site review criteria related to projects that are on a major road. So J and 28th Street are considered a major road, and it's also considered a transition point into the city from the county. So that's why the site review criteria is looking for those buildings to create more of an urban edge there. Okay. The detention pond, is located in that area based on, where it can be physically located due to the engineering constraints on the site, so…

[26:07] probably grading at some point, right? It is grading, and… and all of our storm water is going to go off to the east, and so it's… this is the low portion of the site, and… I can see it. I'm on Google Earth, I can see it. Yeah, I… I just… we gotta stop doing this as a city. You know, I know this is… So, Steven, just real quick. But this… This is important because this is an urban design condition that we're looking at, and having a detention pond on the principal street, there's other ways to do this. It's already got… this ship already sailed, so I just want to bring that up. We're in the asking the applicant clarifying question phase, but then we can open during our review commentary phase, so please… Right? I will be cracking the whip tonight, sir. I had a quick question. The thinking behind having both the alleys and the roads between the buildings is that

[27:05] Could you just expand on why you've got that? Is that a requirement? It… it… it… well, it… I don't want to say it's a hard requirement, But the… The guideline was… To really have the front entrances face the public realm, right? To have a front porch facing the public realm, Which is, you know, Most of our units, if all our front porches face the public realm, then we created alleys so that there was no conflict between garages and front porches. Only Building 7, this edge here, where, we have to… we… our front porches and our garages share the same facade. So what we try to do with the majority of the units is to create a alley. For garage access, And the front porches off of the streets.

[28:06] Again, so that is kind of the principle, and I'm glad you brought that up, that's a principal guideline of what we wanted to do here, is so that we could have a front Front yard, front porch, and most of the time we'll have a little fence around here, but that was so that there was no conflict. between the pedestrian and the vehicular movements in the front. And only along this road is where we couldn't get that done. And so, everywhere else is that we have a, private or a public walkway off of our front porches. Laura, you've been patient with your hand up, would you like to… I'm sorry? Laura has her hand up. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, no problem whatsoever. I'm very happy to defer to the board members if they have things they want to say or ask. I did want to ask about that collector street. My recollection, so I was part of the concept review for this at Planning Board.

[29:05] My recollection is that that dirt road off to the east there, that there was some controversy or unsettled questions around whether this project could have access to that. And, I was just wanting to ask Shannon how that was resolved. And if the intention is that this is going to be… this half collector is going to be combined with that street, is that a done deal, a sure thing? Would that happen if the property's to the east annex? Like, what's… what's the story there? Yeah, that's right. Your recollection is correct. So the property to the east is still in the county, it's not in the city, and so it's, we're not able to use that access road to serve this property, so that was What we determined through the annexation agreement was that this property would need to provide that 30 foot of right-of-way To provide access for this. So nothing will happen with the 30 feet to the east until or if those folks chose to annex into this city.

[30:08] Which could be never, or soon, or it's an unknown. So this… this 30-foot right-of-way is what will serve this project for the foreseeable future, unless that property annexes. That's right, yeah. Okay, thank you, and I have one other question, just again, to refresh my memory. I think there might have been a statement that was a little confusing to me. As I recall, the annexation agreement… so, first of all, concept review is not an approval, right? It's feedback. So there was no approved concept review, it was just feedback on the concept presented. And then with the annexation agreement, there was no site plan attached, which is a little bit unusual, but was done in this case. And this is the site review part of that. So the open space pattern, the size of the open space, the position of the open space, the access roads, none of that is spelled out in the annexation agreement, as I recall. Is that… is that correct?

[31:02] That's… yeah, that's exactly right, yep. So it's not like there's an approved plan that can't be changed. This is still part of reviewing the concept that's in front of us, the site review that's in front of us. Yeah, that's her. Okay, okay, thank you. Yeah, thanks for that, Laura, because that's sort of a better answer to my question of, is this a parallel dirt… is this parallel to the dirt road, or is it in combination to? And Matthew, to your point about a 60-foot right-of-way being more common. that's… I mean, maybe that's the intent, it sounds like, being set up for a future annexation, but there's no guarantee that that will happen, so I think, as far as the review's concerned, it's a dedicated 30-foot right-of-way for access for this site and through this site. Okay, any other clarifying questions from the board? No. Great. Let's move on to… public comment. Do we have any public participants looking to comment?

[32:08] And if you've joined us and you didn't hear the instructions at the beginning, just a reminder, if you want to speak, raise your hand. Okay, we have Lynn Siegel, I'm going to unmute you, and you will have 3 minutes. It's a lovely design, but… no. We don't need any more housing in Boulder. We can't Begin, even begin to touch The infrastructure, and the needs, and the financial Impacts of what we have. I mean, we're talking serious development here. It needs to stop. It's gotta stop. And if there's anything, I mean, these people have their land, they can do it by right. God forbid I'm… I'm working hard on the Boulder Valley Comp Plan to keep it shrunk down, because we do not need this density.

[33:08] The Colorado River Compact? Not… it's in limbo. The expenses? Alpine Balsam, $250 million, where's that coming from? Where's all the money coming from for the impact on the roads? I haven't got money for a transportation maintenance fee. I haven't got money for the library district, $350 a year. I'm glad for libraries, but we need to find the resources within our already existing funds. In the city. And we're making it worse with each one of these developments. right to left. I can start at one end of town and go to the next, because Laura knows, I'm at planning board all the time. I mean, I know every project that's going on.

[34:01] and Sundance, and CU South, it's gotta stop somewhere. These… these… in good faith, these guys are developing this, and they're… they're watching out, and you had good questions back and forth. But I don't approve of one more development in Boulder. This is the most outrageous growth surge this place has ever seen. My dad was here in 1949, and it was too big then, at probably 20,000. So… All I can say is think about the impacts Think about… the finances of gas prices going up, Iran war, you know, probably World War III. You know? And… Build, build, build. More, more, more. More people, more population, more impact. I'd love to have Great-great-grandkids, too. I've only got one grandkid.

[35:03] But… We've gotta stop. This is just… Not good. Please, think about it. I don't know what you can do, it's not back and forth. Unlike it really should be. you should be able to say, well, Lynn, we can't do anything. They have their development. We didn't provide them any subsidies or benefits. But, you know. Why can't it be a little back and forth? It can't. And that's the pitiful thing. Thank you, Lynn. Thanks, Anna. That is 3 minutes. Any other public participants? We don't see any. Can I see them? I don't… I don't think I can see any, can I? I… I don't think so. Kalani should be able to see them. I don't see any other hands raised. If anyone else wants to speak, raise your hand.

[36:02] Yeah, no one else, and the. I'm riding. No one else at this time. I feel like I've got a lot of respect for Brendan now. I feel like a pilot. There's just so many screens open, and chats, and timers, and altimeters, and Steven's over there running it. I'm about off-topic. Okay. Not off topic. Sorry. Wrong part of the agenda. Okay, that's true. So, we are heading into the board discussion and recommendations portion, where we have our allocated time. Perfect. This is so nice, guys. I really like this new format that we're using here. Okay. City Council referral, I think this just… we put a minute on this, just that… just to remind the board here that this concept plan… was referred to us by City Council.

[37:01] With… instruction to, quote, focus on providing feedback on a desirable development. So that's quite loose, but that is what it is. We move to the next… Slowed… Key issue. So, key issue number one, site design criteria. We've allocated 10 minutes here. Streets are designed to provide parking and void. Parking lots with rear garage access. That was the applicant's self-evaluation. And this is being partially satisfied. Just based on a handful of the units, and I think Michael pointed them out, where they are sharing front access and garage access. And there's some challenges, it looks like, on the site, just having to face outwards with doors and pedestrian access versus Vehicular access, so I think, why don't we go through our roll call here? I think, this evening, why don't we start with Steven?

[38:05] Great, you're gonna start with me. I mean, in terms of vehicular and Parking, and I mean, I think they've done a good job with alleys and… hierarchy of streets, I don't… I don't see any issue with that. You know, I do want to bring up the site detention. I don't know if that… because it is a site design criteria in my mind. And… Laura, I'd love to know… And you can answer this in a second, you know, in the initial concept review. We keep… I keep seeing this around Boulder, where we have, on Principal Street, site detention. And it's just something that we have to… Like, planning boards should be aware of this, and… you shouldn't be having, like, on Broadway, you know, we have site detention. It's ridiculous, and this is the same thing. Eventually.

[39:01] with Area 3 and everything that's going in here, this will be a, you know, it's going to be a major street, it already is, and so there's an opportunity for them to do units in that spot. Ian. I can make a recommendation, which is just basically flip the site's tension with the units to the north. And you can make that grading work. It's, you know, not that far off. And then we're filling in the urban condition on the street wall, which is important in Boulder. We need to… we are a city. And we need to… Have urban design that responds the way a city responds, not a suburban response. Which is having site detention everywhere, and one feeder street to the main Road. So, but in terms of parking and, vehicular circulation, I think it, you know, you guys have done a good job. Given the constraints you have. But Laura, I would like to know what…

[40:00] what Planning Board's role is in determining where site's tension is, and if you guys are thinking about this from an urban design perspective, and this is a perfect example of that. Rory, would you like me to answer that? Yeah, please, might as well. You know, I can't recall in my 4 years of being on Planning Board that that has ever come up of, Huh. having something to say about where the detention basins are located, we generally just trust that the engineering has been done and that they're in the proper place. But it's very interesting for me to hear the input from a design professional like yourself of why that might not be the most appropriate place, and whether it could be relocated. Well, I mean, do you see them in Brooklyn, or in Portland, or… no, right? You don't see site detention in the middle of a… street, right? They're internal, they're in vaults, there's other ways to do this, and a lot of it has to do with city engineering.

[41:04] Rules, but anyways, it's something that… Is on lots of projects. But I just want to bring it up, and I think there is a solution here, actually. Not very difficult. So, and I can talk about that later, I guess. I think that that would be a very helpful role for DAB to play, since you are the design professionals and the architects and, you know, people who understand these things. Because we… planning board mostly deals with, like, citywide planning issues and site design, but we don't get into, like, the grading and the architecture as much as you folks do. Right. Harriet, would you like to go next? Sure. I think there was just two… comments that I kind of wanted to make, maybe it's three. Firstly, I… I really like the use of having street parking rather than the parking lots. I agree, I think that's awesome. I still…

[42:03] struggle with the whole alley, road, alley, just in terms of how much it feels like there's more pavement than necessary. But more importantly. I struggle with that in terms of people flow when you think of the Type B units on the west side, where if you think of someone coming to visit, let's be honest, we're in America, they're going to drive there. They're gonna park somewhere on the street, and then they have to try and find their way around these buildings to the front porch, unless they're going through someone's garage. And I've been to units like this it's a pain. Like, it doesn't feel like you're going in the most, like, obvious way to enter someone's house. You don't have a really good, directional flow, you don't know where to go, and it's hard. So, that would be my main comment on this whole alley road kind of, flow. The other thing that… my final comment was, I… the way that the unit types are, I think you end up with slightly more parking available in front of the B-type units.

[43:06] if I'm right, compared to some of the, E-units, and I wondered, given that they're a higher density, and then you have less parking there, where there's a way to intermingle some of these units a little bit more to, A, encourage Perhaps some diversity between the different, building typology, so it feels more like a… like a neighborhood, but also so that the parking is more evenly balanced, because at the moment, it feels like on the west side, we have way less density and way more parking, and on the east side, we have a lot more density, and there is, somewhat less parking there. So just a thought, Those are my comments. Matthew. Yeah, I think, having looked at some of the key issues, I'll sort of table a couple of comments I have. that are consistent with what Harriet brought up.

[44:02] As it relates to entrances and visibility of entrances and access to the front entrance versus garages. For the street, parking lots, I mean, I just offered a general impression, is that there's just a lot going on in this site. And I think it is… Conceivably the most dense, Plan that you could provide? And still prioritize all of these individual parking garages and on-street parking. It really feels like there's not an inch to spare on the site. And that may… that may play well in reality when it's built. It may be cozy, it may be, have a nice density and feel to it. I don't doubt that, but, I just think one of my concerns is, as the design is finalized and moves forward through the next

[45:04] Phase of, review and approvals. I do think some… Respect has to be given to, the front yards, the virtual setbacks to sidewalks. If this… if something were to happen in the planning, and this got a lot more dense, or you had to sacrifice What little, sort of, private areas there are available. I think that would be a detriment. So, you know, I guess my general thought in summary is there's just a lot of vehicles… vehicular circulation here. It's really dominant. And it's redundant due to the alley loading and insistence on having, alley loading. That can be done the right way, and it can work well, and it can look good, but I don't think any shortcuts should be taken, as it… as it pertains to,

[46:03] Foot traffic circulation, pedestrian circulation. Thanks, Matthew. Yeah, I think when I looked at this. basically, I started at the west unit, exactly the ones that Harriet was talking about, where Your arrival from a car is… a garage door, and then depending on if you're visiting Unit 23 or 20… well, maybe not 23, because there's… I do appreciate that there's this sort of green public path that sort of bisects everything from east to west, and creates a north and south, and so there are… there is porosity from a pedestrian perspective to help balance some of this. Vehicular dominant circulation plan. But, you know, if you're visiting one of these 22, 21 units, depending on where you park, you know, it's a big bootleg to walk around. and try to find that front door, and I think I heard Michael presenting, saying something to the effect of that path that

[47:05] to me, is what is relied upon to access these front doors is a future item, so I think I'm confused if… how you even get to these front doors if that path is a future item. I would actually like if someone could respond to that question. I don't know if Michael or anybody on that team is able to speak right now. And, unmute, Michael. Or Margaret, they both have their hands up right now. Yeah. I'll let Margaret answer that, because… But you're right, I did say… #Margaret Freund, Applicant: for that. Go for it. #Margaret Freund, Applicant: So yeah, so, so right now, there's a… there's a… an easement for the multi-use path, but in the meantime, we're putting in a 5-foot sidewalk. #Margaret Freund, Applicant: And a,

[48:02] #Margaret Freund, Applicant: Landscaped area with benches to form a sort of linear courtyard, if you will, at the fronts of these homes. #Margaret Freund, Applicant: If you look at the site plan, you can see that there's a connector from the playground that's a paved pathway to that 5-foot sidewalk, and there are gates. So, it is true, if you pull up to one of these units in, 20 to 25, #Margaret Freund, Applicant: You would be… Coming through the gate to come? #Margaret Freund, Applicant: to the front door, if you didn't have someone meeting you. If you weren't coming by bicycle, or… #Margaret Freund, Applicant: whatever other, you know, rollerblades, however else you would come on a path. I do just want to point out that we lost 45 feet of width on the site to dedicated easements and right-of-way right out of the gate. That doesn't include #Margaret Freund, Applicant: An extra 2 feet here and there, where we, #Margaret Freund, Applicant: You know, for the detached tree lawn and some other things that were beyond the 30-foot right-of-way on the east.

[49:05] #Margaret Freund, Applicant: That we dedicated, and just to be clear, and respond to one other comment on the parking, we had to have a 30-foot minimum right-of-way to make these streets public. #Margaret Freund, Applicant: So there was a big desire to make them public because one of the issues in Holiday with a mixed-income neighborhood was just having the restricted housing owners fund their reserves. So in order to try to keep the costs low on the site. #Margaret Freund, Applicant: you know, we wanted to make the public… the streets public, and I believe the city initially wanted those public as well. So one of the constraints we faced, we lost a row of parking on the east. #Margaret Freund, Applicant: Because of that, we had these one-way streets with parking on either side. #Margaret Freund, Applicant: But we had to give some of that up, one for the detached tree lawns on the collector street. We tried to make that an attached tree lawn with woven-in parking, but it wasn't written a specific way in the annexation agreement, so we had to lose that parking.

[50:04] #Margaret Freund, Applicant: while I can agree it's not ideal, initially, in the very beginning with inclusionary housing, the agreement was, we can't do for sale housing here unless we get a certain level of density. It doesn't work. It doesn't… there is no project. It just doesn't… #Margaret Freund, Applicant: And you guys are architects, you know this. It just… without a certain number of units, it's not viable, so it… #Margaret Freund, Applicant: Those are some of the constraints, so yeah. Yep. #Margaret Freund, Applicant: We know that the, so the 5-foot sidewalk goes in day one. #Margaret Freund, Applicant: You have an easement big enough for a full multi-use path there, and you also get benches and landscaping and trees and so forth along that edge to enhance it as a sort of park-like environment for these front yards to face. It is, I agree, not, you know. Hey, Margaret, thanks for that additional commentary. We have to just sort of be brief in these question and responses, because we're moving through an agenda here that's got time allocation, and I'm… I'm blowing it right now.

[51:08] #Margaret Freund, Applicant: Understood. But we'll continue to prompt you as needed, but thank you for some of that additional color. I think… I mean, when I look at this, again, like, from that perspective, again, a developer-centric perspective. What we're hearing is, you know, how things have been taken away from the developer with… by easements, or with a property, and all of that is… this idea that something has been taken away is under the premise that you could have done any of it initially anyways. So I think, for me personally, it's… I realize there's a handful of widgets on this site plan, 4 or 5 different unit types, whatever it is. And in order to lay them out from east to west, north to south, with some dimensional standards and tolerances that are acceptable for other projects that you've done in the past. This is tight. Removing a row of units makes this less tight. Does it make the project infeasible financially? We aren't here to discuss that today, we're here to discuss the merits of the design.

[52:04] I think that goes back to Matthew's comment of just, every inch has been squeezed here, and I think you guys really are at the cusp, where these unit types are about to fail to function, both with access, open space, and being nice enough for sale marketable. at the density that you're at, given the size and shape of the site with its encumbrances. I… my… I guess, to sort of wrap up this particular criteria item. there's been provisions for units that have front doors and garage doors facing the same direction, the road. why, you know, why would you have chosen to do that in some locations, but not others? I guess I would argue, you know, it's a great idea to think your friends are all coming by bike, and that the Amazon guy's gonna deliver his package by walking through this beautiful tree lawn landscape, but I think to Harriet's point, the reality is we're in a generally car-centric. culture still, and this site plan is car-centric. So, you know, I guess I'm confused why we're not seeing more front doors share garage door elevations in order to just create pedestrian circulation from the obvious public right-of-ways.

[53:14] And I appreciate this idea of, like, turning out to the open space with the, quote, front doors, but I think it's illogical given this site, and that that would actually, on the west side, be much nicer to me, as a prospective buyer, as a backyard. where I don't have everybody who's walking home with their groceries or arriving on rollerblades, shall it be. going past my backyard. So, I think I'll leave that on there. Are we… Kalani, remind me, are we doing… we're not doing summaries per, or we're doing summaries at the end, right? We… we would appreciate summaries per, because that's what goes to Planning Board. Okay, I'm gonna… Hmm. So, let's see, summary… Of…

[54:01] Rory, just one quick… Yeah, please, Steven, yeah. Yeah, looking on… looking at your… the B unit, you know, it's kind of the ones in question that are… west, facing. It's tricky, because… You know, we don't want to have backyards facing 28th and Jay Road, right? But at the same time, you want a street condition inside. One thing you could look at, like you said. Is having combined garage and entry, secondary entry, and there is, on the sides, they have a window where you could replace it with a person door, and put, like, a little… even a little porch element on the corners of those units, and you could have an entry there. You know, someone could ring a doorbell, and they could come back like, through the garage, basically, and let them in. You know, it's not a perfect solution, but it would help, you know, rather than having to walk all the way around. You know, just a quick thought on that.

[55:01] Yeah, Laura's hand is up right now as well. Yeah, I will just say, I think it's very interesting that the… maybe best practices in site design and our site review criteria maybe aren't lining up on this particular point, because there is a site review criterion about entrances facing the public realm, where there is a defined public realm. Yeah. I could quote it for you, but I'd have to find it. Yeah, the trouble is… the Republic. the ground here, I think on the west side, and I don't want to belabor this, because the next two key issues deal with basically the same thing we're talking about now. So, Roy, maybe we could just summarize this, and then we're gonna… there's more to talk about relevant to the next two key issues. Yeah, I agree. I think… so, in summary… Gosh, you gotta… I really have so much appreciation for Brendan right now. This is why I've, over my years, never volunteered to be the chair. Okay, summary, so I think,

[56:03] In… well, I have our notes here. I mean, Steven, you talked about the detention pond location. I'm not sure how that gets summarized here, but I think we could just say, you know, comments regarding… Regarding the… Yeah, looking for… looking for… is there an alternate location? location. So, comments regarding the detention pond location along a… Public right-of-way and Primary Street. Correct, yeah. This… Could be relocated to a less prominent Location on the site. Then we had Ariel talking about the walk-around units. And I echo that, and I think Matt does… has made some comment about that, and is about to… is prepared to make it on the next criteria comments, so I think just, boop.

[57:00] A way to summarize this would be to say that the current unit Typologies have both Split, vehicle. and pedestrian… entrances. And… Some shared vehicle and pedestrian entrances. In particular, on the west And is it also… where else does this happen, where we have this garage only, facing the roads? Is it the southern units, too? Yeah, I think it's all… yeah, it's all those green… West and south. It is, but the southern units have a specific relationship to Jay Road, which… Right. There's a giant empty… empty prairie dog lot between. You know. between 28th and the West. Yeah. Right, right. That's why I'm tabling my comment. That's my main point is coming up, but I just… I think we shouldn't treat the row of south units and west units in conversation the same, because they're…

[58:09] Understood. Yeah, so I'm gonna say current unit typologies have both split vehicle and pedestrian entrances, and some shared vehicle and pedestrian entrances. The locations of which should be reviewed at the west edge, where the split entries Are challenged by the vehicular access. I think when Rory is just the fact that we've got the alley, the double alley and road stack, and in a site that constrained, it feels like there's a lot of roadway, and that maybe solving the door garage access might enable some removement of the pavement? And maybe give some more breathing room to the site? How about generally for a site that is as constrained as this design presents, the, redund… the potential redundancies

[59:06] Between roads and alley access. could be… Made more efficient, along with… V, combining… vehicle and pedestrian entry facades. How's that? Is that good? I think so. Alright. Yeah. Yep. On to the next criteria, please. Alright, 17 minutes, guys. It's actually 17 and a half that we get on this one, but we already blew through so much time, so good luck. Building and site design are consistent with the character established in any adopted plans or guidelines. I'm gonna let you all read all that. But basically, the applicant's evaluation is what I'm always interested in. All 82 units front a public sidewalk and or street. Each unit's garage is accessed via streets or alleys. The partially satisfied

[60:11] comment from staff, individual units generally front onto streets, some units along the western edge, which, to Matt's point, we're getting into. have been designed to front onto landscape and sidewalk and a public access easement. Some units at the north edge of the site do not have rear access to an alley, so both garages and front door space onto the public street. So, I think we'll run through our roll call here again. I think the one thing I just wanted to say before we… Steven, you jump in and we get through the roll, is, again, like, I appreciated Margaret's sort of backstory on these roads were sized large enough to become public roads. So, in a lot of ways, they are the public road. So the ability to face and front them, both with entrances, vehicular or pedestrian, I think that there's a little bit of a loophole there. So, you know, I don't know how that impacts y'all's thinking, but Steven, if you want to take the floor here.

[61:03] Yeah, can we go to the, it's in the third packet. I don't know what page it is. The B units. It's Paige… 25. Units. A5. A… A5. Yeah, this… which unit is… see, I'm confused. I'm looking at the site plans in Deb Part 2, the packet, and it's building numbers without unit types identified. I thought the B units are the ones that are… And I'm promoting Michael to, be able. Oh, yeah. that sheet up. Where are you guys seeing the ABC? Because I'm on Dab Packet Part 2, which is just building numbers, and. I was on 3, packet 3, it had… Because it has elevations and stuff, and then it… Got it. But they don't ever tie those to a site plan.

[62:00] those designations. Big… thought. Oh, maybe at the end they do, hmm. Anyway, so you're talking about the buildings on the north. Yes, is that… these are the B ones? Well, those are A's. B's are the ones to the west, and then there's B's in the middle. along roads C and E, This is a very… Which ones are 20, 21, 22? Those are the ones. B. Those are B. Those aren't. So I'm on sheet 21 of 31 in Packet Part 3, and that actually is the first time I've seen both numbers of buildings and letter designations on a single plan. Okay, if you zoom out so it has the floor plan. I think Michael's running the show over there. There you go. Yeah, there you go. Oh, this is Unit A. This is Unit A. These are the northern units. But you want Unit B?

[63:01] I want 21, 20, the Bs, yeah, I think it's the next… there we go. Is that… There we go. So yeah, it's the same discussion as how can you guys do something… let me see, I can… Can I… I can annotate, right? Yes? Okay. How do we do something with this rear slash front, right? And what I was suggesting. Is you have a window right here. In here, you could do a person door in lieu of a window. And look at more of a little corner condition. That might mitigate what you're… you know, the kind of issues that we have. That… because it's true, if you're in… Unit 20, you're walking, you know, all the way around to get to the quote-unquote front. And, you know, your friends will come over, you'll open the garage for them, or whatever, but… you know. I always think of it in terms of the pizza delivery, because I used to do that, and FedEx guy, like, where are they going? And they're gonna hate you. They're gonna walk, you know, 100 yards around to get to your unit. So I… yeah, exactly, like, something like that, and even, like, a little, you know, like, a little…

[64:18] Port, you know, covering element, and then someone could bring the doorbell, and you could go and answer that. Right? Anyways, that's just… but I think it's the same issue we were talking about before. You know, this is… Getting to that, you know, how… you really need two fronts. On those perimeter buildings, and how do you do it? I think is the question. Harriet, would you like to jump in? I mean, I don't have anything new to add, other than my comment, my counter to Stephen's suggestion, is if you're a visitor and there's two front doors, it's really hard to know which one to use. And we've all, you know… and how do you make it really clear? Because some people might not want you traipsing through their garage if you go to visit for the first time, so…

[65:07] Yeah, I've… what? Concerns about this, but I don't have a solution, I'm sorry. Yeah, no, I don't know, I think it's… again, if you think of, like, your friend versus the pizza delivery person versus… You know, and how that… That works. Yeah, or the fire department, or 911, or anybody else in an emergency, right? Like, I think that's part of this discussion, too. Yeah. Matthew… Yeah, hey, so, I think I'll probably be the most blunt about this, like, I just think it's weird on the west units to have the front doors facing a multi-mode path. It's weird today, it's weird in the future, It's weird, that… They're facing a field, which is, you know, marginally developable land between the lot and 28.

[66:05] Yeah. It doesn't make sense. I mean, these… this… Vehicle circulation is specifically designed to be city street, right? City right-of-way. And so, under no circumstances would we allow a house to be built with nothing but a garage facing a city street anywhere else in town. So, what I… I sort of see is kind of like the… Some of these units taking liberty with, oh, it's just, you know, it's urban, it's city, it's facing the street, it's engaged with the sidewalk, and some of the other units are like, I'll just turn my back on all that, and I'm gonna face, like, open space. So… just logically inconsistent, and I think that's why we're all a little confused and perplexed about how this is all working cohesively.

[67:02] So, to make the simple solution. is… I don't understand why these West units aren't facing the new street. Just like it's been solved on the north… some of the north units. where they face a street, there's a garage, and a front door. I mean, I know as a… As a residential designer, it's definitely less desirable to have your garage and your front door on the same face. It's challenging for many, many reasons. But I don't think… I don't think that difficulty is a good excuse for a lot of these units To just sort of turn their back on the new street. And put their butt, you know, their garage butted up to the sidewalk. And say, well. You'll… the front door of this faces a multi-mode path. I'll just go a little bit further. I don't think there's anywhere… we've reviewed projects in the past where some student housing has faced multi-mode paths.

[68:04] And we've… You know, public comment generated some resistance to that. Some of our own rationale generated some resistance to that, because Multimodal paths are… somewhat of security issues. They're not the most desirable things to face. It's not like they're facing a street which has some community common surveillance by nature of it being facing other front doors. So, I also don't think it's… necessarily desirable to have These expensive units having a front door and a path out to a multi-mode path. Oh, and Matthew, the other thing is that I just realized the front doors On the ground level. So not only do you walk around the unit, but you walk up a flight of stairs to get to the second floor. That enters in… that's your bedroom.

[69:00] Well, that's your front door. Yeah, but into what? That's not living space, you go into bedroom… Yeah, and I, yeah, I mean, you kind of. But an interior… so the stair is an interior snare, right? It's a walk-up. I guess so, yeah. It's all view-driven, guys. I mean, these are epic views, you can imagine. Yeah. these units, right? No, I… you know, none of that withstanding, and I will commend, like, I enjoy the variety, you know, I'm usually one not to enjoy a variety of materials and forms, but, like, this, I think you guys have handled Providing some variety and some, some visual, material themes are nice. But I… and I'm sorry I'm blunt about this, but I just… my takeaway, and I'll wrap it up here, is that I don't think… I think what's causing a lot of this, A lot of the illegibility of what's going on here is because, just at a very basic level.

[70:00] the relationship to those west units do not relate to the street. There is never going to be a street on the west side of those units. So, based on the city criteria, to have something relate to a street, it can't just stick its garage back into the street. Where… where a lot of the rest of the development is making some very, thoughtful… thoughtful measures, taking some thoughtful measures to address the new public right-of-way. And I don't think you can just ignore that on some of the units. Because it's more convenient, or, you know, it creates some different kind of unit type. Well, you get a two-car garage. I mean, this is why some people do tandem. parking in this situation. The other thing is you have… the one advantage you do have, Michael, is this is a duplex, so you don't have a middle constrained unit. One of the things, you know, a lot of site design that had, like.

[71:02] Facing south, so you could have north solar orientation. In these kinds of scenarios, you could do side entries. You know, so you… but you would need more space, right? You need to… but you could… that could be a way out of this box, if you literally had… because you have a duplex, you know, in the middle, you could have side entry… Top and bottom, and get yourself out of this box, but… Yeah, it's definitely. Oh, I'm sorry. I think about. I think… so I'm just gonna… in full support of Matthew's comments. I think it… and it ties back to, Matthew, your earlier comment about there's just not an inch to give on this site, and again, I understand Margaret's backstory as far as they've, you know, this sort of the site has been victimized by its easements and right-of-ways, but on the other hand, it's just… it is what it is. And we still need to provide good design. That's not an excuse to provide design that's not going to function well or look nice. So I think straight up, the reason why there's not entries on these is because these units are 19 and a half foot wide versus the ones on the north that are 25 foot wide. And those units, you guys have already shown us that you know how to fit a unit that has both the garage door and the entry. You just chose not to put them on the west, because those are the view-driven units that are going to sell for top dollar.

[72:21] put more of them in from a development perspective, which I totally understand and appreciate, but it's still got to work. And I think what you're hearing today from this board is we're not buying it. It doesn't work. So I think the Western units, in summary here, need to be redesigned to allow for pedestrian access to engage roadie. If I… can I just put that in the summary? Is that good for you guys? Yeah. Western units as designed do not work with Had a desk screening… Access facing… I think there… there's a… there's definitely a thoughtful solution that would…

[73:02] You know, not make these look like, when you're driving up 28, like, the back end of the houses, and still have a front. on the new street. I think there's a way to do it, and it's not probably that difficult from where you guys are. I think it's more desirable. I mean, again, I think. Yeah, exactly. is you lose unit counts, right? Like, to get a wider unit, because even… I appreciate your side-loaded entry, Steven, but even that is like a… You still need 20… you're gonna need more, like, 20 feet between it, you and. Yeah, so… but, to walk… to not have, like. a front door and this front porch and this access all sort of mucking up what could be my really nice backyard that has flat iron views. I think these units actually could be spectacular if you enter from the east and eventually arrive at public gathering space that has epic Western views in relationship to a yard. Okay, so I think that's a basic summary there, so let's go to the next key issue.

[74:07] Wherever practical, considering the scope of the project, parking areas are located behind buildings, or a setback further from the streetscape than the building facade. as far as the applicant self-evaluation, all residential units have a front entry porch fronting a public street or access easement. Residential units that have front doors and garage doors facing the public realm, where the front porch is emphasized. The partially satisfied comment, some units at the north edge of the site do not have rear access to an alley, so both garages and front doors face onto the public street. The design of the front entries is intended to bring the front door as close to the front of the property line as possible. I mean, this is just, like, episode 3 here, right? So… Yes. I will let you, Steven, kick it off. Yeah, I mean, I don't have anything else to say. I guess this one is a little confusing, is it saying…

[75:01] Now it's saying they… you know. Should we have them on the same… I don't know. I mean, it's the same discussion, I think. You know, really looking at You know, how the different users are going to enter these units, and where they're coming from. You know, making sure that that's satisfied. I mean, it's the same… sort of the same discussion that we've had. Yep. Harriet, anything new to add to this? No, I don't… I don't think so. Matthew. Anything new to add here? Matthew, did we lose you? I think what I would like to point out here, though, is just the challenge in sort of the contradictory nature that this design team has to look at this… at these criteria, right? And so I understand why they've arrived where they have. Because there's… and I think even… I don't know who jumped on, Laura jumped on and commented, you know, even, you know, based on some of the basic site design.

[76:07] Preferences of, you know, pushing outward-facing buildings that engage the public realm. you know, on paper, that all sounds great, but we're gonna run into some of these unique conditions, and this site is quite unique. The western edge is… not really a public realm. I mean, to Matthew's point, it's a triangle of… of Prairie Dog Reservoir, and… And then this whole idea of creating the public realm, because you guys are building all these roads that you're trying to get qualified, you've now sort of self… you can self-reference yourself. So I think… I think there should just be more clarity to the approach to, if you're gonna build all these roads and alleys. That we should… pick a scheme for how to access these units and be consistent throughout the neighborhood. And it seems like the scheme that's working is what you're doing on the northern units, which is sharing an entry for the pedestrian and the vehicle. And it's quite common all over town.

[77:06] all different eras of residential development since, you know, my house was built in the 60s track developments, my front door is on the same facade as the garage, and we have a cute little neighborhood that functions really nicely from both a pedestrian and vehicular circulation standpoint. So, I think, in summary. C.2 above. Is that… is that fair, Kalani? Can I do that? Yeah, you can bundle that. just one thing, Rory, that came up, too, realizing that the affordable units, you have townhomes, right? Internal, and so that, by definition, you're picking up space, and then on the perimeter, you've got the more expensive units, and they're duplexes, but they're only 10 feet, or whatever it is apart. And, you know, it's not lost on people that are buying these. I'm not sure that you couldn't… Go more of a town, you know, row house, put four together, And…

[78:03] free up the site a little bit and accomplish some of the things we've been talking about without losing value to these units. I mean, people… I mean, you can hear it all over, go down to Stapleton, people are like, these houses, why don't they just put them together? They're 10 feet apart, like, they're not… Fooling anyone. you know, it's kind of… kind of weird. And so there's a lot of that happening here. You know, an effort to make everything a duplex instead of… Row houses, like you have… On the affordable ones. So… That could help, too. Yeah, I think that's a reasonable suggestion. So, I think for summary, I'll say… Discussion has been similar to… Item number 2… General Board… MSensus… to… Thank you. address… pedestrian access… or western units from road east.

[79:12] Okay, are we making up time? I doubt it. Let's… Roll through to the next slide here. Summary recommendation. I think I got through that, so… So, yeah, we're actually good on time. Alright, let it stand, Kalani. For the record. Alright, so this does open up some discussion, right? We can… can we use this 17 minutes for general discussion? Because I appreciate that, you know, staff has directed our attention, particularly to these units and how they orient interior, exterior. I think, Steven, this is absolutely an appropriate time if you wanted to continue on the soapbox about the detention, but I think we captured it, and I have it in the notes, and I can. And I… Darren. I could show you real quick. And can I ask that, as you do this, if,

[80:01] If you see a chance to summarize any of, any recommendations that come out of this, Free skate discussion period. Yep. You do that? Yes, I will, I will certainly, yes, be keeping track of this best I can. Michael, I think you have control, right? If you could go to one of your site plans, that'd be awesome. I could do that. Awesome. maybe, like, Yeah, there you go. There we go. And then, kind of, Cool. Yeah, so… Alright. I think I can. So, like I said, it's, you know, it's… it is… it's not a pet peeve, it's really something that we're starting to see, like, on Broadway, like, the project that…

[81:01] Shiny Mountain did up on Broadway, you know, we got a huge urban condition, and the whole front is a detention pond, which kind of… you know, the whole idea of stoops and all that stuff goes away. And this is a little similar, and it's just something that I think we gotta get a handle on, and I mean, quite frankly, I would put it right here. and then fill in this with buildings. And yes, the grade's a little bit different here, but you could definitely make that work. And maybe you can even combine it in here with your garden court path, you know, and have… and make it an amenity. not just something that, you know, stuck on the corner. I understand why that happens, but just because I think it's important. And definitely, planning boards should be looking at this when they get projects, like. You know, where is inside detention? Can I jump in on there, and sort of. Yeah. echo this. One of the things that strikes me about this site, and I want to kind of build off what you're saying about this pond in particular, is how dense it is, and how… I really like that you have the green spaces and the playgrounds, but I don't know that they're…

[82:08] in the best locations, like the retention pond, to make it feel like there is a community space or a bit of breathing in and amongst all these buildings. Right. And so, if you could move the detention pond somewhere, then it does feel like you might get that. Likewise, the green space in the southwest corner that's… I feel like that's going to end up being a very underutilized space. It's right on the corner of two busy roads. No one's going to want to have their kids playing there, or have it, like, You know. line out there with a book, because there's going to be cars rushing past. So how do we… how do you use the site maybe a little more effectively with the playground and the retention pond that you have to have anyway, and this path, and that… spot down the bottom to be more efficient, and maybe you could squeeze another. unit in that bottom space. Right. Basically, like, a spine here.

[83:03] You know, that could start to line up. So that would be, you know, one thing I think. I'm with you, Steven. I sort of, you know, again, just trying to follow the order of our meeting here. Yeah. again, and I think even to some of these issues on the perimeter, where we're talking about clearly they're seeking a duplex sort of market buyer, whatever, we're running into… dimensional issues, to be able to put entrances along… pedestrian entrances alongside garage doors, and that's gonna be sort of a function of running down this whole west and south perimeter, and then we run into this… that's a big area we could come distribute all along the south and west to give everybody another 5-foot chunk, to be able to put a door on it and then locate that elsewhere, which will still come at the cost of a unit, but not necessarily a primary for market unit. So I actually am really in support of this. it begs the question that has the detention pond been located in the most strategic area, not from a civil perspective, like, the engineer's like, yep, here's a low spot, obviously we'll put the puddle here, but could there be a more creative solution? And I really appreciate

[84:07] what Steven and Harriet are saying, where it actually helped… like, you guys know it's a tight site. So, like, you took your one open area that's required programmatically, a detention space, and you put it on the periphery, where it could become a wonderful breathing space in the heart of this development that then, to Steven's point, makes that pedestrian path feel a little nicer, because it's got a big open space next to it. Makes those end units even better, because they're now not 5 or 8 or 10 feet from each other, they're 25 or 30 feet from each other. So I actually really think we should include this in the summary here, that the relocation of the detention pond should be considered to move it away from the perimeter and primary road slash public right-of-way frontage. It could be incorporated into other green spaces or pedestrian areas as an amenity of open space. within the development. Yeah, and then my other point was, if you started

[85:03] To take these, you got 6 of them here, if you started to combine these into a… fourplex. you could get a little more breathing space. But even that said, I mean. When you start getting 18 foot wide, 20-foot wide, these are 19.6, that's why people do tandem parking. Now, you know, people end up never parking both cars in there, it's not ideal, but with tandem parking, you could have an entry on either side. You could… you could rework that floor plan. you know, and make it work. And you'd only have one garage door, you know, on the end, which would be nice. So you can do an alcove. And have an entry. So, you know, I think really looking at that. You know, from a cost, and… market perspective, like I said, just in my experience, when you have 10 feet between buildings, nobody's… Yeah, once you learn…

[86:00] making any more money just because you're. Steven, what's your opinion, or… I'm curious the board's opinion. I'm looking at the perspectives in 3D. I mean, we normally are so focused on architectural character. Right. and massing and material use, and unfortunately, given just the nature of this review and the time allocated, we haven't had a lot of opportunity to comment on it, and I personally can't I'm just wrapping my head around, like, I… initial glimpse, I like the diversity of the unit types. I tend to think if they were intermixed a bit more, that it might read more like a neighborhood instead of, like, different developers picking off different plots within this, and each one of them bringing their own scheme to the table. I'm just fundamentally, like, I'm on Google Earth, I'm looking at the context. this idea that the west and south edge need to be an urban infill of, like, character makes zero sense to me. Like, they're… across the street to the west is a neighborhood, a single-family, like, low-density RL1 or something.

[87:00] Right. And to the south is, like… I'm assuming that's still county, I can't even tell, but, like, that's just… it's, like, big commercial and, like, farm. And then to the north and east, there is… the urban environment is about… two miles to the west of this site. Like, I don't understand why we're trying to now create this cute destination that's giving vibes of the stuff that we see off of Arapahoe, Pearl Street, Broadway, student housing, like, I personally do not think that the, quote, urban character out here is appropriate. Right, and that could be… I mean, it's hard, because as we get in the future, things are gonna change out here, for sure. But… Like, the whole west side of 28, you think, is gonna change? Well, I mean, once Area 3 and all that starts happening, I mean, we're all gonna be shocked in 20 years, I'm sure. But… You know, it's like…

[88:01] even Holiday, right, that felt dense when it was in is now not that dense relative to… Even Holliday feels like a single-family neighborhood. Right, yeah, exactly, right? Like, there's nothing in the region. Well, Holiday, in my… there's just… I could be talked about this, but, like, Holiday really is the closest comp to kind of what this is. Yeah. In density and scale, I mean, this is more dense. But Holiday is the geographic, sort of, closest comp, and in character, I think. to what we're looking at here, and to our point earlier, Holiday does a lot with the public right-of-way, right? I mean, it's… It creates a walkable public right-of-way in different ways. But it also has a lot more walk-in-to-unit shared court entrances. Rather than this, every… every unit gets a two-car, you know, gets a parking garage. It's a… it's a similar comp and a very different approach to the… the vehicular…

[89:10] Access to each unit. Right. Some units just don't have garages in Holiday, right? Yeah, and that's not good, and I mean, I agree, like, from a marketability, long-term market, like, we're… people are still gonna have cars in 10 years, okay? Like, 20 years. they're still gonna want a garage to put their ski gear. So, I'm… I'm not saying that… that… that, Holiday is the right… is… The right way, and this is the wrong way. But I'm just saying, in terms of, sort of, scale and density and massing, That's kind of the closest… comp that I can see where this would fit, as opposed to this being a purely, like, urban Housing product. Right? We're not… Yeah. We're not down at the transit village area. No. And we're closer… we're closer to rural zoning, in a way, rural lot zoning, than we are to urban lot zoning.

[90:07] Laura has her hand up. I'm curious, from a planning perspective, your comments, Laura, because I realize this is a function of this, like, interface zone from county to city. But, again, like, look at the context, physically, like. There's not. nothing urban about anything around here that I don't… unless they're gonna tear down entire neighborhoods over the next 20 years, which I don't see that happening. I was gonna ask Shannon. Shannon, if you're still with us, could you clarify the relationship of this property to Area 3? Yeah, Area 3 is located to the north of this property. So, basically everything. So, the east is… is that in Area 2? To the east? So it's annexable, but hasn't annexed yet.

[91:00] Yep. So to the east is Area 2, which could annex, and when it annexes, if it does, it would get denser. That's almost always a condition of annexation, is that we add, additional housing units, and then I think basically everything to the north of this, along 36, is… sorry, that's not 36, that's. Well, I don't… Good evening. 28th Street. everything to the north of this is Area 3, which is slated for, you know, also where the city can have urban growth. And so, Shannon, is that part of the rationale for wanting us to have more of an urban edge character? Well, the… yeah, there's a site review criteria that it's specifically talking about major streets, which J and 28th are, and it also talks about the transition between an Area 1 property like this. in areas that are in… I think it's either 2 or 3. So for clarity, Area 3 does include the properties to the north, as well as about 3 properties to the east of here, and then Area 2 picks up about 3 properties to the east with,

[92:08] Other properties in the county further east. So that's what the site review criteria is getting at, is… And how staff interpreted that was really trying to provide. More of a defined edge, you know, along those major. Totally. as opposed. From a density, from a density perspective. And I think even to Laura, your point, like, to the east, if these things, you know, if these annexations happen, density is part of the, you know, the collateral there, but that's not a character driver. you can have dense gable developments. Like, Building B looks like a very nice, appropriately scaled, formed use of different materials, some bump-outs and things, given the context of holiday stuff to the west. I mean, if you're coming up 28, you're gonna, like, see some of that new development from Where the Sports Authority was there at, diagonal Plaza. Iris, yeah, and then you're gonna, like, go through Palo Parkway and all that, and, like, feel like you're getting out of town, and then there's just gonna be this one little hit of these, like.

[93:11] 6 urban-looking buildings, and then you're back going to Lions. Like, it's… I think it's very odd. I like the character that they've established for building, you know, other buildings on the site, and I'm not seeing the rationale For this more, like, flat roof, urban hip, walk-up unit infill. Right, like this unit here, yeah. Yeah, like, that feels much more appropriately scaled, masked, and the character, so I guess that… I would… I'm gonna… I don't know, what do you… do you guys… can I put something of that? Can I just ask Shannon one more question from a staff perspective? Would that be appropriate, Rory? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead. Oh, okay. So, Shannon, in the beginning of the developer presentation, they talked about this being, I think, RMX. What's the zoning on this? 2.

[94:00] RMX2, and having certain distribution of unit types, of different kinds of unit types. Is that part of what's driving the need for a different character along the edge? That's not a character component, that's just size and bedroom count allocation. They don't want to just monotonize something, so having two-bedroom, three-bedroom mixes creates diversity of user end groups, families, etc, but the character is irrelevant to that. Yeah, that's right. There's criteria in the code for the mix of the unit types, the way those… the character, like Rory's talking about, could be… You know, part of just up for discussion, architectural design. That's helpful, thank you, I'll drop off. I would just say that I think a more, sort of, rural, agrarian, single-family massing and character is appropriate on this site versus the flat-roof urban, particularly on the outward-facing edge. If there was, like, a cost thing, or it was simpler to build them, or you could, you know, get more height or whatever, and so that's driving some density constraint.

[95:07] I think that's a different discussion, and maybe they're located interior on the townhomes, and that allows you just to bang these things out, and they get wrapped in a more, like, outward-facing. Single-family residential aesthetic. And my… These ones are… . Beautiful. Are these tandem parking? Resistant. Those are two coming as well on the back. amazing. These are the bees. That's exactly right. But the alley bees, they're not the western… well, they're the same as the western bees, but that perspective… A little different roof condition. Right. No, I think it's the same. I think it's just… it looks great, because it has a street in front of it, it's front door, which the other one doesn't. and… The Western… Right, okay. That's exactly right. The B is a B. So it's, again, park, two-car parking.

[96:02] front porch. And then a balcony off your second floor. Right. That would be… yeah, I don't know if anybody… we have 45 seconds, this is amazing. So I'm gonna throw that into it. So in the summary of this section, and then we can move on, I'm saying relocation of the detention pond should be considered to move it away from the perimeter and primary road slash public right-of-way frontage. It could be incorporated into other green spaces. or pedestrian areas as an amenity of open space within the development. And then, perimeter… Unit… character… Feels… Out of place with the flat roof urban aesthetic. Given the single family context… single-family and rural.

[97:07] Context… Evaluate more of the… Single family, gable… Roof forms and massings for… these edge… Mute. Alright. Can I pull up Amelia's slide here? Thanks for participating! You can now get off the ride. No, I think. I mean, I really think you guys are clo- I don't think you're that far… Making this work, like… Yeah. I think it's a needed project, for sure. We nitpick a lot of things, depending on where staff puts our attention and what much time we have, and so I think, like, largely the character has gone somewhat unscathed, so I think, just to compliment the team, we realize there's a ton of work here on this project.

[98:15] We hope you'll take the feedback here and have some productive and insightful design evolution when you take it back to the planning board or whomever's next in the gauntlet. Yup. Alright, shall we move on to board matters? Is that what happens now, Coloni? Yeah, that's… That's next. Thank you, applicant team. Yep. Thank you. What board matters do we have? we're here… well, we just wanted to say thank you to Matthew for 7, 8 years of…

[99:02] Is your camera, Matthews? he's hiding! He's still hiding. Yeah, I can hear you, and I will be sure to email you all a picture of my face for your screen. It's been, 8 long years for you, I'm sure, but we appreciate, doing your first session, I think the 3 years, and then volunteering for another 5 years on the board, and being, a… a voice of, experience for the reviewers and, and for staff, and we really appreciate all your time. Thank you. And I'm sure your other members have a lot to say, Laura. I was… I was just gonna say briefly that I was gonna keep extending my membership of this DAB as long as you would let me, assuming that one day we'd meet in person again, but that never happened, so…

[100:03] We will, we will have our, Going away, as we did last time. Yeah, how do we get that on the screen? We'll send out a… we'll send out a query to folks. Lani just won't let us meet in person, because then she can't cut off our microphones when, you know, when we go over time. And you'll get to… you'll probably get to meet the new, the new dev person during that, so… Who's the new DAB member? Yeah, we… you have… they're… they were appointed, oh, good. Nope. Awesome. this last, council meeting. I was not paying attention. Do we… do we have two appointments? No, just one. This one, that's good. Yeah, Matthew, we're gonna miss you. I hope you're going to, like, Iceland or some Scandinavian country and getting out of Dodge, but that's another discussion. Well, you know, I do like to keep my options open, too.

[101:00] I know. You're not moving or anything, Matthew, right? No, no, I'm starting vicious rumors. He's just got his citizenship at other places, so he… Good. Yeah, I mean, it's, no concrete plans, Steven, but thank you for asking. Yes. I recommend everyone keep their options open. Well, hey, if you can get us all, EU membership, that's always good to have, but… I read an article the other day that reckoned that New Zealand is the safest place in the world if this war gets bigger. I was like. Yeah. And we haven't even started talking about aliens yet, that's a whole nother. Yeah, well, they're in New Zealand already, so, you know. Yeah, New Zealand is already full of aliens and sheep. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But not as many as you'd think. Do you know? I don't know if this is wildly off-topic, but we dropped below 1 to 5 ratio now. There's less than 5 sheep per pupil, which is, you know, well below our high of 20 to 1.

[102:06] Wow, I hope that's not a carpenter of doom of some kind. Yeah, I don't know. I think once we get below 2 to 1, it's gonna be stressful. There's always stouts. You got lots of stouts, so that'll take. Yeah, well, we didn't used to. Right. What else is on board matters? Anything? Or are we, like, successfully out of here before 6 o'clock? Yeah, that's… That's probably good. I'm still cranky that we haven't heard from City Council publicly, I'm saying that, and I still feel that way. Because I do think all of us on these boards, you know, we put our time into it, and they should… they should respond to all our letters, and they should honestly meet with every board once during the year. It's not a big deal. I don't know why they don't, but…

[103:02] That's just my personal… Grumpy opinion. Not even grumpy, it just seems to make sense. So… Kalani, do we have another project next month? Not so far. Okay. So the date they would… let me just check the due dates. It would be… Yeah, today would have been the day to, receive the application for next month. So… And we don't see anything, like, we won't see the Broadway project again. Which Broadway one? The one right next to Nuvista. No, it's a… DAB is a one visit, so, you can go to Planning Board… watch the planning board, session on it. If it… if you're interested to see how your recommendations get folded in. Yeah, I would be curious. That was an interesting one. So if you look at the… you signed up for the planning… the planning P&DS newsletter, it goes through the schedule and everything that's on the planning board.

[104:06] Schedule, and you can see when it's coming through. Okay. Yeah. Poof? Brendan, I, was complimenting you and… Basically, lamenting the role of throughout that entire process of getting there were so many windows open in these summaries, and so I really want to extend my appreciation for what you do on a monthly basis here. Thank you. Well, thank you, and you're welcome to… step in anytime you want. I mean, I sort of, like, for board matters, I've been, you know, debating. I just had a second kid, and so now, like, these… it's becoming more challenging for me to make these meetings work right now. So I've, Kalani, you and I were talking about, like, if I needed to make a determination and then fill a seat during this last cycle, I'm gonna try to just see out my… the rest of my turn. I'm gonna do everything I can, so just bear with me if some of these don't work for me. But I have 2 under 2 at my house, and it is mayhem.

[105:09] Well, it's good for all. Oh, Rory, it doesn't get any easier when they get to college either, it's just different. Enjoy it now! Really stoked. Free time. So you just don't ever have free time. Yeah, forget it. So it is good for all the board members to get some practice, like, either as a vice chair, so if at any point, you want someone to do the vice chair position. I think that would be great, actually, because that's one… That's commitment. Yeah. And I think… now, Brendan, that you're, like, you're running the ship as if you've been doing it as a veteran, so… I don't know, Steven or Harriet, if either of you would like to assume the role of the vice chair, essentially you just meet on Monday for 30 minutes.

[106:00] We review all this stuff, and that's where we assign the times. That we think we're gonna allocate to each of these criteria. And it's just sort of a quick planning session, and that's really the only other commitment outside of just running the meeting and assisting Brendan and… or vice versa. Yeah, I mean, the… Or take over for… when I have to recuse myself in the future. Right. And just for the record, I was not… this… I did not feel that I had a conflict of interest in this. project, I was frustrated that I was… strongly, and probably, I think, taking it a step too far, advised to… recuse myself on this project. But… Yeah. So it's un… it's unfortunate. But I do understand.

[107:01] dope. My husband is a, you know, he works on a lot of the projects that we review, so… I think it'll be case by case, but point being that if someone does want to take over the vice chair position, this could come up. Yeah. It will be the alternate, and so we, you could vote on that tonight, if, Rory, you, want… I would like to offer it up just as a, like. Or we can wait till the new person, the new board member is seated next month to vote. But typically, a new board member is generally not in a vice chair or chair position, right, in the first year, so… Sure. I mean, I'm happy to… step in at some point. You know, Roy, if you wanna… Or you could do it on a… if you… if folks want to try it on a kind of a rolling basis. I feel like… Harriet, are you interested in this at all, or no? I'm okay just being a board member for another wee while. I still feel like, I was like, wait, I've already been here for a year, that's wild.

[108:00] I feel like Steven would be a great vice chair, and I think it'll give you one more forum, you know, you get that… Explain about stuff. So… I would like to, all in favor, trade my position as the Vice Chair to Steven on this call here today, just so that I can free up that Commitment. I second that. All in favor? I… Bye. Bye. Thank you, Steven. I know. Even you'll be on the list for next month, or for our next meeting, as soon? You'll get the agenda meeting. It's, usually, kind of midday. Okay, yeah, my only thing is that… Midday? do have, I'm learning the guitar, and I have lessons at 3.30 in the afternoon. Oh, yeah, it's before that. It's usually between some, around the noon hour, but for the agenda meeting, it's just the chair and the vice chair and staff, and we go through this agenda that you guys see on the PowerPoint, and just assign times, and make sure that that all goes together.

[109:05] I have a ask. Are these slides pulled together on that Monday? Sometimes after, there's some adjustments made to them, so… if it wasn't too much effort at all, like, it would be super helpful to have them in advance. I know we can go through all the different items and figure out what ones they are, but actually it's really helpful if we get, like, the way you guys present it is helpful, just to make sure that we've thought it through so we can be as concise and on point as possible. So we can send these out. It might, it… it may not be until the day of, depending on what… if we have to make any changes to them. But, these. I don't want to add extra work to you, and… No, I agree. draft, but, like, it would be useful, even if they changed the rules. As soon as they're available, they could be sent. And I will say, the memo cover page has these summarized already.

[110:00] It does, but this is really nice, because this is exactly the flow of the discussion. Totally. It is really helpful to have them like this. Sometimes we are making changes, though, so this one was, you know, timing-wise, we'll send it if we can get it out early, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, I think it's super… this was something that Amelia and Kalani and I… well, I mean, I can't take credit for the slides, but the… just the portion, where it shows, like, the item that we're discussing, and then the. that you can'. I think is… It's amazing. Yeah. Because you're not going back and forth to the packet, and… What's it. It's incredible. It just… it focuses the discussion. Almost like, though, to the point where, like. we… we got through their criteria, there was a lot of redundant conversation, because the criteria all overlapped, and then, in my opinion, there was so much more to talk about, like, the retention pond, the building character, like, we… we didn't even get into one of these courtyards and, like, look at the entry and, like, talk about, like, do we actually think that's…

[111:06] feels good. Like, that's what we do on those big, student housing units. We're, like, inside the perspectives and, like, feeling them out and stuff, and here… So it's just sort of interesting that, depending on what staff identifies, we basically just get an hour. And it's… Where are we gonna direct the spotlight? Well, and I would say we are… it's a criteria-based, so part of the struggle here is you could talk about everything under the moon as far as the design review, but not all of that can be provided as a recommendation, right? It's not based on any site review criteria, so it's really helpful. If, as you're talking, the… where we do see some of those deficiencies, that you can address those, but in that open period, if there's things that relate to the site review. it's, that's where we want to try to tie those back to, because those are what Planning Board can actually make recommendations on.

[112:04] I mean… Everything else is voluntary for the applicant, whether they take the discussion or not, and so to have a kind of an effective review, we try to guide that towards those criteria. But I think, you know, Rory, to your point, like, if the discussion about the courtyard and the design of some of those interior spaces, all… it all can be tied to the design criteria. It just happens to be that our focus is different from what the planning staff's focus is, and I think that it doesn't make it any less important. In fact, I think it's… It adds so much value to the project when you see it from the perspective of the design professional. I mean, what is… It may be clear, we all. Like, one of the most helpful things you can do as a board member is be really familiar with the site review, so that when you do those evaluations, especially on the open discussion, you're able to say, these courtyard spaces are directly tied to the quality of the open space.

[113:06] criteria. So, being able to loop that portion back. So, if there's any part of, like, you wanting to develop the, your discussion level and how those go, I would say cracking open those criteria and being very, very familiar. Yeah, I, I agree. There is a nightmare. Laura, you have your hand up, but I have a comment, too, when you're done. Yeah, I just wanted to point out that, When an applicant asks for extra height is when they get extra criteria about the courtyard, right? And so… For a project that's not asking for extra height, the criteria are a little bit more abstract about open space. The basic principle is that open space has to meet the needs of the residents and users and visitors. But there's… there's a little bit more to it than that, but I just wanted to say that the reason why you look at it more carefully with a very tall building, like a student housing project, is because it's… they're asking for extra height. Got it, gotcha.

[114:00] Triggers, that triggers extra criteria about the court. I think we've definitely, sort of, through different planning board liaisons, like, been educated on how to, sort of. word things in a way that can be conditioned, because that's essentially what we're trying to do, and it also helps you guys just sort of understand what our perspective is. I… we're having a retreat still, right, Colonel? Yeah, and so that's what I was gonna say, is we could, We can… this can be one of the retreat topics. I would love, if we as a group. In addition to the onboarding with the new member, no problem. I think that would be really useful, to actually just use it as, like, a learning opportunity to high-level go through the outline of. Yeah. criteria, then our board have a discussion about how we could abstract those, and then we have them all in our back pocket if we don't like a facade, and we can pull out some site criteria that loosely allows us to cover it. That'd be a massive toolset. Because there's… Probably, like, a pre-planning session. We can put some pre-planning session on topic areas on one of the, meetings. If you guys want to hold a meeting next month in April, it could be a pre-planning topic for, like, you… that…

[115:11] DAB meeting could be all about pre-planning the topics. I mean, and that was part of the reason why we got… why we are getting the packets earlier, and also part of the reason why we moved the planning meeting to Monday, so that it gave all of us an opportunity to add items that we thought to be reviewed. It just takes that, like. Yeah, or criteria that need to be reviewed, but it just takes… it just means you have to review the packet earlier. Yeah, I was gonna say, there's times where, most of the time, you know, you're like, you know, we don't feel comfortable, you know, the criteria isn't… Not met, or, you know, it's… you're waffling, and then we say, well, it's okay, or… no, but there's… there's other times where we… you guys have said it's okay, and maybe we think it's not okay, right? And we're… or we need to bring it up, and… and we can, right, you know, but we just… what you're saying is we need to tie everything back to…

[116:08] And just criteria that's not brought up, like, at all. Like, that's the challenge, is like, there's so much criteria, and you put one of our heads on it. and understand it in a way that we can loop in things that we don't like about the design, or think need improvement, that are outside any criteria that staff has brought to our attention, and we can make that creative connection to then get it conditioned for a planning board. Like, that's the highest and best use of this board. It's just a lot of effort to get there, and… The volunteer nature of this position is challenging. But I do think if we could use our retreat, or maybe a planning session, as Kalani, as you've suggested, to do a high-level, like, site review-focused discussion between internal board members, so we can start to, like, relate to each other on our interpretations of site review criteria. I also don't like when new people come on. And their first meeting with us? is a project review. I feel like that's very awkward for them, so I think having an opportunity to meet with us and have a more generalized discussion, as opposed to, like, being put in a lineup on a roll call to have valuable information, that is sort of intimidating, I think.

[117:16] Yeah. Laura? If you don't have a meeting scheduled for next month, could you use next month's meeting time? And I think we're onboarding someone next month, right? Yeah, we are onboarding, the new member, and so maybe next month is a good time to talk about the topics. that, briefly go over an outline that you want to talk about, not have to do this. If site review is the… Thing you want to do at the, at the… Not go over the site review individually during next month, but at least put that on the… outline for the day, and get the… get the agenda settled for the… for the retreat. And then, you can also introduce yourself. It's a good informal time to introduce yourself to the new board member. It would basically be an all-matters meeting.

[118:07] And, we could do an all-matters meeting where you talk about, meet the new member, get them, you know, familiar with what the board is like. And then do your outline for your review. I think that makes sense. Do you guys… is that something you guys would be into, Brendan? Yup. We will… then we will post, we'll… we will, do the notification for the meeting, and it'll be just a matters meeting. No… no design review. Yeah, I mean, I… I… we… like, the pendulum has swung so far since I've been on this board that it was… it was kind of… like, the topics were pretty loose, I mean, but they were… you know, generally loosely tied into the guidelines, and then it swung, I think, really far. It's so rigid about what we're supposed to be talking about and what we're reviewing that I've, for a while now, wanted to kind of bring it

[119:00] The discussion back to, you know, more… architectural… Items, or that, you know, that we would prioritize, and not just what's been reviewed by the, staff. Well, and Brandon, along those same lines, I mean, I… It's like we're sort of figuring it out, but also… like, proposing new guidelines, or things that planning board or city council could start to think about, like. you know, I'm not being silly about, you know, having detention ponds on major roads, like, it is happening. Or, you know, places where the height is measured from below the sidewalk, so to do a two and a half-story home, you know, you're four… you have to go below the sidewalk, so you go walk down, you know, like, these are… these are real urban design conditions, and it's bolder transitions to more urban, like, we need to start thinking about them, and so it would be nice to, like, say, hey.

[120:03] this kind of stuff's coming up. Or, like, why do we have fences on Iris and Broadway the whole way? Like, that's… What is that? Like… Again, we don't see that in Brooklyn, or Portland, or… Right? Kind of ridiculous. And so these questions are things… Steven, I think this is great. Thank you, Jen. We should use next meeting, if we're gonna do an all-matters meeting, we just hit time here at 6.05, so let's, what do we call this parking lot, these ideas? Like, things that we, you know, little design things that we could, you know, propose as, like, hey. you know… Can we still have really strict discussion time limits, though? I mean… Get to the end of the two hours and still be talking about the first thing. Right, sure. Yeah, I mean, yes, totally. I think being respectful of everyone's time is something that we're continuing to try to do, and these marathon ones where we used to have dinners and break them up over two reviews and all that, sounds like that's all…

[121:03] past era. that we are now a surgical task force that is being brought in to snipe. So, well, thanks, everybody, for participation tonight. We'll catch up next month. Great job cheering, Rory. Thank you. Is there anything I do with this summary? Do I email it to somebody? You're welcome to email it to Amelia and myself, and we can see if that translates over to the minutes. It probably will. Yeah. That would be helpful, actually. And then if you… just make sure to formally adjourn the meeting. All right, formally adjourn the meeting. Bye, Matthew, number one. Hi, everyone! Much love, Matthew. Cheers. Bye. Bye.