July 24, 2019 — Housing Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

[MM:SS] timestamps correspond to the YouTube recording.

[0:03] great and we'll move to approval of the minutes I move that we accept the minutes I'll second any discussion those in favor of approving the minutes from the previous meeting an animus and we're gonna start with a public part issue participation tonight this is the open comment period for all things other than Alpine balsam area plan is there any public participation for those Perfect's all right we'll close open comment period so we have a specific comment

[1:08] period for alpine balsam that we're going to cover tonight so we're gonna need a staff update board questions and then public comment after those so that's probably going to take 45 ish minutes okay come in then suit in order yes yes you can speak on alpine ball so now well last night there was this is Lynn Segal 538 Dewey I'm surprised you're you're just on here you know your own Planning Board but ex-officio okay yeah okay regarding last night the the council was entertaining a

[2:03] ballot measure that we should effectively pay through the city we can give loans for permanently affordable housing through restricted deeds you know deed stuff and that's a concern for me because affordable housing the demand for affordable housing is so high because we allow such high-end housing in Boulder in the senior community the example 311 Mapleton there were five subsidies given by City Council for that development yet they bring in ten to fifty thousand dollars a month and one to two million dollars per person per three hundred feet it can be bigger but it's a communal thing but still that's a lot of money and I don't think they need subsidies and each high-end development in Boulder which you can't you can't help sometimes right because we alive Google here now we have all the people

[3:01] that can pay and then that creates the wealth industry in discrepancy right the wealth inequality and then we have much more low-end help you know demand for housing and more and more homeless and more and more of all of this so I'm not gonna vote for that thing but they've got on the ballot but I should pay with my city dollars to give down payments for people for affordable housing I'd love to be able to do that but I would only do that if I know the city of Boulder stops these subsidies down at 21st and pearl they've developed a huge office complex there ww rentals it's taking up all of the local neighborhood uses like the yoga place the art place the dance place the mattress place and the unfinished furniture store right by smooth pool that's gonna be all office complex and they have the audacity to brag that they are serving as office space and this is the opposite of jobs housing for the housing that's down the street on 21st

[4:01] and 23rd pearl that's 2 million you know luxury apartments this is not okay and you've got to do something about it I don't envy your job but you got to do something strong about this to stop the problem otherwise you're going to be chasing the tail the dog the tail can't do that you have 20 seconds the same thing the same situation they're asking to put all this affordable housing and this density in the center of town in the most expensive part which is not the best use it will get many more units outside in the perimeter of the city that the center of Boulder that the East the north-south corridor on Broadway is too constrained we cannot flood it with more the hotel on the hill that'll add to it it can't be done no

[5:00] density on Alpine I mean 50 and they took away the lowest that's not okay Thank You Lee so who had the time constraint we're only doing time constraints right now so yes is that Karen okay hi I'm Elizabeth hahndorf nice to meet you guys great board I used to serve I served on Boza my husband and I together 11 years we didn't do it together after each other he passed away we never had an ex-officio that would have been great so it's just really nice to see the board's evolving so I'm here to talk about the traffic plan for 27

[6:03] 24th Street for since 76 I met with Steve Pomerance who was on the City Council for ten years and Alan Aaron Brockett once to speak about this too and we went through the traffic plan and there are some discrepancies and problems with it that we see I think one of the reasons is because the project is evolving and the facts the traffic people had in the beginning are changing it's like a living document one of the major miscalculations in and isn't the plan is that they've only done one hour traffic studies in the morning and in the evening for commuters and we know that people have flex schedules and it's more like two hours in the morning and evening I'd like to get it down better by the traffic study people after our meeting also they didn't really get a good count on the evolving issue of city and county

[7:00] workers living there or working there and we know that they come in and out all day so there's more traffic than projected and the the future projection of this you know I took have a business 3 I took statistics it's based on you know past use and stuff and it's always you know not exact and their future projections of the traffic that's going to be there in the next ten years is based on the past growth and it's wrong because we're putting a lot more density and talking more density for iris for Alpine so the traffic growth is going to be greater than what they're saying in ten years so I just think the thing is invalid at this point it needs to be gone over and reviewed by the professionals and before we can make

[8:03] judgments on what the traffic will be the other thing was now it's coming up on a ballot this council said last night about voting on deed restrictions and for people that are going to provide affordable housing and if we get say 200 300 deed restricted units in our neighborhood we're gonna that's gonna be more density and more working cars coming through that aren't counted in so that's part of the future component so that's what I had to say that you need to ask that this traffic study be redone and I request that you speak with Steve Pomerance and mr. Brackett has agreed to listen to our argument thank you thank you Elizabeth apologize for going out of order everyone but I wanted to make sure we

[9:01] get as much public participation surrounding this matter as possible so before we jump into the staff update I just want to welcome our newest member Daniel Tudor oh is that the Teodoro who goes by Danny so we'll be calling him Danny from here on anything you'd like to say and make sure you speak closely to the mic ok very pleased to be here I'm looking forward to working with everybody and you know I think there are some very challenging but very rewarding issues here that you know we're tackling itself look forward to it and I also wanted to take one moment to thank Jeff Egan our former staff liaison so he's been switched out J segment will be our staff liaison officially going forward so welcome Jay thank you I know you've been

[10:00] with us multiple times but welcome aboard hope you're ready for the ride and with that being said we'll move into the Alpine balsam area plan staff update and take it away Jean great good evening and good evening again feels like we were just here talking about this only a few weeks ago and I've really appreciate several members participation at some of our community events over the last couple of weeks so I'm on green okay I'll get closer okay so again it really appreciate board members coming out and talking with members of the community at our at our events and so I know that probably a number of you will be a little more familiar with some of the materials I brought some I'm just going to go over it at a high level since we did talk about this and Danny I'm sorry you're you're gonna do a quick up to speed on this project so as we've

[11:03] discussed the Alpine balsam area plan provide a definition for the future vision of the area in lots of different ways land use urban design access and mobility and as we know one of the key drivers for the purchase of the Builder community hospital site is both for consolidation of city services and for affordable housing and what we've been looking at for the area plan are opportunities for housing in the area I'll just refresh asan our goals and objectives for the area plan again around land use urban design public realm public spaces local government services access mobility sustainability and housing our housing objectives include creating that diverse and affordable housing with a variety of housing types sizes prices balancing market rate and permanently affordable

[12:01] youth units and also serving various community needs so our discussion tonight we'd like to get your feedback and I know that several of you of it that we're at the community events also have seen the materials and probably we're asking those community members and hearing responses about some of these questions as well so what we intend to do is part of the schedule is that the the council and the Planning Board reviewed the options and components of the of the plan that were we shared in June we've shared those options and components with community members we're getting a lot of feedback really good conversations and good discussions with folks at the three different events that we held as open houses we've also held a couple of walking tours that were more focused on the connections plan and we

[13:02] have feedback coming in on the be heard folder online website through tomorrow so and similar to the feedback that we've received all along through this process we have a lot of mixed few points and not really clear preferences all the way around so we're gonna but but we've had really very thoughtful feedback from folks too so we'll be summarizing that for our decision makers as that's moving forward all of that feedback is serving to what we were what we were asked to do is develop a recommended draft plan and it will be back to the Planning Board and the council with a draft plan in August and so we're seeking feedback from the housing advisory board members similar questions about that around the housing policies and components of this plan both for the hospital redevelopment site and for the area around it so

[14:01] opportunities for announcing the site properties in the area and I think we talked a little bit about this and I'm happy to talk some more about it about this we're still we've been asked to keep on the table this option of boulder county relocating from there iris and broadway campus to alpine balsam it has an implication on the amount of housing that we can achieve at alpine balsam but then presumably there would be an opportunity for redevelopment of housing at iris many factors that have to be determined with that but we are asking folks about the appropriateness of that and what what factors we might want to make sure that we are considering if there's some criteria as this is moving forward and then I think we talked a little bit about this last time as well of well we don't want to be absolutely specific to put ourselves in a box with this area plan about who what would type what type of

[15:01] housing affordability and populations we might be trying to serve because this will be a longer process and will will be dependent on us I understand what partners we may might be able to work with what tax credits might be there what some of the needs are in the coming years as we do more work so but again I think that it's the area plan and to is to set intention about what happens and so if there's advice from the board around some of those affordability types that we might want to include so as we discussed we walked through these last month the we had five different options that we shared with the Planning Board and council that had different emphasis for land uses and different ways we might achieve the goals around housing and mixed use and and area character and

[16:00] we the council in the planning board provided direction to take one of those off the table the one that was really about more current trends less less less opportunity for growth okay I'll get closer to the microphone and and so we have on the table the four different options that emphasize housing or one that's a little more density does more strongly emphasize the housing more emphasizing mixed-use and then as I mentioned an option that keeps the boulder county relocation on the table and I'll amend what I said a minute ago about some of the community feedback I will say that in the four areas are not on the site for the some of the questions around emphasizing conversion of some of the non-residential the existing non-residential areas to housing or to

[17:02] mixed-use there is a more of a preference on the mixed-use part of what we're hearing from community members let's see so we have some different land use options I left some of the copies I didn't do one packet for everybody because I know some of you are pretty familiar with these some of the materials that we've had at the community events that spell out what each of those options are and there's a there's an at-a-glance that's also with the land use options the colors there's more definition in your booklets about talking about what those land uses are and what they might look like clearly it's a range of different unit types what they might look like even within those ranges so options for the site the question to the board is how to best address affordable housing goals regarding opportunities on the site we

[18:01] had the within the options a couple there that's once more of a mix of unit types from the high-density residential one that's the townhome style that would be on the western part of the site and then mix of high density residential two and three which are depicted three and four-story stacked flats four and then the other option was a little bit higher density was just the mix of the high density residential two and three with three to four story stack flats and then the question about the county and so really the difference about housing is the more housing there is there the more opportunity we have for affordable housing and some of meeting the an affordable housing program or project within those options within and we can bounce back to these once we have the

[19:01] discussion to options in the area that's about how do i best address affordable housing goals in some of the other areas that are just on the surrounding the hospital redevelopment site so we've been asking about the neighborhood center and again a clarifying and Cory just asked to because we had a lot of questions from community members like what we don't want the retail center to go to go away and of course not we don't it's a highly valuable neighborhood center as depicted in our comp plan but our component also gives us the direction for all of our neighborhood centers throughout town that are single use retail with a lot of parking to be evaluating those over time for opportunities for mixed-use and opportunities to add housing the south of Alpine so just south of the hospital redevelopment site some opportunities some of that is currently housing that we would encourage to stay and some of it is non-residential uses then we want

[20:00] to just evaluate as to how those might evolve over time and then along Broadway especially south of North Street area is mixed-use and some of it is some commercial uses with quite a bit of parking around that and I also heard a lot from community members as those are opportunities for places that might be good opportunities for mix juice or housing over time and then as I mentioned if if the board is would like to discuss prioritizing the any of the heart heart to meet needs are the types of affordable housing that we would be seeking really more on the site because we know that redevelopment of private property in the area over time would likely be meeting meeting the affordable housing through the inclusionary housing program either by twenty percent twenty

[21:02] to twenty-five percent on-site or through the cash in lieu and so next steps as I mentioned we are we will be recording and documenting the feedback from the board to be able to share with our planning board and council and David also glad that you're here to here at first hand and and will be informing the staff recommendation we anticipate the public hearings and feedback from the Planning Board and Council in August and then tentatively scheduled to turn around for adoption of a final plan in later September and locked up early October so we're back to our questions and I'd be happy to answer any questions from the important so who has questions we can just go down the line if everybody has

[22:00] some or we can bounce around a little bit okay let's bounce around Terry the Civic is that just for the county offices so know what we're anticipating is that the city would renovate that medical office pavilion that's at the corner so all of the options assume that the city city service center would be relocated at the medical office pavilion if the county just relocates with on the site - it would be in some configuration and we're doing some work with with the county staff and with some of the consultants to better understand you know they have a sizable space need and so it displaces we think somewhere around a hundred the potential for around 100 units plus or minus so the Civic presence in option D is city of Boulder a city of Boulder and Boulder County and Boulder County yes

[23:03] Judy I have a couple of questions and a couple of areas the first may not be related to this hopefully you can tell me I heard that in the discussion of the opportunity zones there was the possibility that al use which I believe means efficiency living units up until now in many zones they had been if somebody if a developer wanted to build more than 20% they had to go to planning board site review and I understand that in the discussion of opportunity zones they might eliminate that and it would I want to know whether that would affect Alpine Bossin so that a developer could come in and say no I want to do a hundred percent DL use and not have to do a site review for that they're planning on changing this what was discussed in that so my understanding is

[24:02] that if there were changes to how we treat efficiency living units or that that would only apply to that area where the opportunity zone is it wouldn't apply a citywide great okay thank you then my other question is about the traffic impact study as Geno's I she gave me the copy of the traffic impact study to read and to study and when I got home I saw that it only went to page 28 when there were 52 pages and then I looked on the city council packet what they got and they only got up to page 28 and then Jean referred me to another site that again was just 28 pages and I'm happy to hear that some of you have seen the full traffic study but I want to know if we and Council and Planning Board and easily accessible to the public can get the whole traffic study the full traffic study is now on the

[25:00] website there are a few hundred more pages than the initial typically we share with decision-makers and the community that the meet of the report and the and then the summary of the key findings and then all of the charts and all of the engineering and all of the analysis we we typically don't really it's it's hundreds of pages but it is available on the website for folks that want to view that now could you tell me specifically where cuz I went right before I came here today to the link you gave me and it was still the 28th page one okay that might be something I when I looked yesterday it was the longer one so I will confirm but I we haven't asked our community our communication staff to put the longer went up there great thank you Chuck gene the question for you just first to go back to the traffic study

[26:01] because there was another point of kind of clarification on and I think that I've been hearing about from community members the draft status that was on it is there is it a final status now do you because that was throwing a lot of people there saying oh this is just a draft so we don't really know what's going on well it is it's the analysis that we have to date and and I think one of the speakers mentioned you know these things take a while so we had to provide a certain range of assumptions for them to test my at the moment we are not anticipating having that redone the options that we have on the table are still within those early assumptions those earlier assumptions you know they're gonna change they're probably going to change a little bit once we finalize a recommendation and we can evaluate at that time if if they if we and especially with direction on the

[27:03] draft plan if there's a need if the if the projections come out very different from what we have had studied we might have the consultants take another look at that but we don't have that in the scope at the moment okay thanks yeah I just want to get a little understanding of clarity on that the other question I think follows on one that Terry or I think was Terry had about the the county's offices if they were to bring County services to the site it would displace a certain amount of square footage so that we would have available for let's say residential do we have any sense at this point I know we very well may not but I just want to check in on kind of like the trade-offs that we're looking at for that I'm at iris and they're not certain yet what we're finding is that as I mentioned it's

[28:00] certainly displaces at least about 90 to 100 units or the space for that it would have implications about the parking I mean we we have a approach that we had tested around the general Improvement District with reduced parking shared parking for both the city service uses and the housing especially because there's a potential for some for more sharing because of the day-night aspect of that we had direction all along for not constructing more parking on the site and so we're not entirely sure how that would work if the county's there as well it would if the city in the county can share the the existing parking structure that still means that there would have to be probably some additional parking for the housing that would that would still be there so not clear yet that all of these things are

[29:00] things that we would have to continue to study assess and address as we move forward does that help the other one last one I have for you is on you just made a mention of the mixed use in the kind of other areas of the area plan not just you know at the site and so is that just to be clear on that also for myself basically we're saying if we can get some mixed-use there or bringing some housing in with some retail or commercial of some sort whatever that is and it essentially is going to improve our walkability capabilities in the neighborhood is that the reason for that well there's some of that I mean there are so there are a lot of opportunities in the area in places where we have big parking lots buildings that are very setback as when we can

[30:00] define some of the mixed-use types over time can be brought up a little closer have a better sidewalk street feel better pedestrian environment so much of this area had been developed prior to any of our landscape current landscaping standards or any of that so we do see that a lot of opportunities over time for improving the the pedestrian environment the the look and feel on the character and and some of the tree canopy etc you brought up a question jack about parking and I was curious in each of these scenarios what the parking impacts look like for the neighborhood as I know that that was an issue that I've been hearing from people that live in that area they're concerned about overflow parking from a lot of development either whether it's mixed-use or housing that that that was

[31:00] an issue people who lived there a long time that was an issue when when it was a hospital there was overflow parking into the streets in the neighborhood people couldn't park in front of their homes and what is the what is the parking look like in each of these scenarios would affect the local neighbors so our direction has been to apply this advanced mobility strategies the strategy about reduced parking requirements the more shared parking and also to utilize the it's it's an approach that we've that we use successfully in Boulder junction and in the down town based on parking utilization data for those types of residential uses and the mixed uses that we have in those places as I mentioned that the parking is shared unbundled managed and paid so it along with that is it's it's a general improvement district so the funded through property taxes and

[32:00] they've been and through the district and thinking the district would start with just the site redevelopment to fund the parking management but also to fund the programs that go with that to help encourage and to support that reduced amount of parking we also know and we have heard that there is the concern about the overflow into the neighborhoods so we included in the strategies and the recommended approach it would be to proactively enact start a neighborhood park is something like the neighborhood parking permit program to make sure that we're managing the parking in the in the nearby areas to minimize that impact to the neighborhood in each of the scenarios yes yeah its overall and then can you provide an update on the flood situation there because I know one of the original goals of this site was to move the city offices out of a high hazard flood zone

[33:00] into an expiring building into a more suitable location and I know that

[34:45] okay there we go we can switch to if you want to music

[35:00] okay side mitigation as I mentioned we've spent a lot of time studying what the potential options might be to improve to address more of the 100-year flood in the area we study groundwater and we were considering potential mitigation at North Boulder Park what we found is that the groundwater in North Boulder Park is like that far from the surface and so it's like right there that's the technical term and so going digging down to be able to create some of that a detention is not going to be feasible well we went into that study thinking the criteria of working with it to further assess those options would be it has to stay a great park as I mean it's a wonderful park and we have to maintain the uses that are there maintaining the trees and not not it not

[36:01] adversely impacted and so what we found is without being able to go down you have to go up and to be able to get a sufficient amount of detention to make a project worthwhile to at least address like half of the potential hundred-year floods it would require more of a berm than that our staff thought was going to was within that criteria of acceptable so without being able to do more at North Boulder Park it will mean that we have to address the 100-year flood on the site we're not going to be able to address a wider impact but we can't make things worse and we have to address the the flood footprint on the site so with the deconstruction and some grading we'll be able to adjust that 100-year flood area to a conveyance area at the north part of the site but it still is going to take up a pretty

[37:02] significant amount of space because it's gonna be you know not in a culvert we've had the direction to have the flood mitigation be above ground so it'll be a landscaped designed conveyance zone it will mean that there's quite there will be a sizeable setback from balsam we're trying to assess if if we keep the existing trees or how those are incorporated in that kind of design at this point at the area plan process its we're still pretty high level we're not doing the very specific design for that so it'll it'll be we're estimating at this point the most conservative is about a hundred 100-foot conveyance area so it it may impact some of the projections for housing and for a developable land that we have at this

[38:00] point by bringing those down just a little bit but that's that's the approach that we'll be including in the area plan with a recommendation for flood mitigation is that answered the question can we go back to the schedule slide is that easy to do okay so the joint okay the Planning Board of City Council is October 1st okay oh these days pretty pretty firm at this point and I hadn't seen all of these permits our data rate can be okay I'm just planning around some extensive travel is there any thought of going to tab for there we've been providing updates to tab various times throughout the project we provided all the recommended approach to them at their

[39:02] last meeting I they were supportive and interested in hearing more of the community feedback but supportive of this approach great thank you any other questions Danny well trying to get up to speed so my apologies remit in the wheel at all but so as I understand it this option D is the one that would encompass that's the only one out of these four that would encompass both city and possibly County facilities on the site so I guess my question kind of you know with some interest the notion of bringing the county in and then having that option Ireson Broadway is with the concept B with that land where the where the facilities are right now on the corner of iris and broadway would be vacated or the city or still really up in the air

[40:02] it really depends on very up in the air there are a lot of factors so um you know at a high level thinking that the 17 acres that the county has is a lot more space for housing than the potential for the couple acres trade that they needed alpine right but i think seven of those are the ball fields there are a couple of structures that are over 50 years old some with significant historic value there's some fun flood implications up there too and of course we'd have to talk about appropriate density and develop ability and compatibility with the neighborhood so many factors understand traffic studies that either salami and not for iris okay okay that's why for now anybody else I had one just process so how what's driving the timeline here so what is you

[41:03] know why are we trying to move at this pace we are aiming to get an area plan adopted this fall and who wanted that our city council City Council wanted that okay have they given any further feedback as to that timeline since their initial we have the last check-in from City Council agenda committee on Monday was that they're anticipating this discussion on August 27th great okay any other questions otherwise we're gonna go to the rest of public comment real quick perfect Karen Simmons thank you for your patience well thank you Thank You Jane for that full traffic

[42:02] report I am digging into it you received my comments earlier this afternoon about that traffic report I have real questions about whether it's viable and to hear your comments that there may be some additional changes we'll see I would like to make a statement about the parking I used to live on the hill and neighborhood parking eventually made it out to our house on 9th Street and we could no longer park in front of our house I have real questions about neighborhood parking especially if you're going to attack us for it but this concept that I want you to think about as I was sitting at bread work this afternoon looking at our wonderful

[43:00] mountains and thinking in a couple of years I might not be able to see those anymore that is a shopping center parking lot what do they have at shopping centers what do they have at grocery stores they have shopping carts why do they have carts because people need enough food to feed their families for until they can get back to the grocery store again the plants that you guys are working with are making the assumption that I can ride my bicycle over to the grocery store get some groceries and go home I'm certainly not going to be able to afford to use a over once a week to go to the grocery store I can't show up onto a bus two or three or four bags of groceries we need to make sure that that shopping center it's maintained and I know you know it's

[44:03] already being used for people who use the bus to go downtown there's stuff like that but if you're going to tax people either the shopping center itself so ideal or bread works or whoever it is to park in that lot which is kind of what some of those words in that traffic report say if you're gonna charge the retail to park there and then you're gonna charge the customer they have a parking permit to go there you're stepping too far away from what people were gonna need to do to go to the grocery store I want you to think about that you know a parking plan is a neighborhood thing it's a retail thing

[45:02] thank you thank you Karen any other comments perfect we're gonna close public comment on this matter I don't know if I could just address really quickly yeah absolutely the approach for the general Improvement District and the part is as a parking district at first would not expand it where the anticipation I'm sorry I'm stumbling over all this the initial boundary for the parking district would just be the redevelopment site this what the city owns and then we would be exploring the potential expansion of that with property owners with redevelopment over time but not it not at first all right we're gonna go into board discussion and I suppose we can pop

[46:02] around if anyone wants to start us off yeah this is almost personal to me because I was actually born in this hospital many many years ago so to watch it turn in from a hospital it's exciting with respective impacts on the neighborhood I haven't studied the traffic study yet but I have to believe that any of these options are less impactful than a full service fully operational hospital was for so many years I don't know for sure but just common sense tells me that no matter what of these choices happen and get built it's gonna be less impactful on the neighborhood common sense

[47:09] perspective I think you need vertical Broadway you I like the idea of consolidating the county and city services in the office medical office medical pavilion and I think there should be housing of all types pretty much everywhere else so when I look at the choices that are here I think that's kind of a combination of a and D so emphasize housing with the civic presence I like mostly in one place it makes it easier for people needing services and makes it people for who in the city to be I think that's a very good thing and the mixed-use piece I think a lot of people think of mixed-use they think you know office over retailer or residential over retail and let's not

[48:01] forget that that's that's some kind of vertical mixed-use where as horizontal mixed-use housing on one side of the street and office on the other side the street and I think by having largely housing with a civic component you do have a mix it's just horizontal mixed-use they're just next to each other versus stacked on top of each other so in summary I like a with a little slice of D and I think it's very exciting that this is happening and I like the schedule as well I like it happening quickly Terry I'll just clarify that the medical office pavilion would would be just City uses the county would need to build a whole nother building because they've got a pretty substantial needs up but it's still whole there yeah Jay can we pull up the questions that you're asking again

[49:01] that's gonna kind of went straight in and I'll take the opportunity just to say that we're not making a formal recommendation to Council tonight just so everyone knows this is sort of a getting to know what everyone's feeling so we can work our way towards hopefully a recommendation that's gonna bring most of the board together so that's just where we're at right now this is a get your feelings out on the table sorry and just to clarify so the idea would you do that at your August meeting that's the intent so there's just a lot of unknowns

[50:02] here to me we don't know you know how much land we would get if we did the trade off for iris that is something that really interests me a lot just to sort of spread the housing out even more in a way so I'm interested in just knowing more about that in general and if we could get that before we're having to make a recommendation that would be great obviously I realized the timeline is constricted but knowing what all of our options actually are before we have to make a recommendation would really be ideal in my mind that's that's my only piece right now I might jump back in a little bit but I really want to know more about that option in general you know at least to jump in in the discussion mode right now

[51:01] one piece that that Terry brought up about the civic use is there I have some questions about the civic uses there from the standpoint of both location in that is is that really the best space to be from a transportation perspective and accessibility for the whole city because I feel like our Center has shifted somewhat and that in combination with the sixty million dollar cost for a remodel on that building seems to be those two things together when I take them in I'm like are we really getting what it's worth there and now you know I go back and forth on it myself I've talked to other people who who've been in this town for a long time and and you know I've been here almost 40 years now but others have been here I've been longer and there is a sense of it's kind of where our Civic space should be

[52:01] for some reason kind of historically energetically almost emotionally so I get the difficulty of of that discussion but but again functionally I wonder if location isn't better elsewhere and and then I do have to just question a cost of some 60 million which i think is what Michelle shared on that I think it was at a council meeting yes and I will encourage we're gonna have the accommodate kind of combined discussion of the at least a piece of the facilities master planning work that'll T up the conversation with the area plan with the council on the 27th so well Michelle and and her team will be addressing a lot of the points that you're making cool great okay fasten your seatbelts first of all

[53:00] I just wanted to remind all of us and I'm not sure if J and gene know this but anytime hab makes it gives either feedback or recommendations we already voted on a whole year ago that we want to see how we're being represented first before that feedback goes out and it doesn't require a meeting but it does require emailing it out tests and I sing it and I don't know if you knew that but that's what's been done since we made that decision since we voted on that so secondly I will be specifically addressing your questions but I have a few other comments to make first and part of them are my own feelings and part of them I got from talking to other people at the sessions that you had Jean and from reading all the emails and then some are just my own opinions in the

[54:00] emails and with the people I talked to at your event there were certainly a few people at the event who didn't have any position one or another they just wanted certain things like they wanted senior housing or something specific like that and didn't really voice anything about the choices if you could pick can you put up the at a glance thing or something because I'll be talking about that in a minute yeah thanks I'll get to that in a minute so my first opinion that is very strong for me I live really close to the iris Broadway land and I think that has wonderful opportunities for housing as well as you mentioned I think it's really premature to be making the decision about Alpine balsan until that is decided I think it influences too many decisions along the way and I just think that's imperative that that be figured out first

[55:01] I want to mention that the vision plan includes your vision plan that I got from the website includes strengthening the neighborhood fabric and also aligns what is already great about the neighborhood I also recognize that the council and staff are very interested in public engagement and have made a lot of efforts and it seems that the neighbors have spoken to me it doesn't seem like there's mixed opinion from residents about this it seems like it's running at about 4 to 1 maybe that's just how I counted the emails and when I talked to people at the events but there's been it seems that the neighborhood survey of 500 people has been discounted as not being valid and if people don't think it's valid then I would suggest that the city do its own survey and have people

[56:01] who are on different sides of the density issue give you feedback that it's completely neutral and just get that survey out there from everyone as far as traffic a few years ago for my own neighborhood issue I had somebody in my neighborhood who was an engineer teach me how to read those and it actually required I require kids help and I realized that there are two important elements in studying a traffic study and the first one is the baseline how the baseline was derived at and already I heard something today that there was only one hour of study done of impact times rather than the two hours I live on Broadway so I know how long the heavy traffic goes and one hour actually isn't sufficient so I want to know exactly how it was done and what those numbers were so I can see them

[57:00] myself the other element that's also important is I know there's a manual that U is called the transportation engineers ite trip generation manual that's used as the basis for making projections I want to actually see what those projections were and how they'd arrived at those numbers and that takes a lot of studying so I think to be making decisions about the traffic will be fine and is is it's premature at this point tell people have had a chance to really study it as far as parking I live in a place where there are ten condos which have one assigned space and there are 12 other open spaces I think that if each of us right now think about what our parking situation is many people in Boulder and many people on council on on different boards

[58:00] choose not to use their car or in some to even have a car but I'd like each of us to think do we have a parking space do we have our garage do we have a carport and there's something that just doesn't sound right and democratic to me about telling people oh yes you can live here but you can have point eight tenths of a car that's just I just am uncomfortable about that I also feel that people are gonna keep people are gonna keep their cars for the most part and that's just the way it is so they will park wherever they can walking blocks and blocks if they have to and clogging up adjacent neighborhoods another unintended consequence is thinking I shop in the ideal area really a lot and I was thinking what will happen to ideal because people who can't find parking well of course park there so what's going to happen to that whole plaza is

[59:01] there's gonna have to be guards their parking guards all the time hounding people are you shopping here what are you doing what do you this what do you that and its be going to come unpleasant and lose some of what's so special about it right now also I want to mention that a couple years ago when I was studying our neighborhood issues I called a real estate developer in Denver and I called a contractor successful contractor in Atlanta to ask some questions about how to evaluate how much a property costs to build and unsolicited they both said to me and they don't know each other they both said to me yeah well the strange thing about development these days is that the trend is to reduce parking and the problem with that is it doesn't work everyone just drives around and is angry and upset and it causes more problems than it solves and it doesn't take away

[60:01] people's cars so I think we have to decide if we want to look like Capitol Hill in Denver or if we want to retain our neighborhoods the community hospital certainly had more people in and out per day than I would imagine would be generated by at least some of the the options however those people did not come and go at peak hours they came in and out throughout the day and there were vast amounts of parking spaces there so I don't think it's comparable to say oh this won't be any more than it was with community hospital I just don't think I think it's apples to oranges so then also I wanted to mention engagement very briefly I have several ideas that I won't take more time talking about now but if you want to talk about ideas to tweak the engagement process a little more I'd be happy to talk to you about them Kolani on your staff suggested that

[61:04] the best way to proceed might be for us to pick an option and tweak it as we wanted rather than make up a whole new thing so I spent some time doing that so the option I like best for the site is a with some changes combined with c4 the area plan but for a if you look at it and see the little black part that's what the highest density up there for a I think for me that would be fine to leave that black square rectangle as it is and have that be a space for a light tech tax-credit place where you could have 50 or 60 units of permanently affordable housing however I would change all the rest to the lowest density and I would do a new one I would do mxr land use and mxr to

[62:02] zoning which would be 10 market priced houses units with 10 permanently affordable units and that's that's how 3303 Broadway the people's clinic currently sits right now and I would also I don't care if the city has their offices there or up on IRS if it ends up being that way or the county either way but I don't think it needs to be both I think I don't think they have enough crossover to make that key I think there should be one at one place and one at the other so I'm just gonna briefly now demonstrate a little bit about why what my idea offers because I believe my idea offers way more affordable housing and doesn't as negatively impact the neighborhood character as this so the first one a currently has 260 units per

[63:01] acre as a top site since you don't know how many acres quite it would be I used four point five acres or 5.8 acres so you could either have 57 units or 45 units per acre which is pretty dense that would still only be 23 percent guaranteed permanently affordable or 60 permanently guaranteed affordable in the in the area with my way you would have only 28 units per acre or 26 depending on what you did you would have 66% permanently affordable with 95 permanently affordable units or as or as much as 108 depending on how many how many you built 108 permanent and I can show you that math if you like or I can go over easily there'd be 130 units that way the others the others I'll just briefly mention there their density would could be as high as sixty six units per acre yeah it

[64:05] could go as high as sixty six units per acre and I wanted to mention in comparison because I think we have to try and actually visualize what this like in Boulder Junction one of the areas pearl Parkway is 73 units per acre so that's not too far away from 66 per acre holiday and so imagine where Boulder Junction is that's in the midst of a more retail totally retail area not a very residential neighborhood area holiday which is right on Broadway is only 12 to 20 units per acre foothills community which is west of west on violet west of Broadway on violet has 20 about 25 units per acre and so we have to think about really what that would look like there the difference to do really want that neighborhood to look

[65:00] more like Boulder Junction right in a residential neighborhood or do you want it to look more like Foothill as their holiday so I also mentioned that I want to mention that my idea works for people who want the most affordability the most affordable housing way more affordable housing and also doesn't mess with the neighborhood so as far as your particular questions so I go for option a but with very specific tweaks I go for option C for the area plan for Broadway and iris I'm looking to hear more but again I don't think a decision should be made until that's settled and as far as hard to serve housing issues I think this area would with my idea lend itself well to lytec for some with some good solid and that's some density right there but the rest of it could be the market rate and then the

[66:02] others permanently affordable could be the middle income ownership so those would be the ones I go for and then the last thing I just wanted to mention is that I'm planning on talking about our actual feedback or if we can come up with recommendations more knock in our August meeting Thanks any questions about I think so Judy but I think maybe we can just share your some of your your ideas in the calculation so I can better understand what that means anyone else just continued board discussion here you don't have to get a feedback right away but I'd like to at the end of the skittle read where everyone kind of is right now even with the unanswered questions just so we can work towards

[67:02] something at the next meeting without having to have a whole nother discussion about it so so I share Terry's perspective that I think some confluence of Av really seem to work here I'd be very intrigued by the notion of having county facilities over here and utilizing that iris and broadly spaces of a way to possibly diffuse some of the issues that we're talking about I don't know that you really need to wait for that to happen from my experience you know that could take six months to six years to sixty years right so but I think that the whole notion of a comp plan is to try to keep things as flexible as possible so that you can have those contingencies or those possibilities in place and articulate them in the plan now and I would like to see that whatever plan

[68:00] goes forward has some of that flexibility to address that and really you know to address a lot of the other possibilities here as well but to say this is our focus but there are other things that may change and you know we're flexible and we can adapt if we need to I will share my concerns with parking you know just to start with when there is inadequate parking that does actually contribute to the congestion because what you have happen is people are going around I've seen it time and time again spent 20 years dealing through sort development and you know anybody that's gone to a ski resort on a busy time of year and so I would say that I think parking is something that really needs to be addressed a little more deeply and the problem is none of us want to because it's the you know just the blank space over there you never want to build a stadium for Super Bowl Sunday however once you don't plan

[69:03] for it it's so hard to come back and get it and it really does have an impact on the community I think it does have an impact on people's perception of how a new development comes in and blends it with the existing community and I think that's something that I really be concerned about that's one of the reasons why I'm pretty interested in the possibilities of an Irish Broadway because that area being larger in that area having some more potential to deal with things like parking it might be a way to defuse it and that's one of the things that I'd be interested in looking at but I do think the whole notion of a emphasizing housing because this is a very good opportunity to introduce housing to an area that certainly it blends in with the local community and there's a lot of ways that you can do like some of the ideas that you know we're brought up here and I think there's a lot of different possibilities and I think some of the concepts that I saw with like the stack flats I think those work really well especially if

[70:01] you're gonna have different levels of housing and different levels of affordability sometimes those stack flats can work really well because you can have single level on top of them etcetera so there's a lot of possibilities there to essentially integrate the different the different models of housing from market-based to you know even the light that housing but I do think that you know ultimately parking is something where you know the other part of this is that if we have somewhat of a D model I think that you know the concept that there can be you know this balance of the parking for residential which maybe is there more at night and the parking for the Civic which is maybe that are more in the day becomes a lot more viable than the supermarket and I was born in New York City growing up in that area what I could say it's a lot of people there don't drive but a lot of people there are of cars and so you know my experience from Boulder and from most of the state of Colorado is people may be

[71:01] walking more than may take the bus and and we want to encourage that but most people still do have a car because there's no other way to get to the mountains there's no other way to get to a lot of other areas and so I think just the the very notion of saying how do we contemplate that and how do we figure it out and from the sounds of it you know there's not really an option to go underneath or anything like that but really trying to figure out any way to get the spaces that you know can get a little bit above and kind of pragmatically deal with what we might anticipate there I think would be great and you know are the things that I thought of this if there's a 100 foot or more setback on balsam because of what air flood issues you know there's it's possible to have some flood mitigation areas that can also be utilized as parking if we're talking about 100-year flood the one thing fortunately is doesn't happen all the time hopefully right and so I've seen that before it can be challenging but that's even one of the things or maybe that's an opportunity to introduce a little bit more but overall I mean I think there's a lot

[72:02] of potential on this area I think it's a very exciting concept and you know I really think that emphasizing housing because it's an operon an opportunity for that that you know doesn't come every day and mixing that with the potential for civic presence is probably the approach thanks everybody for all the feedback here from makes my job easier so a couple things one there's been a lot of emails that have come through have a lot of people with comments in the last couple of months and I want to just make sure we acknowledge all of the feedback that we've gotten from the community I know there was an email that came through today about a group that did a neighborhood survey and is feeling quite a bit ignored I think you referenced that neighborhood survey of over five hundred and thirtysomething people 75%

[73:01] of which expressed a preference for a lower density option that was removed from these panel of choices so I want to make sure we acknowledge that group and that group is neighbors it's not the whole city I don't think they represent the voice of the whole city but they are immediately impacted by any development because they live in that area so I know that that that group has said they are not opposed to affordable housing in fact they would like to see affordable housing on that site but they would also like to see it a development that's in line with the goals of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan and preserving the neighborhood character while achieving the other goals of the city so I think we need to make sure and actually like Judy's comment about how to you know can we take choice a if those are our four choices that we're now left with can we take that and tweak it too and come up with some kind of good compromise that is going to incorporate the desires of some of the neighbors in that area that are directly

[74:02] impacted because of the of the other issues that they're going to face such as parking and traffic so I think that's important consideration I think in terms of the housing affordability we need to ask ourselves for that location what population do we really want to serve from an affordable housing standpoint do we want to serve families do you want to serve singles do we want to serve seniors I think we need to come up with some ideas about what type of affordable housing makes sense and then how do we make that work I know that having been a resident of the Holliday neighborhood in the past for eight years myself but that's a very successful example of a mix of affordable and market rate housing with a density that seems to work for everyone although I will submit that there is parking problems up there because there's not enough street parking and there's always a fight for parking your car because I I was there

[75:02] fighting for parking my car and it's impractical to think that everybody is not going to have a car because to danny's point we do go to the mountains some of us drive to Costco for a groceries and we need a car until we have better transportation which is my other point and I think in that is in a strictly tied to this concept of developing this area is we need better public transportation and I don't I understand lyft and uber are very successful but that does not and an option that a lot of people use but that does not remove cars it does not remove emissions until they are a hundred percent renewable source vehicles so I don't like the idea of using those as transportation options for consideration that's not that's not a mass transit solution and then in terms of these designs no one's talked about height I don't think there's a lot of appetite here for in the city for over 35 feet

[76:02] people live in Boulder because they want they want to escape the big city I know a lot of us here have lived in big cities before and we choose not to live there because we don't want to be in that environment the density the height we want a little bit more open space and that's the fiber of this Boulder Valley comprehensive plan is to preserve those things so I would I would not support any option that was going to be looking at a lot of I know that there's some area right now over 35 feet because of the existing hospital but I would not support a land use that would promote a lot of 34 over 35 feet head height limit I'm gonna go again real quick some things that have come struck me throughout this entire process is we don't hear a whole lot of the number of people who are gonna be there or anything along those lines it's all about the sort of secondary impacts so

[77:00] it seems like most people have parking issues traffic issues height issues so if we can find ways to address that you know it's it seems like we're spending all our time on the impacts not the housing itself so like I get that I understand why that's where the you know sort of the reservations come from for the neighborhood and you know I think just my recommendation right now is to try to address those as the main issues right now because it doesn't seem like the people themselves are the issue it's all the things that the people create so one thing that I think we've been missing is that sort of like 3d visualization from the ground what each individual option would look like so

[78:03] that people could you know not saying we have to put on goggles and walk around the thing but some pictures of what it would look like from the ground level would probably be beneficial to sort of you know get rid of any high concerns even you know showing some visualizations of what traffic is like now and what it might be like based on the traffic impact plans you know we could do spent a video of that during the rush hour times showing what the parking looks like now and what it might look like based on any individual plan those types of things where we actually would indicate what the impacts would be physically so people can see them in their minds before we have to make decisions about them right now it's just kind of like we

[79:00] do our best to think about it and visualize it but we don't really have any physical concept of how it's gonna work so that's that's sort of what I think would allay most of the fears you know what types of housing do you want to see there personally next up yeah I guess a couple of things that they're not quite a lean in a couple of things that I was just listening to Adam then I'll kind of talk about that first from discussion standpoint it's a really difficult process this one of trying to do this high-level planning and also trying to have the picture of what this is going to look like one of my thoughts on this

[80:02] is that in some ways none of these are terribly far from each other and I think we would be better served in this entire process to let go of that desire for staff to mock up what it might look like this is the level of project that and no disrespect to staff at all Jean but in my mind we need to put broad parameters on that are acceptable ranges and then we need to see through professional design competition what we can get for that if we put out our desires as a community then we can see who can give us the best result because otherwise we end up with beige we end up in the middle and it's

[81:01] not gonna be pleasing to anybody and it's unfortunately I think how we end up with a lot of projects so just a little bit of a different perspective of how to maybe come up with a result at the end of the day where Judy's numbers or my numbers for affordable housing units and housing units their overall aren't the driving factor the driving factor is the quality of the development at the end of the day so anyway that's one of the pieces that would be feedback for me to council which is maybe a slightly different look and how we're doing it I know it's hard politically to do that but good planning good Civic results require a little bit of boldness at times so that was that's one piece another one that I really want to step into is the concept of the neighborhood

[82:03] and neighborhood character it's one as you all know always gets to me a little bit I had a response to one of our past board members letters to Council which just went to him but yeah if you look at the BBC P there are 11 references to neighborhood not all of those two neighborhood character throughout the entire document there are a hundred and seventy-nine references to our other values sustainability itself has 72 climate change diversity inclusivity are significant pieces and our focus I think needs to be balanced this piece of property is publicly zoned talking about the site as was the Mapleton Hospital my question is are we getting the greatest

[83:01] community benefit for the entire community while still being sincerely concerned with the impacts in the neighborhood and I think it's important looking forward to keep those things in mind to also think of a future as much as if not more than a present in the past the transportation thing there are changes coming we know that what they'll be we don't know yet but all housing is developed to meet a market why don't we develop housing here whose market is people who don't want cars we do that with every development we ever make let's do that here let's push towards what we're professing in the other pages of the BBC P so I

[84:01] respectfully disagree with that because if you're really wanting to do as much affordable housing as possible you're putting a big burden on people who are often working jobs at odd hours and often don't have the same options for affording lift an uber if they have to get somewhere and or paying $100 a month for a parking place if it's bundled or whatever that word is and bundles whatever unbundled and and I also want to point out I didn't count I'm very impressed that you counted all the references in the Boulder Valley comp plan or somebody told them to you but in the survey that was done prior to the finalization of the Boulder Valley comp plan they did a survey of actual people

[85:01] that was a very statistically valid survey and the two most important things to the actual people who live in Boulder are two things affordability and neighborhood character and they were one percentage point and they were the top two so I believe that neighborhood character is hugely important and I believe as I outlined in my little ditty that might have been too hard to follow but I believe there is a way you know I'm into the finding that sweet spot in the middle is my whole thing and I believe there is a way to get maximum affordable housing permanently affordable housing and not mess with a neighborhood character and then you've got a win-win situation and win for the community as well could I just ask numbers the ability to fund the

[86:06] affordability development depends on how you can have some market rate development with either cash in lieu or whether the particular private developer is putting on site an affordable or whether they're paying into the housing partners funding and things like that did you kind of happens behind the scenes I know it's probably got spreadsheets and spreadsheets on how how we can get the numbers how we can get to those numbers so I'm not sure if you did you take that into account so I did some what the I base some of it on 1440 pine which is a standalone lie tech project they didn't have to have four times the amount of their housing to count it it's a standalone project and the city did have to kick in some money for it but the tax incentive people put in something like twelve and the city put

[87:01] in one or two or something like that so that's that for the mxr to where you have ten market rate and ten affordable permanently affordable the market rate for the developer would help off balance the permanently affordable and their deal would be they would deed the ten permanently affordable or and the only reason I know more about that is because that we went through lots of discussions about the in my neighborhood and with planning staff about that so that's how I imagined it would it would be affordable and possible I don't know I you know I'm not a contractor or engineer or expert city planner but it still seems you know Kirk and his staff can take that might be helpful for staff from maybe yes for us to take a straw poll of if we had to pick a B C or D just maybe to say hey if

[88:05] I had to pick one of these it would be hey it was important to get everyone's new wants either because I said you know maybe it isn't about picking it a specific one so I want to make sure that thing is if we weren't to do anything and this just for made public land and then the city had to sell it off we don't know what the possibilities are on this particular parcel right so yeah so I said it it is currently that's a land use designation of public and a

[89:00] zoning of public which are quite restrictive so presumably for the purposes of a vision of this area we need to assign land use and then zoning and that's what this process was is trying to set up so that we can as Jacque said have at least one more step toward what we want there so that we can solicit partners and then get to the more specific site design so just sell it off this misson going away necessarily it's just gonna two things on that I mean if the City Council directed the city as they look like they might do at one point this year I think they would also direct city staff to try to change the zoning before it cancelled off so that would probably happen and that would create a whole new set of discussions and then

[90:01] the other thing I just wanted to kind of [Music] review is based on these land-use decisions that we will have the same levers and and there are TV passes for every resident for example there's we just don't know that we'll get to here so there's a lot of stuff that we can do to kind of try to make make these proposals match whatever it is that we go with it looks like there's a lot of people that see hybrids of them and see you know good parts and I'm sure as you go through you'll see you'll pull from from the different options so it doesn't necessarily it's not that even I could say which options specifically I like the best because there's certain aspects of each option that might lend itself to

[91:00] creating a hybrid over the next few weeks which it which I think it's interesting that I just wanted to say and I'm sorry really looking at the Yale use tomorrow and I think that the 20% is being pulled from the used tables so with efficiency living units will no longer require a use review specifically for that if it's over 20% I looked at the ordinance while we were sitting here so that that's my understanding on it from what we'll see tomorrow is behind that approach but I think the majority have expressed support for it and I think the majority of City Council also did so thank you for clarifying that so that makes me wonder is it possible to attach that as a restriction to whatever this ends up

[92:00] being that there would be a cyber view for for if somebody wanted a hundred percent yell use that there would have or is there gonna be a site review no matter what anyway maybe do you may know know better on this but I think that by the size of the parcels and the size of the development its it would automatically require serif you and you know if the 20% is taken out then we would have to find other criteria based ways to talk about the you the the mixed use of housing types I think that most people who have weighed in on it have come down on the 20% is a little bit arbitrary and is really is limiting possibilities where there might be a market for smaller dwelling units and we just had one come past us recently so so

[93:03] I think there was some support for removing the 20% rule because it's it's just kind of arbitrary at this point but I know that not everybody agrees I guess I guess Sam Weaver would call this a colloquy so my question is isn't there wasn't there a study done about in commuters and it showed that what most people want is they don't care for the condo or townhouse or whatever but if they really had their choice in Boulder it would be a little condo or townhome with the yard with a little teeny yard and that that was the biggest interest do you guys know that not for helping Boston specifically this is right right that affects our decision either with all al use or that was the housing choice

[94:01] survey of 2013 and that was one of the sort of quotes that was pulled out but that was kind of a common theme that a lot of people were looking for more of the yard and they could get that outside of Boulder so yes you know I'm not sure how widespread that was interesting piece on that also Judy was because I did just read that recently to kind of review it because that came up I think maybe when we were talking but the thing that I noticed in there was it wasn't necessarily a yard of their own it was a outdoor space that either was shared for you know yard type or garden or whatever but there was that desire for outdoor space was kind of the the real the real gist of that I think from from my reading of it you know but of course it's America no want of yard all right let's try to wrap this up let's do

[95:02] the quick straw poll obviously this isn't locking you into anything we just want to get a see if we have any any kind of similar interests here so from the end Juliet I would support a with some modifications this point reductions specifically if I started somewhere I'd start with B and yet as I said even with my doubts about civic uses and the like I can see the melange of these four in some way a mix of the four and picking a little bit from around so I would also start with a with some tweaks leaving open the opportunity for D if that would actually provide more land space for housing to help

[96:03] spread it around Boulder a little bit more for the site I would go for a with tweaks for the area I would go with C as I said earlier I like a with a little stronger Civic presence and I also would be inclined to support a with again some flexibility to at least contemplate the possibilities of the you know should the opportunity present itself and not leave it all off just because you're supporting a so that you know if that comes up it's certainly something that can provide a lot of benefit okay thank you sue the board member said we specifically I don't know if any of you had taken a look at the while some of you saw the survey questions that

[97:00] questionnaire that we had at the events and there's also on the online be heard builder we we didn't ask which one do you like we asked the questions because we knew we had to kind of we're probably doing a mix and match and wanted to understand the qualities of the things that people liked or didn't like him thank you so much just remember that we're trying to make it full recommendation to Council next time so you know think of how to try to have your wording right here what you're looking for specifically to try to get in that recommendation that you think we can for the most part agree on great let's take a five-minute break real quick and we'll hop back in right after 45 we're back

[103:09] we're gonna go to the East Boulder sub Community Plan Mary's role okay hello I'm Kathleen King I am the senior planner and comprehensive planning I think I've met some of you but I see some new faces we just started this project this year I think the last time I met with the housing Advisory Board we were still talking about the structure of the program and council hadn't yet selected which sub community was going to be the one that we were going to work on so um that happened this past January council selected East Boulder which is great so this is the first sub community planning process that has happened since the North Boulder sub community plan that took place in the 90s we're about

[104:03] 60% through our inventory and analysis phase and we're coming up on a major community touch point and I'll talk a little bit about that coming up here so um I'm gonna give you sort of an overview on what we've completed so far where we are in the process and then present some of our findings that we've done or we've come upon through the inventory and so some of the deliverables or work products that we've completed so far as part of the East Boulder process are that we have our work plan in place we have a communications plan for communicating with the public there's a community engagement plan project charter and so all of the sort of upfront organizational stuff has been completed we did a team site tour with a planning staff from across the city to learn more about this of community and kind of see

[105:00] the different land uses that are out there we have a project website and we've completed a previous plans memo which studied all the other planning efforts that have gone on in this area over the last maybe 20 years and that they have impacts on on our or canoes Boulder and then we also completed an inventory and analysis report outline so that report is something that we're working on right now in addition to the report we're also putting together a arcgis pro map project so GIS is a mapping and analysis tool that we use we have new software and so we're all kind of learning it and testing it but it has great potential I think for our department because a lot of what we create and the maps and analyses that we produce for this project we can host some of that stuff online and use it as

[106:00] a community engagement tool so it's there's a learning curve but it's pretty exciting and then our next big upcoming deadline is we will go to City Council in September to give an update on some of the inventory work on the community engagement process we've been collecting and put it a couple of different venues but I just kind of want to remind people what we've committed to so the East Boulder sub community plan is operating in this collaborate space of the engagement spectrum and so that promises the public that we will work together to formulate solutions and incorporate their input to the maximum extent possible so that's a big promise a big ask but we've we're doing a lot of work and working with the city manager's office community community engagement team to come up with I think some

[107:01] creative methods and great ways to document this work some of the things we've completed so far is we've developed these tenants of community engagement and I think a lot of you probably saw that in the January memo we did a kind of a fun activity in February called what do you love about East Boulder we had a series of valence out for the week of February 14th little boxes at different businesses throughout the area and collected information from folks about what they really loved about that area we participated in what's up Boulder we've held a couple of neighborhood office hours throughout the sub community at different businesses we did a walkabout at the 55th and a rapaho area sort of around foothills medical campus and and Ball Aerospace to gather

[108:03] input about people sort of experiences walking in that area and learning about a lot of the challenges of just being a pedestrian over there we established a working group so I just came from the our third meeting I'll talk a little bit about that in a bit and then we've been putting together this East Boulder sub community plan an engagement scrapbook so we're trying to kind of log all of the engagement that we do the input that we're collecting and how we're gonna use that input in this scrapbook and that we have sort of a first draft of the capture of all these events and that'll go online this week so the East Boulder working group I was just there two hours ago this group is charged with representing diverse stakeholder interests they are to share information with our communities and then they work alongside our planning

[109:01] team we have 21 members and a planning board liaison and I have to say it is a really really great group it's just everybody is really engaged they're representing interests from all over we have residents of neighborhoods to the south residents of San lázaro Park which is actually in the sub community and business owners landowners and they're all having really great conversations and it's just I'm really happy about the group there's awesome so here they are great folks so some of the upcoming engagement that we are planning on our a series of who what where why inventory workshops so we're going to be hosting I think around ten events at different times of day

[110:01] throughout the sub community to collect input on on different topics housing is going to be one of those topics and so I have some questions for you about that and we're also putting together a series of videos called sub community stories so we're working with channel eight to kind of document and capture the stories of different people that live and work in the area and we'll push those out through channel eight and then also um and a lot of our social media channels to kind of tell the story of an area that maybe people don't visit that often and then also help us to promote the process and the last thing is we have a contract with growing up Boulder to work on some youth engagement activities and and that contract starts next month so a lot of some more information about that soon so our subcommittee planning

[111:02] process is broken into these three big questions for the community who is East Boulder what do you want to be and how do we get there today we're focusing on how to answer that first question I'm gonna present an update on City staffs work so for the past few months we've been working across departments to collect an inventory of existing conditions our approach to answering this question uses two different types of information and so what we have today is really this data based inventory we're not generating new information but we're collecting and assembling some of the key facts and statistics about East Boulder mapping that information and then the second piece of our work will be to collect experience based information from the community and I'll talk more about that a little bit so for

[112:03] the data based inventory we use a lot of public information we have national resources like the census and the American Community Survey to give us some background on the population demographics things like that we use state resources such as CDOT to look at impacts of transportation traffic and some of the projects that they might be funding in the future that could impact this area and then the the resources that we really dig deep into are but the county and city databases so that provides information about property ownership land use zoning we have tons of data so here is East Boulder and this is if this is the first time you've seen I know where the area is it is bound by Foothills Parkway on the west the

[113:03] airport on the north up to the independence Road it wraps around 63rd Street on the east and then um a rapaho Avenue is the southern boundary the sub community is 1610 acres there are 691 parcels only 466 residents and then this area employs 16,000 984 people and so pretty good information but I'll kind of put that in the context of the whole city for you and so East boulders area makes up almost 10% of the sub community we have ten sub communities in the city so kind of make sense it's one-tenth the number of parcels even though we have ten percent of the land area it's only almost two percent of the properties so you know what that really tells us is

[114:01] the parcels out here are very large and there's fewer property owners than there might be in another part of town and there are 466 residents the only residential neighborhood in within the boundaries of the study areas the San lázaro Park neighborhood that makes up zero percent of the city's population and the reason is that neighborhood is actually outside the city limits they are in the county but if we were to kind of compare it it's less than 1% of the population and then almost 16 percent of everyone that comes to work in Boulder comes to work in East Boulder and so for the sub community plans really the goal of these plans is to implement citywide goals of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan and those goals fall

[115:02] into these six focus areas so I'm gonna kind of take a high-level look at some of the data that we've collected related to these six focus areas and we will start with design quality and placemaking and I'll kind of finish with the housing topics that's your your um interest and subsidy wide goals related to design quality and placemaking are to ensure that redevelopment and in Philippines and public spaces of high quality design and that they create pedestrian oriented neighborhoods um so one of the things that we consider when we're thinking about design character and quality our Historic Landmarks a lot of time they help create aesthetic character for a neighborhood there's only two historic landmarks in East Boulder and they're they're kind of hidden there's one in Belmont Park it's

[116:02] a small white house it's boarded up right now and then there's another smaller structure that's in the bike park area and we're working with historic preservation and learn more about some of the stories behind these buildings um but right now they don't have really a major visual impact on some of the broader areas of the sub community but they may have some characteristics that people in the area think are valuable so we'll study that was more and then related to the pedestrian oriented neighborhoods our Transportation Department is currently working on the pedestrian master plan for the whole city and one of the things they're studying is wok access so that's the the graphic that you're looking at on the left side of the screen they have they've been working with consultants to

[117:00] develop this model where they study the sort of presence of pedestrian facilities so the availability of things like sidewalks trails the quality of those facilities and then the third piece that is sort of new to this kind of assessment is destinations so are there actually places that people want to walk to in the area so they've put that model together and run it for the whole city this is east Boulder you can see that um not we're not rating very high and walk access so that's definitely something we'll be considering and looking at further the next focus area is resilience and climate commitment so city wide we're trying to achieve energy system resilience we want to improve our resilience to natural and economic disruptions and reduce carbon emissions so one of the big topics in East Boulder

[118:02] because this is where a lot of the city's major creeks sort of meet we have Boulder Creek South Boulder Creek Wonderland's conch Canyon Creek all have a confluence in this sub community and so there's major issues to consider related to flooding and storm water management in East Boulder 450 acres are in the high-hat and conveyance zones um a lot of this is in parks and open space land but you know some is not we have to be really sensitive as we plan for the future of some of these areas and then also you know taking into consideration the 100-year floodplain the 500-year floodplain we know we see those types of events happening more frequently we have three emergency management facilities that are also lu located in east boulder up near the airport is the Emergency

[119:01] Operations Center so they coordinate with the city in the county to respond to flooding and wildfires the airport also serves some important functions for rescues and wildfire management and then the county's communication center is located in this area they're responsible for taking calls 24 hours a day and they dispatch law enforcement um fire medical search-and-rescue and so important facilities for the region and then another kind of key component that we're looking at in studying related to stormwater management and air quality is our urban forestry and right now we measure that in canopy coverage so urban forest trees goal citywide is a 16% canopy coverage in East Boulder right now we have less than five percent so

[120:02] the fourth topic area is about small and local businesses city wide we are proactively trying to support small businesses through loan programs and grants and we're also looking for ways to retain these businesses and keep them in Boulder and hoping to find ways to provide affordable business space so as I mentioned before there are 820 businesses in the area we don't currently have a way in our data to classify what's a small local business versus a larger business but in February as part of that what do you love about East Boulder xers as a lot of people identified some of the small local businesses in the area that they really loved and so those are certainly folks that we want to reach out to and and work with we've also been working with the arts and culture department to identify all the arts related businesses in the area and we

[121:00] have a running list of those if folks are interested and providing an affordable space for these businesses is something we believe is going to be really important for consideration in the East Boulder plan historically I think a lot of businesses have chosen to locate in East Boulder because there was affordable space certainly more affordable than some other areas like downtown some of the current rental rates for different types of business spaces are are listed here and these are currently still less than other business hubs in the city like downtown but they have been trending upwards and we are aware that some East Boulder businesses have chosen to relocate both outside the sub community and the city related to arts and culture so we're looking for

[122:00] ways to include arts in the community benefit policies um as this group pretty familiar with community benefit okay the other goal is to support arts and cultural experiences oh I thought there was a question okay other goal is to support arts and cultural experiences throughout the city and so some of the things we've collected data on include the amount of public art in the area so there are three art pieces but there's also things like murals that were sort of interested in getting an inventory of because those have such a kind of visual impact on on the area um I mentioned that we've got this list going of arts related businesses and so far we've identified over twenty arts and culture related businesses including places like art galleries the boulder dinner-theater boulder creative collective and then we're also looking

[123:01] at kind of what types of festivals and cultural events go on a nice Boulder we know about three of them there is the upslope get down which is an event that takes place in Flatiron Business Park in collaboration with Absolut brewery they've got music food trucks games there's also an aerial dance festival that's coming up at the end of this month and then there's a big cyclocross which i had to google what cyclocross is but it's a type of bike race that's a big event that takes place in film on bike park so now on to the juicy stuff housing affordability and diversity so some of our citywide goals as described in our comp plan include increasing the number of affordable units increasing the diversity of housing types and increasing the number of housing units

[124:00] in commercial and industrial areas so some of the data we have so far as I mentioned before there's only one residential area that offers housing within the boundaries of the sub community that area includes 313 home sites and it's a manufactured home community so they're all sort of a similar product there's not a lot of diversity there see and then related to increasing housing in industrial and commercial areas about 55% of the sub communities land use is industrial light industrial or commercial so we're gonna have to work with the community to consider where housing may be appropriate in these areas the next focus area is about balancing jobs and housing so again looking at housing and commercial and industrial areas and then

[125:03] another kind of big topic that falls under this category is about increasing access to multimodal transportation options to help alleviate some of the traffic that's generated by commuters from outside the area so today around 17,000 jobs that includes people that are self employed in this area 820 businesses we took a look at the number of residential properties that are within half a mile of the area because that sort of considered a reasonable distance for people to consider alternative modes of transportation like walking or or biking and there's around 3,000 properties so just to clarify that numbers just properties it doesn't indicate number of units or residents and then the other thing we are studying because there's so many businesses and employers in this

[126:00] area is how many employers provide eco passes so 38 of the areas businesses provide eco passes for employers our transportation department has found that the more eco pass holders we have in the city the more transit commute trips that we see so which isn't super surprising but they did a recent study and found that a 20% increase in Eco pass holders has correspondent with a 10% decrease in single occupancy vehicle trips which is pretty significant but we know that you know convenient access to bus routes and transit stops plays a key role in this and so it's something that is an issue in this area and we will continue to study so this is that's a sort of a

[127:02] really brief snapshot of some of the stuff that we've been collecting and studying and looking at we're working on a more comprehensive report that we hope to have out for review towards the end of next month maybe early September but I kind of want to just be clear you know that that is all sort of just the data just the facts what's in the computer we want to really compare that with and supplement it with what we're calling an experience based data so the human experience of being in and around East Boulder what do people like or not like about East Boulder how are they using the area and moving through it and we have to go out to the community to understand this and really complete that picture of existing conditions and so there's all kinds of ways that we can

[128:00] collect this type of data primarily will depend on the community to tell us what their experiences are we have a couple of things going on to complete this experience based data the first thing is this East Boulder working group inventory session that just happened earlier today a lot of great discussion a lot of great input on on some of the things that maybe we have mapped that they found from their experience to be inaccurate so we'll have to go back and look at some of that data and then a lot of really interesting questions generated from that group things that they really want to know more about that we're going to study yes so when you're doing these working sessions is it just with residents of this area or is it people who work there as well like what's the make up yeah so there are 21

[129:01] members and then a Planning Board liaison there are residents of the San lázaro neighbourhood and there are residents of the neighborhoods south of Arapaho who have kind of great interest in East Boulder sub community there are business owners landowners and people that work in the area but don't live there it's a pretty diverse crowd actually that's kind of people of all ages which is really nice and yeah a lot of different interests so then coming up into August we're gonna do these in-person engagement events so we'll be hosting a series of events throughout the sub community different times of day different locations to ask people about their experiences with transportation our housing interest all kinds of things to

[130:00] collect that direct feedback from the public right now it looks like this is going to be happening the second week of August I think we're pretty close to locking down the dates and times a couple of these are businesses so we're working with some of the folks in the private sector to organize that and make sure we're all getting what we need and so in addition to those events there will also be similar exercises available online for people to participate in we will be combining all of the feedback that we get from both in-person events and the online participation with our staff inventory work and that will all go into this inventory and analysis report so as we move into this community engagement process really getting at

[131:00] questions related to housing and trying to assess kind of people's temperature about housing in East Boulder I would love to hear from this group what would you like to ask what would you like to know from the community about existing housing or potential future housing in East Boulder and then you know whatever questions this group comes up with we're all going to talk about them and they'll be included and in what we ask the community when we go out I can also answer questions about the data I'm gonna start real quick just with I can you go to just any of the maps great does this does the East Boulder include the airport itself yes it does okay and has there been any talk about

[132:01] utilization of that piece of property is something other than an airport so right now we are just collecting information I'm just looking at existing conditions we are collaborating with Transportation Department and I know that the airport will be doing or updating the airport master plan I think 2024 but sort of around that time if that's not the right year of course I have questions thank you so much I thought that was fabulous and congratulations on having a good meeting today I just have I find this whole area fascinating and I don't know as much about East Boulder as I should but I'll try and keep my questions just a housing are there some farms or agricultural properties in this land so

[133:01] historically there were that land has transitioned from more agricultural to a lot of the area was mined kind of early 1900s and that's why there's so many ponds out there is it some leftover mining pits but today there's no agricultural land there's quite a bit of open space and actually the city is the largest landowner in east folder and although there are no other neighborhoods other than San lázaro are there a sprinkling of houses here and there earlier there hardly any houses but San lázaro no it's really just an Lazaro and my last question is and again it may be too premature for you to know this at this point but do you think then there will be the possibility of some residential building in this area I

[134:03] think that incorporating housing in East Boulder is definitely something worth studying and exploring with the community I think there's some great potential and opportunity for housing there but we haven't tested anything there to talk to the community about that yet so what strikes me is when we talk about jobs housing imbalance that this is clearly exists always struck me about this I used I lived just south of this and it used to work north of it so when I ever I drove through the Flatirons Business Park especially in like the later evening it's just a dead zone of activity altogether because

[135:01] people are just there for the day and then nothing really is going on at night at all so that's always been weird to me that we have such a part of town and it's a pretty big part of town that's completely unutilized about 14 hours out of the day so I think this is definitely an opportunity to put more people closer to where they work as well as maybe some utilizations for that space when it mostly unutilized for a large portion of the day yeah you know as the area kind of developed over time there was a lot of heavy industry and a lot of land uses that really aren't attractive for people to live that has

[136:00] shifted a lot and so things that were heavy industrial that produced a lot of noise a lot of smells things like that have transitioned out not entirely we definitely have some major industrial facilities out there still but a lot of them have turned over to office and so office is a little bit more compatible with residential and so I think that's where we may see some flexibility and and potential for incorporating housing I'm just curious I know you're focused on this but I'm looking at these 33 68 properties within a half mile of the sub community in those areas what's the jobs numbers there in other words a half mile it's relatively close this Center right and so I suppose you know I also immediately respond by saying man let's

[137:01] get some housing in there right but it seems like there's already quite a bit of residential there and so I'm just wondering you know how that how will you engage with I suppose you know looking at the impacts from just outside the sub community on the sub community that seems like a you know again that it grows it but it seems like it's a significant impact yeah there are definitely some pretty dense residential areas surrounding there that provide some some housing options I would say the boundary line that's drawn on here is not limiting sort of our scope of understanding or what we will study related to impacts of any proposed plans we'll certainly look at how any concepts may impact surrounding residue

[138:01] and surrounding businesses kind of you know east arapahoe is a major transportation corridor so that that'll be really influential so yeah well we'll be kind of looking both citywide regionally to some extent and but focused on what changes or impacts can we make directly within that area okay so that was my questions for us but as far as what I'd like to suggest that you may want to ask the community is first of all I thought Jack's idea was really good about including the people you asked be people in those neighborhoods just to the is that the south just to the south about those neighborhoods and and it to me it would be sort of a two-parter of questions and the first

[139:00] would be listing all the different types of housing that you could possibly think of townhouses apartment single-family homes whatever and just say I guess the first would be would you like to see more housing in this area the second one to be if so which of these pick as many as you like would you like and then the third question just simply where it would be an open-ended question and that would be my thought forgetting the the most open community engagement that's great those are pretty much echoing my questions but an additional question would be what is your level of interest in housing in establishing housing and non residential zoned areas and then what is your interest in mix of

[140:02] affordable permanently affordable housing and what types of affordable housing for purchase for rent how much coverage is on a parcel so each private property owner owns their personal there's a building on it and usually a parking lot for the most part out there know that how much is that building covering the land because question is I think the best way to add housing to this part of town is by the massive amounts of parking that's out there I think this part of town is more function over fashion largely it's it's

[141:00] maybe not you know the most attractive place because it's largely their office buildings industrial flex all that kind of stuff which serves a very important function and I hate to see that go away to try to be redeveloped into something else it's going to be much more expensive across the board so the way I think you can put housing here is to incentivize the property owners to say hey you have all this excess parking your mother's excess property that's not being used right now especially at night and and incentivizing them to both housing there some of which obviously will be affordable and and maybe that's a way to incorporate housing into what is largely a lot of office buildings in industrial and and flex type space what I would hate to see is incentivizing property owners to redevelop and thereby do that reasonably priced commercial space and turn it into very expensive space even

[142:04] farther so I think the incentive should be not working an office building or whatever $20 a square foot how can use that excess land parking lot to add housing that's where I think the focus should be for housing in this part of town this is just an observation a little different than the things that either of you notice about the neighborhood I was recently at up slope brewery for an event and I guess 00 and I was very surprised that many of the little individual units around there seemed to have artists in them and seemed to be having stuff going on that when we left

[143:01] upslope I thought that was pretty exciting see so it seemed it's not like they had a wild nightlife or they have a lot of restaurants right in that area but they did seem to have something happening that I thought was pretty cool yeah there are because industrial spaces allow give artists kind of the room to work on big projects there the buildings are equipped with the type of sort of exhaust and and things that they may need for I don't know blow torches all kinds of crazy stuff there are a lot of artists that are in this area and the space is affordable for them today so it definitely we've we've been sort of uncovering more and more artists that are working out here and a lot of them have art all over Boulder so it's really cool I was just gonna say

[144:00] you know the question I think as is being alluded to here is to expand out and and ask that question what do the property owners see as I guess not only the property owners but the property owners and the business owners or tenants see as their needs for the affordable workspace and what they can both provide and what they need and how that again might mesh with housing in their minds you know those tenants who are in those buildings working and and what kind of housing kind of a line that might work best for them that could get them you know right there we're gonna be looking at the opportunities own stuff tomorrow night and one of the proposals that's going forth is to kind of put the

[145:00] efforts to look at modifying the use tables in our zoning to allow more uses in light industrial to kind of a-line with this project so I don't know if you've started to talk a little bit about that but we do have a subcommittee working on use table changes that I'm chairing and it would be really interesting to to get some opportunities to kind of you know maybe send some of our committee members to the public engagement but also see what you're thinking in terms of not just residential that maybe some additional retail or restaurant possibilities in live industrial I think questions an area plan like this would be a really good opportunity to kind of make sure the unintended consequences are examined and things like that so I don't know if you know part of this

[146:03] community is within the opportunity zone and so we will be looking at how those you know how the plan influences the opportunity zone opportunities and how the opportunity zone opportunities and challenges I guess can play a role in what we plan for the future of this area but we are working with community vitality to sort of look at some of the kinks of the program and see where we might align but I don't have any other information beyond that just looking at some of those numbers and the zero-percent population and 17,000 jobs I think maybe it's a little insight like on the ground insight from people who are from that area a in terms of whether the commuter traffic patterns like you know from their own experiences from their subjective experiences looks like there's probably a lot of

[147:01] people driving in there where they're driving in from Jacque brought up a good point if it's just from the adjacent communities and that's where most of the housing is that really speaks to a lot of the need or the tourism and I think another interesting question would be what areas seem to be antiquated or you know I kind of you know what areas could stand to have some improvement there's some vitalization brought into it you know that may be housing can support from the business owners do the business owners support housing a I think you know housing for actual on-site employees I mean that's another important part of housing in a lot of areas like this like when we talk about like an artist studio you know the concept of having an artist studio that's also residential can be wonderful right and with a lot of these other businesses with office parks etc right is there a way to bring housing in there

[148:03] that really is for more on-site employees or area employees and then the other one is what transit improvements could be made that can make it more suitable and more accommodating to people living there because I think that's probably an issue from my experience over there seeing that as an issue and the last one is what support is there for like height variations because certainly going back to that notion of on-site employees and the Upstairs Downstairs model and i know that a lot of the buildings there tend to be of the more expansive you know lower profile more experience of buildings and is there some way where some more flexible zoning on things like height or setbacks might make it more accommodating for housing without losing the industrial which is you know essential for any community all right okay we'll just put everything over the industrial that you know you need it you

[149:01] know you have to have somewhere to have a toll wide etc so those are some things that I think you know maybe people that live there that have a good feel for you know the ebb and flow of how those things feed into the community and then how suitable that community can be to introduce housing and affordable housing over there because certainly there's room there's space and there's jobs are not a lot of residents so there's no other comments we'll wrap that in the hair inputs all right next up under matters from the board we have committee and project liaison reports this is specifically for the engagement committee and we're gonna do a quick discussion on the approach to the August listening session so just to remind everyone we're talking about how

[150:00] to raise table discussion additional things that we're hoping for this one is staff to provide the ways that we already and some of the ways that we can't do certain laws or restrictions that we have so we can actually have that kind of typed up in advance so we can send that out to the groups that we have they have some idea of like we already do what we can do probably get a PowerPoint together to give you a sense of what will be covered sure in terms of a detailed memo in advance would be

[151:04] beneficial for sure that way we don't have to go through a whole lot of the questions or suggestions that might not even be possible so I'll have just a couple things we took the list of affordable housing providers that had been given to us by staff for our last one and then we also built a list of all the groups we could think of that might be interested like better Boulder and plan folder and everything else in between the the homeless shell the Center for people with disabilities Boulder housing partners is having someone speak for a few minutes to about sort of their wish list and and what they do for affordable housing and so we

[152:03] already sent out an email save the date email and have already received or five six responses from people and then we'll send something else out again we're working with Zach from the communications department and he's going to help get things on next door Boulder and put it out throughout the city information and he gives us good ideas on how to message properly and we sent out that you might not have seen yet I'm afraid that what we were hoping to have be the letter to the editor you want to mention something about that okay I think I think because you send out at me I think we wanted feedback by the end of this month and and we have a word count of exactly 300 words it can't be more than that and it's just from me and Adam

[153:00] has the engagement committee so if if people have any reasons why they don't want it on or they don't want to use their name on it or because you can only send things in once a month or whatever that's covered and and we'll do more publicity towards the end oh I know Zach said that it's possible that after the meetings over and it's archived and available on video he's going to see if it's possible to get something a questionnaire on be heard Boulder just asking people what their ideas were for how to raise money so biggest takeaway there if you have any edits to the letter to the editor centered around again we're hoping for those so that's kind of the action item there otherwise we're gonna take about an hour to an hour and a half of the next meeting plan on that as the start of the August meeting so it's gonna be

[154:03] pretty full considering we have that and then also a recommendation that's why I wanted to try to get as much on the table tonight for a recommendation for Alpine balsam as Possible's just so we don't have to but several big things up against each other in one meeting if you have no idea even what the heck we're talking about we'll talk to you afterwards and bring you up to speed it's we're doing a couple of listening sessions with the public to try and increase public engagement and get more input about housing issues great next thing so we've kind of had keep in mind we only have five meetings until the end of the year so at the next meeting Jacque and I kind of intend which again

[155:02] adds to kind of things that we want to tackle next week so that was kind of our commitment that we made but Judy are you sent out for a list of things that she's interested in considering and having in the letter for Council so if you want to review those making the additions or anything else that you might we gotta start thinking about this right now so that we're not scrambling at the end of the year these aren't things we're gonna vote on at any of these meetings till much closer to the end of the year these are just topics so we can all get familiar and find out sort of a sense of what people are interested in since since this letter is going to be especially important because there'll be a brand new council and they're gonna be forming their work plan for the coming year so any weave ideas we have about things we would suggest that they study

[156:01] we will actually vote on at a later time but right now we want to just start discussing it in some detail and the next thing is a housekeeping matter from Judy do you want to explain that so there are a number of things that Adam and I have done on on the engagement committee which right now is really the only active committee and we came up with principles that everybody voted on and it went through many iterations before we arrived at the final one and we've come up with various plans that that everybody voted on and I realized in going back through everything it's almost impossible to find out which was the final version because sometimes we changed text on that screen during the meeting so I'm just asking that we all agree upon that whenever we vote on on words or change recommendations or do

[157:00] something more there's an iteration over a month or two that that the final copy either be put on our packet for the next month if that works or in the minutes and it says on it final final approved copy and the date that that we all voted on it just as a housekeeping issue so we don't all have different ideas of what's going on so Jamie I don't think that's necessarily anything we have to vote on it's more like a best practice to put it in the following packet whenever we have an item like that yeah I mean we're happy to do that a reminder we'd be helpful and we'll make sure it gets them either the notes or the packet that's the probably easiest way to do it perfect okay matters from staff that's me so I'll start with downpayment assistance but I also have some updates on community benefit large lot large

[158:00] homes the TMP you're talking about you have a full August agenda all of these projects are kind of coming to a head right now so we'll have to do some creative agenda planning for August so let me talk about middle-income downpayment assistance so I've been working on this for just over a year now year and a half actually and we went to Council last night Council basically the direction they gave was to move forward with the pilot we would issue bond or take out a line of credit of 10 million dollars that would not raise taxes so that's using the city's existing bonding capacity I think there's a lot of confusion about that I saw a couple of emails today and council their direction was it really needs to focus on households earning 120 percent AMI and less so that's the

[159:01] maximum the there's still some challenges with how it gets structured in terms of what the allowed appreciation rate would be for those two eateries directed permanently affordable homes back up does everyone understand what the basic idea this program dan you can say no so the ideas to help the middle income households afford a home in Boulder the city would provide downpayment assistance up to two hundred thousand in some cases basically and if you which is not that much you're talking about a six hundred thousand dollar home basically you know the city would have to provide one hundred and thirty-eight thousand thousand dollars to a household earning one hundred and twenty percent ami which is roughly 120,000 for a family of four so that assistance would be provided to

[160:00] the family in in the form of his second mortgage the city would basically loan the money there would be no payments on that second mortgage so it keeps their overall housing cost down for the first ten years at the end of ten years that payment would be due back to the city so we could pay our lenders and it would be do the principal one hundred and thirty eight thousand plus interest so that homeowner / doesn't have to refinance or if they were to sell earlier they would have to pay whatever was due at that point so council basically said reiterated the importance of making it affordable to hustles earning 120% ami they said that they want to keep the ten year period and they wanted to provide some sort of some form of hard potential hardship you know if you know if there was challenge in terms of you know if your income does

[161:00] not go up over time you might have trouble refinancing that balloon payment at the end of ten years so we're moving forward with the potential ballot measure inline ballot measure this fall that would enable that and then the program would potentially be up and running in January but like I was saying I think there's still a few questions because that first household we up to the subsidized by 138,000 it doesn't buy down the price of that middle-income home at deed restricts it says it can only appreciate by two percent so at the end of ten years they're still going to be a gap between what a hundred and twenty percent of household can afford versus you know today versus ten years from now does that make sense right whether the deed restriction be for those ten years would it be its permanent in perpetuity okay yes Judy I just have something I don't understand that I'm sure you can explain to me what's right hopefully I'll understand

[162:01] after that since you're using money that doesn't increase people's taxes on your pilot program why does it have to go so it's a Tabor taxpayer Bill of Rights requirement that says anytime there's a multi-year obligation by a jurisdiction there needs to be approval from the voters so the the ballot measure language is clearly all the Guinness states it's all we're doing is is using our existing bonding capacity and it will not result in raising taxes and the idea is the city is loaning this money out right but we're getting it back at the end of 10 years consideration given to possibly I'm having some portion of this trial examine non permanently affordable properties that could appreciate for the middle income

[163:02] homeowners so that they you know there might be a different realize the appreciation that those of us who by market rate appreciating so last night we presented two options one was at two percent appreciation other was at four percent appreciation which would be roughly what it would cost the city to borrow the money so this is certain elegance in that console didn't even go for the four percent and so and really the range is two percent up to seven seven is market appreciation that's basically with homeowners in Boulder I've gotten in the past ten years so that four percent makes it extremely difficult for 120 percent ami actually goes up to one hundred and ninety four percent am I to be able to afford that what council was pretty adamant that's and there was consensus around this that it really needs to focus on middle-income that if if the a.m. eyes keep increasing that we're not serving

[164:00] the population that we want to serve the affordable units that are involved will be considered part of our 15% goal for 2035 well the currently the way it's defined it's low moderate and middle-income oh yeah so assuming it we're still serving people at 120 percent am i that could be challenging so we're not also said that they're not promising that we would offer this type of subsidy to future buyers so there is a potential that because even with it increasing at 2% there's still that gap in 10 years over any future purchaser so if they can't afford someone can't meet the Inc current requirements for income limits or asset limits the city might still have to step in and potentially purchase that property okay that makes sense okay

[165:03] was there much discussion on the notion of how this might impact the lending potential on those properties because I think is a lot different than when you have a development that's you know affordable local workforce instead of because you're taking a market Union and you're putting those constraints on it I have just seen I had a lot of experience with banks just trying to wrap their heads around it and stuff like that so I'm just curious if that was things that had some pretty good experience with the deed restriction program local lenders are familiar with how it works so you know we currently have over 800 home ownership units in the program that are deed restricted it's but it is a different scale right and so you're talking about middle income you're talking about bigger dollars I'm a bigger potential gap and that was

[166:02] discussed sort of what happens if you try to refinance and your appreciation has been limited but I think the discussion was and at the end of ten years you've built up in principle you are required to have a down payment so you still have some skin in the game and that theoretically should cover you does that make sense so is this essentially just trying to get more sort of lifetime owners who don't really have the intent selling after a long time thank you I would say so okay and I think it's recognizing that the average tenure of a an affordable home in Boulder is 7 years so a lot of people this is going to be probably maybe their first home purchase and particularly if they earn well above 100 20 20 % ami they're going to move on

[167:01] to something else so more foot than the foot in the door then exactly the idea is we had well it's it's one method to get additional inventory of permanently affordable housing so this program is for existing already restricted we're talking about restricting additional housing with part of this program so the idea is we are providing assistance for home buyers to purchase homes on the market and then free market homes free market homes yep so six hundred thousand one hundred and twenty percent ami you can't afford that rest early you need some assistance so in exchange for that assistance so eight hundred and thirty eight thousand we say you're gonna have to just accept a lower appreciation rate understanding fortuity food I thought I understood now I'm just

[168:07] do the deed restriction [Music] I mean it certainly wouldn't add to our affordable housing goals over necessarily but in 10 years there would be a much larger leverage for for refinancing and and then or selling and upgrading to a different home so why can we go with just 2% I guess so the belief is that with the 2 percent appreciation limit then it's more likely to be affordable to middle-income households ok so again the ok permanently affordable deed restricted

[169:00] you're right I mean your typical downpayment assistant down payment assistance used elsewhere in the country is you offer a low no interest loan some are grants and that helps people buy into the market would be actually the first to require a deed restrictions in exchange for the assistance ok thank you ok there's more what else do we get so community benefit Community Benefit is still awaiting for analysis from a consultant to sort of figure out what we can do so are you guys familiar the original ambitions for Community Benefit were extremely broad councils direction was let's focus it down to really just affordable housing so that work is underway they have Planning Board scheduled for September 5th and go to council on

[170:03] September 17th and October 15th so that's happening right now we can come back to it at large homes large Lots that's going to plan board August 15th and city council on the 13th and 17th of September and then the TMP transportation master plan there's a draft out in mid-august and they're going to council on September 17th that is August 15th at Planning Board and then City Council September 3rd and 7 September 17th so that's the current schedule you heard Jane's response before about Alpine balsam but there is kind of this convergence that typically happens before an election there's a desire to get a lot done so so I apologize but the

[171:00] a lot of this happens and it's not something that staff can necessarily control so it's a lot of different projects that I know there's interest from this board and you may not have the time at the capacity to respond to them all so the only one I heard that we might have the chance to push into September was community benefit and that already has been whittled down essentially to affordable housing so there's probably not a whole lot we can provide they're not necessarily okay I mean I would say that's actually the one that is them is most pertinent to you okay I would also say I didn't know that about community housing that they were a community benefit that they'd whittled that down to just affordable housing and I'm pretty excited and I bet you know the recommendation we make is yay I just

[172:05] thought that was really good news well the big question is sort of how much can you require the big question is how much can you require 110 percent okay thanks for that update this sounds like the agenda committee has you have some considerations to make great one other thing for you yeah so the whole issue of conflict of interest just a quick reminder so Aaron Poe the city attorneys from the City Attorney's Office sent to Verona an email was that in June so and I just pulled that one important sort of nugget so if you do not believe that your participation in a meeting would be would violate a prohibition or expectation in the code of conflict primarily impartiality then

[173:05] she recommends giving a statement on the record at the start of the matter to the effect that you believe you can be impartial and you will consider all of the information provided so I think that's a keeping in mind all of Aaron's advice over the past months and years but I think that's just a good practice to consider and also I just wanted to mention counsel on July 16th they did have a discussion about boarding commission expectations particularly around social media so if you weren't aware that's it's our our five and twenty minutes and the City Attorney's Office offered to provide an update to the guidelines to include social media norms and expectations so I don't know exactly when that's gonna come back but it should be fairly soon so I just wanted to share that you see that was July what meeting was it July 16 16

[174:10] anything else for Jay Jay anything else for us alright debrief real quick anyone have anything to say about the medium plans for the next meeting hey hey nice job staying on schedule so happy I can't believe the time on the clock right now I'd like three four just a 20-minute debrief no I I just wanted to say that kind of discussion wise and kind of a call a queer whatever that flow I thought was good to just kind of get that sense of where we're at and what things you know we we actually can dig into a little bit maybe get some

[175:00] good good results so it was good so next time around I'm definitely gonna try to stick firmly to timeline that's gonna be a big part of fitting in everything we have to fit in so whenever you you know try to come with your statements ready Jay any information about anything that we can have in advance that we don't have to review within the meeting itself would really be beneficial that's sort of a best practice of the board to try to get things ahead of time and review them and yeah that way we can sort of keep our timelines a little tighter and go home on time so let's anyone motion to adjourn

[176:07] - Parris I felt like that [Music]