July 16, 2024 — Planning Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

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

[0:02] So I do need to read each of the call up items in full, correct or not. I don't think you have to read them all in full. refer to the item in front of them, and it's been published. 3 possible call ups all final plaits. and the 1st one is the subdivision of a lot at 8 0. 5 Yale. do any planning board members have questions about that? With Kurt? Thanks. I sent in questions and thank you very much to staff for the detailed answers to my questions. Sorry. still processing a cookie just to follow up. It sounded like

[1:03] the if I do my calculations correctly. Currently, there is a sidewalk on the property, and then I assume that the the current property boundary is 4 feet in. From that the edge of that sidewalk? That's correct. And then we're getting an additional 4 feet. Correct. Okay. that's all I wanted to confirm. Thank you very much. So I have no interest in calling this up. Item. item 3 B final plot to replat lot 2 of the boulder Jewish community. Common subdivision into 2 lots. Does anyone have questions about this one or a desire to call it up? Okay, seeing none. Moving on to item 3 C final plat to subdivide out lot a shining mountain subdivision filing number one into 17 lots and outlots A through C.

[2:07] anyone have questions, concerns about this one? Ml. yes. So my questions. I have 2 questions. How is the construction phasing schedule changed? It wasn't clear as to what impact? it sounds like the development of these 2, the townhouse and the residential lots is changed from what the schedulers do we? So I'm just curious if we have any idea what the impact to the construction schedule. Well, I mean, that's more of a question about the Site Review than the subdivision. But if Chandler Van Skoc, who is the case. Manager might be able to talk a little bit about

[3:04] just generally, if he's available. I'm here! Here. You have an echo. Apologies and saying, that start my video because the host has stopped it. yeah, so that that was in the Site Review. Can everyone hear me. Yes. Okay? So that was dealt with through the Site Review amendment that happened recently. And it's not really a part of the subdivision. But. Oh! They amended the a phasing plan to basically remove sequencing requirements for the single family portion of the development which has not been subdivided yet. Or come in for tech talks yet. So it's in the future. But initially there was a requirement that they complete the construction. Starting at the west and moving east.

[4:01] and they removed that requirement from the conditions of approval. Oh. Well, that clarifies it. I thought I remembered something about the scheduling. yep, that was my question. Thank you so much. Okay. the final possible call up. Item item 3D. Final plait to create one lot, dedicate Olson, drive right of way and dedicate and vacate easement on the 15.8 3 acre property at 30, 45, 28th Street questions about this. Kate. All right. That completes agenda. Item 3. And we're on to our public hearings.

[5:00] The 1st one item 4. A public hearing concept, plan, review. and comment. Request on a partial redevelopment of the 1.8 7 7 acre development developed property at 2717, Glenwood Drive. the existing 37, unit 2. Story walk-up, L-shaped apartment building would remain. and a proposed 3 Story 22 unit multifamily building would be constructed over a portion of the existing parking lot. 2 stories of a residential, 2 stories of residential over parking proposed unit types include efficiency living units elus, one bedroom and 2 bedroom units reviewed under case number Lur, 202-40-0012. So we'll, as usual in concept reviews. We'll have a staff presentation

[6:01] and clarifying questions from the board to staff. Then the applicant presentation, clarifying questions to the applicant. Then the public comment. followed by board deliberations. So with that Staff can take it away. All right. Good evening, board. Are you able to hear me? Okay. talk a little louder, a little closer. Good, thank you. Well, good evening. I'm Shannon Moeller with the city of Boulder Planning department, and I'm pleased to be here tonight with you to take you through the 27 27, 1 7 Glenwood concept plan. So I'll briefly touch on the information provided in Staff's Memo and go through the the Concept Plan review guidelines the site and surrounding context and give you some key issues for discussion.

[7:11] So the purpose of the Concept Plan Review is to go through the General development plan for the site and help identify key issues in advance of a more detailed site review submittal. So the applicant receives feedback from the board staff and the public. So, as you know, no formal action is being taken tonight, just feedback in terms of public notification. The property was posted, and notice provided to property owners within 600 feet. Some written public comments about this project were received, and those are included in the Board's packet. The property is just under 1.9 acres. It's located just north of Glenwood Drive, between Folsom Street and 28.th

[8:01] It's surrounded by developed residential properties on most sides as well as Elmer's 2 Mile Park to the north. It was originally developed in 1978 as apartments in a two-story L-shaped building with surface parking. Here you can see some of the surrounding properties. To the west are single family homes dating from the early 1960 S. To the northwest are the Grapewood townhomes, constructed in 1977. To the north is Elmer's 2 Mile Park. It's a neighborhood park with a play area shelter, multi-use path and water access. Just to the east is the two-story Glenwood village apartments. They were built in 1972. The Planning Board also reviewed a concept plan for this property back in January 2023. And it's currently going through the site review process to the south. Across across Glenwood are the Willow Brook townhomes. They were constructed in 1977,

[9:06] and just 1 8th mile to the east is 28th Street, a major transportation corridor with a variety of commercial uses, including the Safeway grocery store restaurants, retail and services. Here you can see the site is impacted by floodplains and wetlands of Elmer's 2 Mile Creek that goes through the northeast corner of the site. There's an existing drainage easement for the creek, and a pedestrian and bicycle easement for the multi-use path outside of the creek area. This site is largely flat, with some areas of gentle slopes. and there are several mature cottonwood trees throughout the site, which are a unique feature of this property in terms of transportation connections. The site is well connected with the adjacent multi-use path shown in green that runs through the site, and it's right along a designated bike route along Glenwood Drive.

[10:03] The site is also close to 28th Street, which has access to several major transit routes, including the 205, the 208, the Bolt and the bound bus routes. On this site. The Bvcp Land use. Designation is high density residential, which is intended for attached residential units at a density of more than 14 units per acre. and the site is zoned. Fourh. 4. Residential high, 4, which allows for attached dwelling units and efficiency dwelling units, living units as are proposed. With this project. Here you can see, the property is surrounded by a mix of different zoning districts. So, moving to the specific proposal. Here you can see the site plan. This proposal would involve a partial redevelopment of the site, so the existing L-shaped apartment building would remain, and the proposed three-story 22 unit new building would be constructed over a portion of the existing parking lot. So it would be. 2 stories of residential over one story of parking.

[11:13] The proposed unit types include efficiency, living units, one bedroom and 2 bedroom units. There's a proposed pedestrian Paseo between the existing and the new buildings that provides pedestrian access which ranges from about 15 to 24 feet wide. The existing curb cut into the site would be moved slightly west, and new bike parking and trash and recycling would be provided on the site. In this zoning district a minimum of 30% of usable open space is required. This site is largely providing that in the setbacks at the north, south, and east sides of the site and parking is provided at surface parking and under the proposed building. The proposal includes an 18% parking reduction that's anticipated, which can be reviewed with the Site Review.

[12:09] The applicant provided some conceptual renderings illustrating the desired scale and style of the building. It includes that under building parking, which is fronted along Glenwood Drive, with the building, entry, stairs, elevator, and mail room, and then the apartments on the upper 2 floors. This design is flat roof design, and it has a setback of about 20 feet from Glenwood Drive, where the existing building, as you can see in the rendering is set back about 40 feet. Here you, on the proposed building elevations, you can see the materials which include Cmu cementitious siding and adhered stone in terms of the required processes. Again, this proposal would require a site review. The parking reduction request can be considered as part of that process, and following the Site Review. It would require technical documents for final plans and a preliminary and final plat to consolidate the property as one platted lot.

[13:17] So, moving to key issues for discussion. Staff identified the following 3 issues for the Board to discuss for the 1st key issue, which is, if the proposal is generally compatible with the goals, objectives, and recommendations of the Boulder Valley comprehensive Plan. Staff found the proposal was consistent with the Bvcp. Designation of high density residential, since it would provide for apartments close to major corridors and services, and the additional housing and infill would be compatible with the Bvcp policies listed toward the top of the slide relating to jobs, housing, balance, channeling development to areas with adequate infrastructure, a compact development pattern and preserving existing housing.

[14:06] however, staff is recommending revisions to the proposal to better address several other BCC. Policies at the time of Site Review. related to the design of the project staff recommends updates to the proposal to improve the consistency with policies 2.3 6 and 2.4 1. These are related to the design of the project. In particular, we recommend addressing the relationship between the existing and the proposed buildings through the building design location and massing to help mitigate the impacts of the new building on the existing structure. we also recommend revisions to the building design along Glenwood and on the sides adjacent to the existing building, to better incorporate human-scale design details, and a more approachable transparent ground floor design.

[15:02] We also recommend that the site design be revised to provide for more functional open space on the site, as the current design has the narrow pedestrian Paseo that doesn't lend itself to a comfortable gathering space with opportunities for mature landscaping. Additionally in support of policy, 2.3 8, which is the importance of urban canopy, street trees and streetscapes. Staff would also like to see how the proposal could be adjusted to preserve additional trees on the site. and how those could benefit the site design and the open spaces. And lastly, staff recommends the applicant. Consider if a greater than 18% parking reduction could be supported at the time of Site Review. If it's supported by an appropriate Tdm proposal to potentially help reduce the impact of the parking on this site. moving to key Issue 2. This was Board's feedback on conceptual site plan and building design. Staff took a look at a preliminary review of the proposal against relevant city standards and the Site Review criteria.

[16:12] So I wanted to highlight a few of those that were listed in the memo. The 1st was related to site design, boulder, fire rescue identified issues with the proposed access and circulation design which limits access to the existing structure and emergency response to that building. so Staff would recommend that as part of adjustments to address that issue, that the overall design be revised to better address, pedestrian and vehicle circulation throughout the site next given that the site, again, is located close to some transportation facilities, transit, and services and amenities. The applicant could consider a greater parking reduction at the time of Site Review. and lastly, as discussed on the previous slide staff, would also recommend updates to the site design to improve the usable open spaces, preserve as many mature trees as possible, and improve the relationship between the buildings and the public realm.

[17:12] and the proposal should be updated to address certain specific site Review criteria regarding the building, detailing and building materials. This encourages simple detailing across the building and a high quality, human-scaled material design. So in terms of next steps following tonight's hearing, the proposal would move forward to call up consideration before city Council. If it's not called up, then the applicant can move forward with submitting a site review application. The application is a staff level review. subject to call-up by the planning board, unless the parking reduction request happened to exceed 50, and then the board becomes the decision maker on the application. So that concludes Staff's presentation. Happy to answer any questions.

[18:04] Great. Thank you, Shannon? Questions from the board, and I'm gonna be looking online to see if a Laura Claudette raises their hand. But here in the Kurt go ahead. Thank you, Shannon. My 1st question is in the Memo in the Staff Review comments there's reference to something about building frontage. It says, since building frontage is a factor in determining the allowable area of the existing building. A code. Analysis of the existing building will also need to be provided. But I don't know anything about that. Can you tell me what that's referring to? I can try. Let me check and see if I can reread what that says. Really quick. Okay, yeah. And I don't have it up in front of me, so I can't. I have it right here.

[19:01] 39 is when the staff comments begin. It's in the the staff review comments. Let's see. Okay, it looks like that's a comment from our our building code. Division. Let me just read that again, real quick. Here. I see. Yeah, I'm thinking, that's a similar issue to what we talked about with the fire access. I think they're just looking at the building code and determining.

[20:01] making sure that all of that the building code requirements are met for having adequate building frontage. so I'm unfortunately, I'm not. I'm not super familiar with the building code, but I think that's why Kirk was getting at that is, on page 1 40. Did you have some follow up questions to that one. Well, I have a yeah. Maybe while the experts are looking into it. I can follow. So there's also reference to a bicycle easement

[21:06] on the north side. Never heard of a bicycle easement. Can you tell me what is going on there? Let's see, I think. if I remember correctly. I believe. our transportation staff just noted that there's an existing easement up here that's not being used that could be vacated if the applicant so chose. I believe that's the bicycle easement they may have been referring to. I could reread the comment letter and just make sure that is correct. Okay, so we don't know exactly why this was put in or what what it means. No, I think it wasn't. I think they identified that it was an unused easement.

[22:03] That's that's not proposed to be used for any new connections. Okay? And do you know, if it continues to sorry, what's the north, is it? Aspen? That's just west? Yeah. Does it? Does the easement continue on the adjacent property to aspen? I could check and see. I don't know off the top of my head, but I can turn to take a look and see. Maybe maybe that would be something to look into. Another question. I guess, sort of related to that is. would there be any possibility from Staff's perspective in terms of flood and and wetland issues and so on. Would there be any possibility of a connection? Across Elmer's 2 mile to the path

[23:04] in the northeast corner of the property. like a bridge across Elmer's 2 mile I believe Staff did not suggest that for a couple of reasons there would need to be kind of a nexus that would allow us to require such a bridge, because this property is so close to the existing bridge that already exists just immediately to the East. I think we felt that that one served the same purpose as well as the other. Reason would just be that it tends to be pretty difficult and costly to to add a bridge over kind of our our floodplain type areas. So that was why we didn't suggest that. Okay, okay?

[24:00] And then I think I have just one other question, which is. would this prop or this this project be eligible for a height modification under the Site Review criteria? If they were to choose to do that. I know this. The the height, modification, criteria are so simple I should be able to just not. I could double check and look. It's they're proposing a 3 story building. so I would have to see if one of the situations came into play that could allow for that request. I think there could theoretically be a proposal, including a 4th story and then requiring community benefit compliance. Right? Okay? And and related to that. Then.

[25:01] if if it were the same general configuration of 2 well, of building over parking, would the first, st would it still? Would that still be considered a 3 story building. Even if the 1st floor is just podium parking. Yeah. Yes. Okay. yeah. Podium parking would meet the definition of story. Okay? I think that's all my questions. Okay, I think Claudia is up next. Go ahead, Claudia. Hi, thanks. Mark. yeah. So my 1st question is more of a procedural conceptual one, and that is when we do a site review for a project like this, where some existing structures are being preserved. Are we needing to have the entire site come into compliance with site, review criteria and the other things we're talking about.

[26:10] I think, because the Site Review criteria are discretionary in nature. They're able to be tailored to the proposal at hand, so some of them may apply more than others to a given project, so I guess I would say that that it depends on like what exactly is proposed, and how we would look at at what the opportunities are with that project. Yeah, okay. thank you. Let's see. other questions are a bit more specific. So there was some commentary in the memo about emergency access to the site, and I assume a lot of that is tied to the Paseo and access to the existing building. Once a new building is added. I'm just curious. Do we?

[27:02] Do we have any models for how to solve this kind of a problem when there is primarily pedestrian access to an existing building. I'm not aware that we've run into this issue too often where a new building is proposed, kind of in front of close to an existing building, I think typically we see more wholesale redevelopments of sites. So I don't know that we've come across this too often with this specific scenario, so I don't to answer the question. I don't know of any specific models off the top of my head. Okay? So another tack on that, like, what are the are there specific criteria that emergency access is looking for in terms of like widths of access, or how close they're wanting to be able to get vehicles to the existing building. What what is the actual aim? If this if the site design were to be revised.

[28:05] I think, from trying to remember boulder fires exact comments, was that they felt that the the access to the existing building was being impaired by the new building. So I think in that for that reason I think they were suggesting or or stating that the design would need to be revised to address that issue, so I think our recommendation would probably be to work with them directly, to work with boulder fire, rescue directly, to see what kind of plans could be drawn up that would address that issue. But I think fire does have some technical standards that they were asserting in our comment letter that created, I think, a significant amount of concern for the response teams and impeding the ability to access the existing building for extinguishment purposes.

[29:09] So they didn't line those out in detail. I think the idea is identifying the deficiencies as significant red flags and then working with the applicant as the process continues on after concept, plan review to help resolve those issues. Okay, I understand a lot of that may be somewhat technical. But as we discuss things like site, design and revisions to that, that would be useful information to have what kind of metrics and limitations we're working with. I had one more question then, and that is, of course, about parking, because we always have to talk about parking. So it was suggested in the memo that the applicant could actually request an additional parking reduction, and it seemed like that was even being encouraged in this case. So I'm curious if we are tracking either formally or informally, what kinds of parking reductions have been requested and granted in recent multifamily projects.

[30:10] and what Staff would actually expect to see here, based on what we have reviewed and approved recently. That's data that we can pull down relatively easily. We don't have it tabulated here tonight. I think generically. Most times we see parking reductions on the order of 30 to 33% is pretty typical. Ultimately, it depends on the project and the size. But that's usually a pretty safe amount for a reduction is around a 3.rd But if that's an information that you know, you'd like us to to pull down, that's something that we could do and look at reductions that we've done recently. Okay, thank you. No. The the ballpark is fine for me, for now that's all for my questions. Thank you.

[31:04] Okay. okay, go ahead, Emma, you go. Okay. I didn't know if one of you had signaled earlier. No, okay. I didn't signal earlier. Okay. Well, I was watching Mason's hand on his switch. I assume everyone can hear me. So I didn't see anywhere in the memo as thorough as it was that spoke to the existing 37 units access to the street during construction. Is that something that we should be concerned about? Or is that something that gets reviewed construction plans as it impacts existing tenants. Yeah, it would be reviewed as as it gets closer to the actual construction. It wasn't something that I think our transportation staff brought up at this at this stage.

[32:01] Okay, so a little early for the question. I did agree with a everything the the staff said in their comments on the about the existing. the need for community space within the property. Is there anything existing within the current building like a clubhouse, or anything like that that meets some of those requirements. There's no clubhouse or anything of that nature that I'm aware of. The existing site has kind of a grassy area kind of in the corner of the L-shaped building. But there's not. There's not any like specific, like community room or clubhouse, or anything of that nature set in like the the upper right corner on the back side of the building. Is that where you would describe it. Kind of towards the creek. Oh, right there, the part that we get built over

[33:04] kind of piggybacking off of Claudia's question about what opens up with the existing building. I had a couple questions. our our fire is fire mitigation. I assume it's part of code. I don't know it. Super. Well, does. Does this construction open the existing existing building up for code review and code updates? I I would think it does. I would think it would require sprinkling if it if it doesn't exist. Already under a similar line of questions. the Bbcp talks about community well-being and safety a fair bit. I'm wondering if complaints against landlords are considered in a project like this. If no, no, that's not a criteria that we'd be able to consider as part of our review.

[34:02] Okay? that are all my questions I've written down. Okay. Ml. thank you. So I have a a couple of questions. Do we have a definition for Paseo. I mean, the term has been used, you know, and it conjures up we're in Barcelona. We're walking down the Fram blah. We're doing, you know. But do we have a definition that that gives us some understanding of what the term is intending in this context? That was just a term that the applicant, I think, was using to describe the area. So we don't have a definition as it applies to this project. I think we have specific metrics when it comes to our form-based code. And what a Paseo development metrics! How wide it's supposed to be, what the aspect ratio was supposed to be. But I think in this context I think it was kind of a term of art.

[35:12] So moving forward. would there would there be criteria placed on that based on the definition or referring to. I mean how we basically got just this straight path going there. And I'm just curious as to is there going to be? Is there anything that would start to require it to actually become human centric? I think the Site Review criteria would have to start to get at that. And I think if there are qualitative remarks that you guys had tonight that might help the applicant with some future considerations on how they might achieve that more of a human scale or a better aspect. Ratio.

[36:00] This would be a great time to to have that conversation. Okay. thank you for that. so just procedurally am I to understand that? This, unless they go for a parking reduction. they would not come back for Site Review. They would not come back to planning board for Site Review. Is that correct? That's correct unless they propose something like a parking reduction that would require it to come to a public hearing. It would be a staff level review, and it would be subject to call-ups, so the Board could consider calling it up when it okay. So the comments we're giving tonight. we may never see the site review. Yeah, potentially, just as like the call-up, yeah. and last, but not least, do we know how the residents would get to and use the open space. The proposed open space is that? I saw the Open Space

[37:02] Site plan. But I didn't see any pathways. Yeah, I think that was part of Staff's reference to providing more meaningful gathering spaces in terms of open space on this site, as it's currently proposed. Most of the open space is as you mentioned, more just in the setbacks sort of situation, and so accessing those, making it something that's really usable as a gathering and and useful open space is sort of what we'd be looking for when it comes back for Site Review. That's part of the definition of the open spaces that it's usable. Is that correct? Yes, okay. great. And oh, last last, but not least, do we know the percentage of each unit type? I think that's 1 of the criteria. Yes, I think I can find that really quick. I don't know it off the top of my head, but I think I can find it looks like they're mostly elus.

[38:08] Looks like it's on page 1. 0, 3 of the Pdf. Packet. It says, 8 elus, 11 bedroom and 4 2 bedroom. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, that's the new building that would be added with 22 units. But Pdf, package 1 0, 3. Okay. thank you. Those are all my questions. Thank you. Laura. Did you have any questions for Staff or you holding for now. I'm good for now. Thank you, Mark. I just have one, and it's a follow up to Ml's question. So What I heard you say is that

[39:01] this this project would not come back before planning board unless the plan changed in some way that triggered a Site Review criteria that triggered a public hearing that because right now in its current form, it would come in front of you as a call up, and then you get to consider whether or not you wanted to call it up for a public hearing right now. There's no trigger that would require a public hearing if they upped the parking reduction or asked for a a height modification. Then it's gonna come before you as a guaranteed public hearing. Okay, but we it would come back to us as a possible call-up item, no matter what correct. Okay. but we would be evaluating it. Without a we would be evaluating it because we wanted to evaluate it, not because it was triggered by something in the Site Review criteria that required a a public hearing. You would have to electively call it up for a public hearing.

[40:13] Kay. I don't have any questions for any more questions. Thanks. Okay. Oh, oh, I'm sorry, Kurt. No problem. Just one quick follow-up regarding the fire question. So maybe I misread so thank you to Claudia and Mace for bringing this up. Maybe I misread. I thought that the the Fire Review, by Dave Lowry said that it met the standards. but they were still concerned, or something like that. Is that is that not correct? Do we? We do have hard standards for fire access. Well, I think, for access, vehicle access. There's the 20 foot turnaround.

[41:02] and I think that meets the requirements, for you know their apparatus access. I think it's the building placement in front of the existing building that you know where they're kind of layering into the middle of the site that's creating concerns on how they would fight that on foot, and creates issues, I think, with extinguishment, not so much as getting the apparatus onto the site, but like, how are they actually going to. you know? Get into the buildings. I think that was the concern that they identified was just really about kind of boots on the ground. Emergency response of getting in the building. I think it also lacks a certain sense of legibility where, in an emergency situation, you might not actually know how to access that second part of the building. So I think those were some of the concerns that they had raised. Okay, and they would be the the Fire department would be involved in the Site Review going forward, even if it's a staff level review as well as the building permit review.

[42:04] Okay? Great. Thank you. Okay. Unless there's a question that needs to be asked. Now, where I think we're ready for the applicant presentation is, do we have? I? I was like. Looking at our folks. All kids joining us remotely today. Yeah, yeah, we're we. We decided to join remotely. I tried to start my video here. This is Michael Boz on the applicant. It's saying my videos been disabled. Maybe it'll go on here. How's that. We can see you now. And you can hear me. Yep. We can hear you now. Really great. Well, let me start by saying, Thank you for taking the time to review this today. Planning board. This is always.

[43:02] you know, a long process. I appreciate your time and energy I'm joined today with by my assistants Molly Bateson, my coworker, Molly Bateson, and Bob Wilson, from cadis architecture. I think Steph did a great job of explaining the the project and preparing a great staff report. so I did have a Powerpoint, but in I never like to just repeat stuff to repeat it. So I think I'm gonna just skip the Powerpoint presentation for the moment, and maybe just speak to a few of the goals that we had. If you have any additional comments we will be here to address them first, st you know it sounds like fire. Safety is A is A is a big issue. When we received the comments back from from fire safety, we contacted Dave Lowry immediately, and we've already had some discussions on ways to resolve and get to a place where he feels comfortable with with the design. And obviously, this being concept Review. It's not fully developed. And we'll go back and

[44:11] spent some time working with Dave and I think that we're going to get to a place where he feels very comfortable with this. I don't think we're too far apart at the moment, and if Bob Wilson, when I'm finished, would like to speak on that, or you want some further information. He's had direct discussions. On that subject. The basic kind of our our project goals. When we started designing, as we looked at a lot of different options for this property from from raising the entire, you know, existing site and rebuilding, and you know that didn't feel quite right. We have a a existing building that that serves a good purpose right now, I think, in our, in our, in, in the need for

[45:02] our our current boulder housing market. These are in all reality they're not permanently deed, restricted as they are today, but they they do kind of fill in, and we're kind of competing directly against them in a non deed. Resist non deed restricted format. So we said, Well, you know, we'd like to preserve the existing housing stock that we have here. It fills a need, but we'd like to enhance the property, and we. We closely followed the arts for developments, and the site was pretty pretty handicapped by the calm. open space requirement per per dwelling unit that that is been reduced. At this point. So we feel like we put together a plan that really meets the goals of the city. Being that you guys sort of just change those those rules.

[46:01] We we wanna, we feel this is a great place to add additional density because of its location, the proximity, the transportation routes. It's got a great walkability score and bike score. There's, I think, 96 bus stops within. you know, one square mile of the property. and we just feel like this is a project that really kind of blends in nicely and meets the goals of the the current city. View on housing. So with that being said. I think we'll just kind of you know I've taken. I take. I took. I took a lot of notes tonight on some of your concerns. We're definitely listen to Staff's comments and feel like we're on the path to a a good project unless you guys feel differently. So again, appreciate your time, and look forward to hearing some public comments, and any additional comments you might have for the applicant.

[47:01] or questions. Okay, thank you, Michael. It's now time for questions for the applicant. and I'm anticipating a bunch. Anyone ready? Well, i i oh, go ahead, Kurt. I don't want to have to always be the one who goes first.st Thank you for your presentation to us. My 1st question regards the Paseo, which my fellow board member already brought up from a from a tenant standpoint. How do you see this actually being used like. what? How? How is a potential tenant or a tenant actually using the paseo to either get someplace or do something.

[48:07] You're muted, I think. Our our landscape architect kind of had a brief. This, you know description of the sale. It is, you know, 28 feet in width, which is pretty significant. It's not a it might look small on on on the site plan, but I think it does shrink in a few areas. But in general it's about 28 feet in, in width. kind of wheeze between the 2 existing structures. It's got an 8 foot wide connecting sidewalk that can provide access and movement for residents by foot or bike with nice landscaping areas. And I believe that we could add additional park benches. There's trees in there, and it. In reality it is an improvement. There's almost no open space usable open space on the current, the current site design. So I do think it is an enhancement.

[49:08] and you know, primarily at the sale is A is a walkway, I I believe, or you know, a a way to to to move within within the property. So and we did also, you know, we did take into consideration Staff's comments about creating more usable open space where we could maybe program it a little bit better. And some of the other areas of the site. Thank you. And my second question regards what I raised the question about the possible height modification. Did you look into the possibility of a little bit smaller footprint, but going higher to allow for more open space. There. Yeah, to. To be honest with you, we haven't really explored that. I

[50:00] really wanted to design as close to a kind of by right project as possible. That followed the. you know, as few code modifications as possible. And so we kind of landed on on this this design with really only the parking reduction being the requested modification from you know, code. Okay, thank you. I think that's it. Claudia. Thanks. My question is about how you arrived at the proposed parking reduction, and in particular, what is the what is the current parking usage on that site. There's, you know, with the existing units and existing tenants. Do you have any baseline data that you're working with. I think I can give you some. Give me one second. Here.

[51:06] Michael, I've got this data. If you if you're. Yeah, if you have it, that's if you have it easy. Yeah, that's great. Thanks. Well, Hi, everyone, thank you. This is Bob Wilson from Caddis. Thank you for all the comments I I think they were all really, really helpful and useful, and and helping us assess this project? So the the required or the current parking on the site? I believe is oh, shoot! I thought I had it. I was. yeah. So there's currently 58 spaces on site right now. And the required parking for the just. The existing building is 46. And so that's tabulated on that site plan sheet. And so what we were, what we're proposing is utilizing that 46. And then. in addition to that minimum requirement.

[52:01] what are we required for our 22 units? And that's how we arrived at a total parking requirement of 70. Which and there's there's was really no realistic way to truly get that number achieved. On the site. And so we we just landed on 57, based on the constraints and geometry to the site. That's kinda. In in current usages. The site is, the site is over parked, based on. That's that's. Yeah, so. Yeah, in in a nutshell. Yeah, the site is over parked. And you know, I actually have a couple of my employees that live in those units right now. I believe 3 of the units are occupied by employees in my company and you know they obviously are saying that the the lots are, you know not. There's plenty of parking within that, and it's over parked at this point. Okay. Thank you.

[53:02] Okay, Mason, any questions for the applicant? Yeah, I I guess just one. And thank you for for coming. yeah, you've heard a lot of comment about creating community space on the site. I didn't know if you're activating. I heard you mentioned activating the green space. Do you have any plans of editing the development to to allow for for a community. As far as open space activation. Like gathering spaces community center. Exactly. That that type of thing? Again, I think it's something that we've we've taken note of. And you know this. The concept review process is a little bit interesting because we submit. And then we get a bunch of comments back.

[54:02] and we don't really have a chance to go back and redesign before we get to that that point. So I feel like there's. you know, Bob and Molly and I have definitely talked about trying to activate where we can some of the additional green space and other areas of the of the site and maybe adding some you know, connection points and things like that to the to the rear of the site, because it really is nice back there. And of course we're dealing with a little bit of floodplain things and those those types of issues that we have to take into consideration during during design. Okay. Oh, Claudia, go ahead. And Laura now to Claudia first, st and Laura. Sorry I was happy to wait my turn for a second round. I just had another question that occurred to me. Okay. Want me to go. Ad. We'll go. We'll go with Laura and then back to you, and then I'll go. Sounds good.

[55:00] Thank you. I I just have one So in the site design that you're proposing, and thank you for being here tonight and thank you for your presentation. Very informative. The new building that you have proposed. You put it quite close to the elbow of that L-shaped building with a Paseo, and there is other space on the property where presumably the building could have been in a different location on the property and been the same size. Why did you choose to locate it so close to the existing structure? What was your thinking? There. You. You wanna take a shot at that one, Bob. Sure. yeah, that's that's a great question, because I think it really sort of speaks to the sort of underlying premise of of the proposal, and that is to provide a a pedestrian oriented zone, or buffer between the existing building and our new proposed building. And and just. And it's it's large related to to really how the parking works as well.

[56:02] We. We did look initially at having the parking drive aisle sort of segmenting or separating the existing, and in the new building. I guess our opinion was that that creates really in many ways a worse pedestrian experience, and I think that, despite the fact that the horizontal dimension of that sort of interstitial spaces, it's arguably somewhat cramped, although I you know, when you really cut a section through it, and you and you have a 2 story, you know, adjacent to a three-story. It's really not. There's a fair amount of space in there to do some pretty interesting things, and we'll be working with the landscape architect to really address how to make that feel like a an enjoyable place to be. especially when you, when you consider it relative to what is currently there, which is a walkway that connects Glenwood back to the front doors of the units. And yes, there is sort of a community gathering area, but it's adjacent to a trash, recycling

[57:11] facility. And it's it's it's not necessarily the most inviting space. So what I think we would ultimately want to do is really dress it up and and and define and articulate it in such a way that it really invites people to to utilize it, and and, you know, have an interaction with with their neighbors. So. And just a a quick question, maybe for for board or staff. In saying that. you know, we've put this proposal with an 18 parking reduction in the in in the memo it came back and said, You know you're welcome to A, as I think was stated. It was maybe encouraged to ask for a a bit more.

[58:03] I think if we were able to go a bit more reasonably, you know I'm not saying crazy. But maybe the 20 reduction or 22. Would that trigger this back to a full public hearing? Or are we still within the the the constraints we were previously talking about, because that might give us some flexibility to to create, maybe a greater gathering spot, because a lot of this design is being driven by parking. Obviously as it always is. So the yeah. The question was, if if the parking reduction was increased a little bit, does it require a public hearing? It would only be required to do a public hearing before the planning board. If it's a 50 or more parking reduction request 5 0 50%, 5 0. Yeah. Okay.

[59:02] Okay, well, that's good to know. And you know it is also a balance of. we do need to have what we feels adequate parking on the site and not go too much. But obviously we'd be implementing, you know, Tdm, policies and those kinds of things as well. So. Okay, I'm going to call on Ml, and then Claudia, and then back to me. Yeah. I'm sad. Okay. Thank you for being here. but there are so many screens. I'm looking all over the place. Sorry. Thank you for being here. And so the question that I wonder about in looking at the existing buildings, and the proposed building is the East-west permeability. So we've got this we've got this corridor that's being called a Paseo going north-south.

[60:03] It's difficult to see from the Site Plan and even from the Open space plan. how people move from the parking, the access vehicular access through and across to access that Paseo. And is there any? I think I heard you say something about it, but the connection to the Elmer's open space, and that whole bike, I mean, that's a pretty significant asset. That's that close. And it's hard to understand if there's what the thinking is with connecting a. A. The flow east-west flow through the buildings. across the buildings, and how that adjacency to that open space might or might not be being thought about. I I couldn't.

[61:04] It wasn't clear to me. That's kind of a question. Yes, sorry. I guess I'll I guess I'll take that. Go ahead, Bobby. I take a take a shot at it. Yeah, I don't think we really thought very specifically about more of a direct connection to Elmer's Creek path necessarily just given the fact that the existing building doesn't doesn't really address that. The north and east sides of that building are really there aren't any balconies on that side. Those are just windows facing that. So there's not sort of an obvious opportunity for connection necessarily happening there. So we didn't sort of expand on that, at least at this stage, I mean, and I guess maybe we feel like the connection just along the sidewalk on Glenwood is in close enough proximity that maybe it wasn't all that necessary.

[62:01] Yeah, it's it's not a. It's not a long walk to to go across and then up the the path. I mean, it's totally adjacent to our property, and I'm sure it would open up. I feel like it would open up a lot more issues from floodplain regulations and all all kinds of things like that, to to to pursue that route, to be honest with you. And are Is there any East-west permeability across the site other than at the edge. at the street? Like? Can a person go from the parking lot through the proposed building into the Paseo. Oh, yeah, yeah, so. Down to the parking. Yeah, Michael, I don't know if I don't know. If maybe the the Powerpoint wasn't working, I'd I'd be happy to share my screen. We've got a diagram that that maybe helps to illustrate just circulation patterns, via access. And some of the things that that you were concerned about. So. Yeah, I think, Molly, I think Molly can pull that slide up pretty easily.

[63:06] Hello, everyone! Give me just one second. Thank you. Think it was part of a presentation package, too, but. Alright! Can everyone see that. Yes. Right? So what you're seeing here are just some of the general circulation patterns for the site. The blue line represents the pedestrian access through the site, and the orange represents fire access both the apparatus as well as the firefighting firefighters themselves. And you know we we know that we need to. Have some follow up discussions with with Dave Lowery. On exactly how we

[64:08] can best address the fire. Access from the apparatus side through the building right now we're proposing kind of it. The access tucks under or the building above sort of bridges over. So there's a clear line of sight. There are 2 very clear access points, one to the south, one sort of two-thirds up. and then you can see the pedestrian access. Similarly, there's an East-west circulation happening sort of along the accessible parking stalls that goes all the way through from the west side of the site to the Paseo. That circulation path has up north along the west property fence line connects to that same sort of Paseo condition running east-west on the north end of the building. So in a lot of ways. I mean, I understand there's some concerns about the new building and its adjacency to the existing. And you know, I think that what we're really trying to achieve here is a more clearly defined

[65:16] circulation. path and opportunity that can really be enhanced rather than sort of being an afterthought, or, or, conversely, having a path that. you know, directly faces you know, head in parking, for example, if if there were drywall separating the existing from the new. so. Thank you. Thank you for providing that drawing. That's that's my only question. Okay, Claudia. Had a question about balconies and what you're showing on some of the building elevations and floor plans. Preliminary.

[66:03] And so what I'm seeing, if I understand it right, are balconies that are enclosed on 3 sides and also roofed. and in particular, on your one bedroom units that you're showing these are kind of at the end of some pretty long and narrow units. And I'm curious what went into your thinking on this design, and what would be the trade-offs if you were to move towards a more open balcony structure, which I consider to be a little bit more like social, a little bit more in the vein of the spirit of usable open space. Sure. Sure. I mean the I would say that the plans are, you know, not fully developed. And and I I certainly appreciate the idea of trying to. you know, provide a little bit more opportunity for for the residents to be engaged. you know, with their neighbors. Which is, which is certainly achieved by having the balcony extend beyond the fit, the facade a little bit.

[67:02] So you know the the main consideration for the balcony balconies, as their diagram was really just weather protection kind of primarily and as we, as we develop the plans a little bit more, we can certainly take a look at, maybe maybe mixing a portion that's covered with a portion that extends beyond the facade, and that'll help also, I think, with some sort of undulation and just sort of architectural expression of the of the building itself. A great comment. Anything, Claudia. Anything else? Nope. okay. So I'm anticipating a lot of commentary that we'll get to after the public hearing that, I think will be valuable for you guys. I do have a question. And and when I look at the different site drawings.

[68:02] what is the open space or setback on the west side of the new building. Is that right up on the property line, or is the does the drawing not really show all the open space to the west. What what I'm I'm trying a hard time, understanding how much space there is west of the new building. Right. So if you were to look, for example, at the the site plan. Just to explain. Kind of what you're what you're seeing the the the faded red. the darker of the faded red area represents the residential units. At levels 2 and 3, the lighter red or pink areas represent some of the common areas at level one. the dimension, for example, on the southern, the very southern portion of the building where we've got a you know, potential, you know, water entry sprinkler room parking

[69:04] parking lot. Access is about 50 55 feet from that from our building face to the west lot line. and it only grows from there. Okay. As a building steps back. Okay, that's yeah. That's that's the minimum. I was struggling to find that drawing. Kurtz has showed it to me. Okay, then I'm going to be. My other board members have asked this in a similar way. I'm just going to be much more direct, and I know this must be annoying as a developer. It's like when someone says, did you ever think about? And of course you've thought about it. But in this case it seems to be Seems to me that. did you? Did you give serious consideration to moving the building to the west. having the L of the new building kind of mirror the L of the existing building, and having much more

[70:01] with, combined with a greater parking reduction. more open space, more courtyard, less linear sort of alleyway between 2 buildings and more community, more face each other, 2, building the fronts of 2 buildings facing each other versus the back of one building. What I consider the back of the new building facing the existing building. So in that sort of configuration, what was your thinking in that regard? Well, yes, we did look at it, and but but thank you, for I mean that that's that's certainly a valid concern, and you know, I guess the main consideration in this in this Site plan is again has to do with the the pedestrian experience, safety headlights, pollution, sound. All of the things associated with a parking lot, trying to segregate that as much as we possibly could from the new and existing tenants, and then again, just based on the simple geometries of the site. If we were to flip this concept to some degree

[71:20] that really does start to put the main drive aisle to get to the parking, the fire access. All of that that really becomes the divider. Then, between the new and existing buildings. at least, I feel like that's maybe less desirable in a lot of ways than trying to really really enhance and and focus on a a truer pedestrian only zone. I guess. I hope that answers. Yeah. I I think that's a good comment, though. I think we can maybe

[72:01] look at some sort of hybrid form of it. I think there was some. There's some. Obviously, we're fighting setbacks on the on the west side of the property. trying to be less impactful and step the building back a little bit from the residential properties to the west. There were. There were some design considerations that went into some of these decisions, but I think we can. We can re explore some of that. Okay, I don't want to get into comments. We're still in questions. Okay, last, call for any questions. Okay, Mason. One really quick one. I didn't see anything that spoke to including space for electric car charging is that in consideration. Yes, if you look at the in the packet. I believe we have 2

[73:00] dedicated charging stations and 14 additional ev stations where? You know, convertible convertible stations. But where 0 exists today on the site. Great sorry I missed that. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to close the applicant presentation, and we'll open the public hearing. and we'll start with people in the room who have signed up to speak or do it. Thomas, are we signing people up to speak? And, Vivian, if you can be getting us prepped or looking online for any

[74:03] speakers online. I'm just being signed off for the evening. So I'll be handling the online public participation, too. Yeah, okay? All right. Yeah, we're ready. Yeah. Oh, it's yeah. Do we need a moving crew for the podium? Or is that the new spot for the podium. Oh, okay, all right. thank you. If you'll just state your name and generally, are you located in the city of Boulder? Do you reside in the city of Boulder Dave Sloan. I'm a local resident on Arnett Street, so we're one of the residences just to the west. A few things, thank you all for the presentation. Caddis. Very nice job, and as a local resident since 2011, and then before up in Iris Hollow, you know.

[75:09] love it. Great place to live. Kids go to school there. We've always known that this space would be developed. So we're not against development. And we do appreciate the location of the proposed actually nestled up against the other. Because then it's not right in our backyard. I think the Paseo actually, with the dimensions you're presenting. It could be a nice pathway. Our concerns are the trash enclosure and parking. and I would disagree that there is an there may be enough parking right now. I think if you do a reduction, that you're going to see problems. And yeah, I would, I would look into that more. So what we're seeing is more people parking on Glenwood, you know, over the last 20 years. But

[76:00] Then with the trash enclosure. it's there are times when it's overflowing. It's not a big deal whatever. I don't smell it, but I think that if you put it where it is, it's going to be right against my mother-in-law's house. anyway. Good luck. And thank you very much. Thank you. Any other speakers in the in the room tonight? Okay? And Thomas, do we have anyone online? If you're online and you would like to speak, please go ahead and raise your hand 1st up. We have Lynn Siegel. when you'll have 3 min, and I will start your time. When you start talking. Go ahead. 10% parking reduction absolutely check this thing out for the fire. Michael had a fire up on his trailer on the 311 property

[77:04] also threaten me that if I opposed 3 11 project he would put in a heroin recovery center. So I'm not really thrilled with this developer. The Paseo is not enough. This is just jamming. I think you should have 6 units in there, maybe, rather than 22. Very funny, isn't it. Michael? Haha! Yep. $40,000 a month for one of those penthouses up at 3 11. Huh? Yeah. The the distinction between jobs and housing is not made in any of these planning board meetings. The 1.1 1 with the Boulder Valley Comp plan. and what you need to do is have an analysis for each of these projects. How many people you're adding. and what each one of those people use in all the services that we provide them fire police rec centers, library, the grocery stores, the low income people that are working for these people

[78:13] and that jobs in jobs, housing, imbalance needs to be applied to each individual in a project like this which is squeezing. Granted, I'm glad that they're keeping the building. but to squeeze this much onto one space. It's like I said, rocky Flats. Oh, we have all this wonderful open space. But you know my mom died, Michael. at 38 years old. from plutonium, from rocky flats. So I'm not really thrilled about your snideness about this thing. It's very personal. My brother was 5 years old when she died from market flats. So

[79:00] people that are living in tight spaces want to get out of there. They've got a balcony that's covered that they can't even, you know when you jam this other building into this one. It's warehousing people. I'm sorry I don't care about the all the buses. All they want to do is. Get out of there, Laura, that's all they want to do is get out of these ghettos. Sorry if that's a bad word for you, Ghetto. That's what these are. Stop already. you know. No fire reduction at all. I mean Dave Lowry. You need to have this thing fire proofed and approved with Dave this all? No height, no height, amendments, no increases. no parking reductions at all. and reduce the quantity of the units.

[80:00] Thank you, Lynn. Your time is up. Thomas. Any other. That's all for the online. Okay, I'm going to close the public hearing. and the board can move into the comment mode so. and I'm expecting a lot of comments given the the nature of the questions. So who who wants to jump in on the comments. I'm gonna prove you wrong and jump in and be short. Okay. relative to key issues. Oh, that's true. Thank you. So thank you. It yes. okay. Key issues 1, 2 and 3. And so I don't want us to feel obligated to. I think we've studied this a bunch. So we can. We can answer those if you feel like it. But I think that tonight, given

[81:03] what we've had in questions, especially key issue number 2 feedback on conceptual site design and building design. You can answer it any way you want. But I'm I'm anticipating. Number 2 is going to be the big one. Sure. So on number one. I agree with Staff's comments that in most cases it does. I think there are, in some cases where it could do a better job. I understand the comments made by the applicant in this meeting about the site design choices that they made around trying to protect the pedestrian which might sacrifice the creation of more community space. I would still like to see them consider you know.

[82:01] taking creative measures to create more community space, maybe through a little more parking reduction or something of that nature. Maybe activating some more of the open space on the other side of the building, or something of that nature. I'm not really sure but I would like to see the opportunity given. How many people are going to be living here currently living here. It'd be good to have a spot for them to get to know each other. that kind of bleeds into Number 2. The public comment didn't mention the trash and recycling being right there, although being appreciative of the building. Not being up against their backyards. Maybe there is an opportunity to move trash and recycling to being closer to the the street itself. Not really sure, but I think that was a useful comment. The other thing I'll mention that I haven't already is. There are some very large trees on site. It would be great to see if we can preserve in some way

[83:05] I know they tend to be just by looking at the pictures of the site. They tend to be closer to the street, so I don't know if some setback of the building would help preserve those trees, or or what, but would love to see some consideration there. and then other key issues identified by the board. I don't have anything offhand. I guess I would. If I were to kinda stretch for this one. I would love to see this as an opportunity to make sure that the existing building is up to code, and is serving the current tenants in the best way possible. That's all I got. Thank you, Mason. Gonna look! Claudia got your hand up.

[84:02] I will also be brief, and I'm gonna roll all of my comments into one. let's see, I wanna 1st of all really appreciate Shannon for putting together this memo in particular, the part, particularly the parts that address the Bvcp. And I agree with a lot of the analysis that she's provided there. I think the concept that we have in front of us here is a really important one, and that is converting surface parking lots to housing, and that meets a lot of goals for the land use and housing and transportation portions of the Bbcp. I really want to recognize that. And I hope and assume we will be seeing more projects like this in some form in the future. And I think for that reason it's important to get some of these things right when we do this in terms of design. The concerns on my mind with this project mostly have to do with usable open space and design, and specifically the interaction between buildings, both the old and the new, between buildings and the public realm. And what kind of resident experience is going to be created there.

[85:13] We had a number of questions about the Paseo. and what kind of space there would be between the buildings. I think that's a key thing to focus on going forward. In my mind. A narrow paseo is not bad by any means. I actually happen to live on one. It can be a fabulous community space if it's designed correctly. The key issue is how buildings are related to it. So going forward, if you could think about things like, is there a way to add ground floor housing on the Paseo in the new building? Is there a way to design balconies to create more interaction there with the Paseo. Are there other ways of creating or activating community space between those buildings? I think it was mentioned in some of our earlier discussion, having some sort of gathering space in a node at the corner of the buildings where that L shape is.

[86:08] Ml. I think, made some really good points about east-west circulation. And I think that can also feed people into that kind of community space. So really be thinking about how to make that space a very active and human scaled one. And I don't think necessarily that width is the way to do that. But it's starting to look at how the buildings interact with that space town. I would be happy to see additional parking reduction on a proposal like this to be used in support of some of these open space and design goals that we have. and the only other comment that I have. And this is Nitpicky. And I totally recognize I'm not the expert in this realm. But looking at some of the preliminary floor plans that you have proposed, I know that we are interested in a city and in a board as a board in unit diversity, right, diversity of sizes, of bedroom types, etc. The one bedrooms that you have in these plans

[87:10] do not look particularly functional in terms of their width versus the depth, things like circulation within the units, access to lighting. and so on. So I'd be looking at that, going forward, too. But again, that's that's a small thing. I think my largest concern is how these buildings as a whole are going to interact with each other. Okay, ML, So, Mark, do you want us to talk about all 3 at once? Sure, okay. I've got a lot. I might stop after the 1st one. If you want my comments relative to the Bvcp. I have to commend Shannon. I think that

[88:03] you did a fabulous job of articulating where this project both meets and falls short. I am going to, so I completely concur with the findings that were put forth by the staff. Additionally, I would add, these Bbcp policies, or, yeah, these Bbcp criteria that are not. I think, are not yet being addressed. One is 2.2 3, the Boulder Creek tributaries and ditches. 2.2 4 walkable and accessible city. 2.3 3 sensitive infill and redevelopment. 2.3, 7 environmentally sensitive urban design. I think the loss of these mature trees is pretty significant, and I know that the staff made many points about this. We haven't really brought it up in our conversation, because I don't think it was a question. It's more of a comment. I think, that the loss of mature trees is a big deal

[89:14] and 2.4 1 staff did point this one out, but this is a big one. It covers a lot of issues. What exists the relationship to the ditch, the permeability of the site, the ability to walk through it. the on-site open space, the ability to use it buildings cohesion cohesion is not just juxtaposition. 3.1 2 urban forests the city will support, promote, and in some cases regulate the protection of healthy existing trees, and the long-term health and vitality of the urban forest in the planning and design of public improvements and private development. So I think that we cannot underscore the importance of those significant trees on the site.

[90:01] A lot is being lost that isn't being acknowledged, and I think the trees are one of them, the way that the views would work from the existing building across that site. And just as you're driving or walking past the site that you see this, these buildings through a canopy of trees. So they play a significant role, and I think that they have not been given the attention that they should be getting, and that the Bvc PI think, points to going to number 2 regarding the conceptual Site plan and the building design. so under the guidelines. 9, 2, 13, e. The guidelines. They talk about the characteristics of the site. I would say that the proposed building is kind of overwhelming, and dwarfs the existing building. I think that the articulation of the Paseo, and the way that

[91:11] the proposed building might relate to that Paseo and to the existing building is going to be critical relative to the characteristics of the site as well. That east elevation of the proposed building is he's got a lot of long blank walls, and it looks like a big commercial scale openings as opposed to human scale. So I think a lot of thought has to be given to the relationship that is being created in what is being proposed as the significant move. Which is this, Paseo? I don't see a human factor coming into play here. Yet with the way the buildings are articulated. If we look at the site design criteria, which is 9, 2, 1, 9, 2, 14 h.

[92:07] 2 a. And B. The staff made a lot of recommendations, and I fully support. I fully support those relative to 3 which is the building, siding and design criteria as far as materials go. I don't have a problem with you folks using modest materials like Cmu. I think, as we all know the devil's in the details, so Cmu can look really good, and it is a long, lasting material. I think whatever you end up proposing, I I don't have a problem with a more modest materials as as long as we take into consideration that design can make all the difference in the world. And you know, lastly, number 4 in the site design, criteria, the environmental opportunities and constraints.

[93:01] I really think that what exists on the site a significant thing that exists on the side again, is the mature trees and the open view facing facade. the scale and ensuing massing of the existing building, although it's not residential, like one of the I think it's the West. Excuse me. West context, it remains compatible and thoughtful. So how we put this bigger mass onto the site. I'm not opposed to bringing in more housing, and I love what Claudia had to say about repurposing, parking into housing. but I think that it has to be done in such a way that we don't overlook the value of what is there already like again, walk by the site and look toward the property.

[94:01] You see it through a forest of trees. You see permeability. You don't just see these blank edges. I think that that is really critical to moving, moving forward, and you may not come back to planning board, and that's totally fine. But that would be my suggestion. Going to Number 3, you know you. I think you have some great aspirations focusing in your statement. You intend to focus heavily on the interstitial space between the new and existing buildings. I don't think that that evidence of of that being meeting the app. the ideals that you put out there is there yet. So I, if I were you all, I would. I would suggest that you kind of go back and and add the value of what exists into what you've done, and see how you can evolve that so that you get the best of we're creating more housing we're removing.

[95:09] We're activating some housing use on top of parking, etc, etc. But let's not forget that we have a responsibility to create. to create something that is at least as good, if not better than what's already existing. So thank you for your efforts tonight, and good luck as you move forward. Laura hasn't raised her hand just yet, so I'm gonna call on you. Okay, thank you very much. So I in general, I agree with a lot of the most of Staff's comments, and also the comments of my fellow board members that have already been made. I think

[96:01] there were some really articulately stated and well thought out, comments made already, I will say, just as introduction that as a general concept, I am absolutely delighted by what we're seeing here that is. preserving an existing building that has embodied carbon in it that is relatively affordable. Hopefully, that will get improved as part of this project, but that we're taking keeping an existing building that's already providing housing and has tenants in it, and then adding, Adding more housing on the parking lots as Claudia referred to. I think it's a great concept, and I hope we could get to see more of these. This is just as a as a tangent. This is one of the benefits of having parking, having a site design that has a building on one side, kind of, and parking on the other, as opposed to a building parked right plopped right in the middle of a site, and then parking kind of around it, in which case there's not really much repurposing that can be done.

[97:13] Anyhow, that's a sideline. So as a general concept. I think it's great. There definitely are details that people have already mentioned. I really appreciated Mark's question about the and others referred to this, too, about the general massing, and could the massing be moved potentially to the west and possibly south. in order to to open up more of a central space there. So there's the really lovely green lawn with a bunch of the old cottonwood trees on it at the inside corner of the L of the existing building. and I think, if you could, that that to me, feels like the core of the existing community space in the the center of the

[98:08] of the the parcel. and if there were a way to move the massing around so as to preserve that and keep that as keep the trees ideally. As Ml. Was referring to that are in that green space and keep it as an open area. as as a gathering space that doesn't really exist in your concept plan. I think that that would be wonderful. I know that you want to do things by right which I totally understand. I get the the perils of going through Site Review. But one possibility that I would support would, if if you were interested, would be to have a slightly reduced setback on the a front setback. So I think currently, you have a 20 foot front setback. I think if even reducing that by by a bit could open up area. Then, between the new building and the old building, the existing building

[99:18] and the staff. Memo referred to this, and I think somebody else did, too. But the use of the the pedestrian experience, the human experience from the front, from the front sidewalk, I think, is something that needs to be worked on as I read the plans. Currently, there's a mail room there which is kind of an active use. So maybe that's okay. But then there's on the south side, facing the front sidewalk. There's a utility room, an electric room, I think, and a water room, and those are completely dead spaces. Those are could not be less active and less of human interest.

[100:09] and so I would love to see if you're going for a little more of a parking reduction, putting a couple of ground floor units there potentially, that could be Ada accessible for one thing, and that then would activate the front side and just provide significantly more human interest there on from Glenwood. So in in terms of gathering and open space. When I was out there, I was standing looking suspicious, out on the sidewalk, and somebody came out with their from the the building with their dog, and they walked over

[101:02] around on to the the the Elmer's 2 mile frontage right, you know the green space there on Elmer's 2 mile, and they walked around with their dog a little bit, and then they came back, and then I noticed, oh, there's a very clear social path there, and so it seems like that is already a a desired and well used space. And so I I think it would be productive to figure out. How can you formalize that a little bit without, you know making it too formalized and destroying the appeal, but at least maybe providing a real walkway over there and making it more perhaps providing a little bit of additional landscaping or a little walkway over there, or something like that. I think that that you've got quite a bit of space over there along the Elmer's 2 mile, and I think that that could be a really

[102:02] useful space that could be beneficial to both the existing tenants and the new tenants. and in terms of the materiality. So I'm sorry I haven't been paying attention to the key issues. But in terms of key issue number 2. Specifically, I count on the again the south facade, the south elevation. There are at least 4 different building materials there already. and yet it still doesn't feel particularly human scale. So I would urge you to work to simplify the material palette. but work on the detailing to make it more human scale feeling. I think you've got some big.

[103:02] big kind of flat areas of materials. And then you've got another big flat area of a different material. And I don't think that that gets to the design objectives that we have in our site. Review criteria. One final detail. It's you're showing all of the short-term bike parking. as I see it right at the south east. Well, the the south end of the pace, basically. And I think it would be appropriate to distribute that better, at least divide it in half and put some further north if I'm biking to visit a friend there, and so I'm not going to the long term bike parking. I'm going to the short-term bike parking. If they live in one of the units to the north, it'd be nice to be able to ride my bike closer and park right there, so I can keep an eye on it, and so on. So better distributing the short term bike parking would be great.

[104:05] and I think that's the end of my comments. Thank you. Okay. And Laura has raised her hand. I'll be very brief here and say I do not have a lot substantive to add beyond the excellent comments of my fellow board members. I'll just say that I resonated with just about everything that I heard, and I appreciate the applicant's desire to avoid a public hearing, if possible. I don't know that you're going to be able to do that with this project. I think this is really interesting and complicated challenge to try to do, to achieve what you are doing here, which is to preserve the existing building which we do definitely appreciate. That does help to preserve some level of affordability. We hate to see a building that still has useful life left be deconstructed. So we really do appreciate that you are preserving that building and trying to utilize this over parked area in a much better way to serve our community. But that said, there are a lot of design challenges here, and I'm not sure that you're going to be able to avoid a call up on this one. So I

[105:15] I would encourage you to be creative use. What's available to you to try to make the best project you possibly can, and, I think you can anticipate you'll be coming back to us. I can't promise that I'm I'm not saying that I would definitely call it up, or that my colleagues would. But I think you your chances are pretty good, so please be creative. And we really look forward to seeing what you can do with this site. And I think you're on the right track. And thank you very much. Okay, I'll conclude with with my comments. And and I think the Board has demonstrated some really

[106:01] great thinking about this site, because it does achieve many goals of the Bvcp of urban infill in a dense transit. Rich area that's incredibly walkable. It is, you know. more housing and and less surface parking, and and Ml. Very much enumerated the sections of the Bbcp. That that she feels it. Project does not meet. but I think that in the big picture of the project in this concept meets so many Bbcp goals, including building reuse. But now let's talk about the things that that can be better, and I concur with every single comment of my fellow Board members, and I think that as the applicant, you can

[107:01] be sure and listen to those, and especially Laura's, that if you're if you're trying to be safe because you don't want to be called up and don't want to go through Site review. I think you can construe from the comments tonight that that you know that may be unobtainable. But that's that's your that's your decision. So I want to. Also, you know, I ask about moving the building west, and we've we've all talked about more usable activated place making open space. You know lately we've seen so many projects come to us where the open space requirement is fulfilled by these long linear strips of open space, sometimes on the backs of buildings sometimes adjacent to a highway or whatever that

[108:00] it just feels like. Okay, they've you've met the requirement. But you actually haven't fulfilled the the goal of requiring open space, and that is, give a place for people to be outside of their dwelling. And I I don't think you've you've reached that point there and I and I especially Kurt and Ml. Talking about the trees that are there. Now, you know. lot of good projects. Cut down a bunch of trees, and we replant, and we go on. But this site does have some really great trees, especially as Kurt pointed out back in that northeast corner. finally. as you finalize your design, and you think about the movement of cars in and out of the space, and for those that have served with me on planning board. I've referred to this many times over the last several years, and that is 34th Street, between Valmont and Meredith Street.

[109:10] It's it's a it's actually a private street. but it's is where the Twitter buildings. What? What was going to be? Twitter but it's a street an entrance way. It accesses buildings, it accesses parking. It's it's an access route that when you visit it in a car your 1st thought is, wait. I can't drive there. I shouldn't go there because the street is designed for pedestrians. The street is designed for cyclists or for you to move through very slowly in a car in this very uncomfortable feeling. And that's a great. That's a really great example of what I think. However, you configure these 2 buildings. You still have to get cars in and out to the parking underneath it, and I think that that kind of

[110:06] space can be created because you have 2 buildings that are close together, and it does feel narrow. But I think you really give great thought to how cars interact with pedestrians and bikes as they as they move in and out of the site, and that and it suddenly it feels rather than it feels like a narrow, cute European street that that rather than a big asphalt swath that you know, 2 pickup trucks can pass by going 30 miles an hour. So I hope you take our comments with the thought that we really, I think we really see this project as something that could be exemplary, and we hope that you can solve some of the some of the problems that we've we've presented you with.

[111:04] And if you guys have any comments you can, we'll give you just a little bit to reply. Oh, no, I say, i i i honestly really appreciate. The feedback we've gotten tonight. Like I'm not. I'm not trying to buck a site review. You know, Mark, I've been through a bunch of them that that that were pretty difficult. I think the goal is create a design that if everything is met, you know you, as planning board members, can honestly get behind and and feel strongly about and not need to call it up. And I agree. It's a difficult design. And I think. you know, like any of these things, it's a it's a give and take of. Well, it makes sense financially to build. You know, a lot of things aren't getting built right now, because they still make sense. What what we can do to maximize, you know, create a create, a great, you know.

[112:03] human scale building that lives well, and you know it's in the best interest of me as a developer as well to achieve all these things because it creates a better living environment for tenants in a place that they want to be at. So I think everything you guys have told us tonight is great, and I think we'll do our best to try to put this puzzle together in a way that hopefully. You know. you guys can be very supportive of, and the city of Boulder, you know, will will enjoy as well. So I think I kind of just leave it at that. Okay, thank you very much. I'm going to suggest a 5 min recess, and then we can go on to our next agenda item. Thomas, are you able to put up a notice here that we will reconvene at? We'll just say 8, 10, sure. Yeah. I'll go ahead and put a notice up on the screen. Thank you. Thank you. All. Have a good evening.

[113:02] Thank you so much. Take care!

[114:24] Bye, Charles. it's just a video. Thank you, Mister Speaker. sir, you'll need to. Accept the panelists. Request. Yeah.

[115:01] host. you need to be here. Let's all step with you guys. Oh, you're not.

[120:04] And we're going to move on to matters from the planning director and city attorney. And in this case we have agenda. Item 5, a. the area 3, planning reserve urban services, study, update draft scenario evaluations. That's a mouthful. And before we begin I just And I'm I'm telling myself this, and I'll tell the rest of the Board members this. that we should all be listening and thinking about this as as what it is, which is our input on the urban services study update draft scenario evaluations. It is not a discussion of, should we open up area 3 next week

[121:04] is that it is not a. It is not a broad-based general discussion. It is the the city is really looking for our input on the on this initial step of an urban services study update draft. So that was, that's my little bit of preaching and and we'll turn it over to Staff. Now and then we can answer their key questions when they're done with their presentation. K, good evening. Clean. Yes, okay. Do you want? Do you want me to chime in? Do you want me to begin. Yes, please. Gotcha. Well. Thank you. Thank you. Mark. For for that introduction this is Christopher Johnson. I'm the comprehensive planning manager. Apologies. I'm not there in person tonight I'm battling a little bit of a cold so I wanted to keep my germs to myself.

[122:03] I did you. You kind of stole my thunder, but I but I did want to provide just a few framing comments that I offered to city council before we had a similar discussion with them a couple of weeks ago, but you really covered it pretty well, Mark, and that the purpose of the urban services study. And really, the purpose of the discussion tonight is to be focused on. The really, what we're trying to to understand is to establish a baseline of information related to the potential infrastructure and cost impacts of future development in the planning reserve. We're we're really not getting into the conversations around policies of whether or not to actually develop in the planning reserve? Or what does it look like? What's the range of uses? All those kinds of things will be covered in a lot more detail. Further down further down the line and future steps. Now, we do have to make some basic assumptions around kind of a a development pattern and the types of densities that we potentially would see again just

[123:05] for us to be able to essentially do the mathematics to. You know, calculate how much additional road length, or how much additional utilities and stormwater pipes, and and then what's the cost of those things? So we have attempted to do that, and that's what we'll be talking about this evening, as far as what some of those assumptions are so really just, I I think in summary, the the urban services study, and what we'll be talking about is, is not really intended to answer all the questions about the future of the planning reserve. It's really just a an opportunity for us to. I help identify what some of those pinch points are going to be. And then really highlight some of the critical questions that we can ask ourselves in future steps. So we won't be coming up with creative solutions to resolve those questions. We're really just trying to identify what those questions are. And with that I'll turn it over to Sarah. Rest of the consultant team.

[124:02] for presentation and discussion. Okay, thanks. KJ. And Mark and Kj. Both teed it up. Really? Well, I might repeat a few of the things that you guys have said, too. But I'm Sarah Horn. I'm a senior planner on the comp planning team, and I'm here, as KJ mentioned, to talk to you about the urban services study for Area 3 and KJ and I are joined by Becky Hebb, our planning and zoning specialist, and Brad Mueller, the Pnds director, and we also have members of our consultant team. As Kj. Mentioned, Aecom joining us, and our comp planning team is facilitating this project. But we're working in close collaboration with colleagues, many of whom are on the call from utilities, transportation and mobility parks and Rec. Police fire finance, the city managers and the city attorney's office, and they've all been instrumental in providing the information our consultant team needs to complete the study successfully. So the purpose of this matters item which Kj. Alluded to is threefold. We want to review the service, demand scenarios and assumptions with you. We want to provide information related to the analyses planned for the study, and we want to understand from you if there's additional information that should be considered in the final evaluations.

[125:15] So in terms of our agenda, I'll go over the project background and the area 3 planning reserve service area expansion process. As you said, Mark, it's quite a mouthful, and then we will go. Aecom will go into detail on the area 3, the actual urban services study. They'll give a quick overview of the existing conditions and then go into the service demand scenarios, and then I will go into next steps and key questions in terms of the project background, as you may know, in 2022 City Council identified the initiation of a baseline urban services study for the area 3 planning reserve as a priority project. Their stated desire at that time was to complete the study prior to the next major update to the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan, and their reasoning was that it could be used to inform a decision on whether to continue with the expansion process as part of that update

[126:07] what is service area expansion. You may be asking yourself, well, it basically means making the city geographically larger by adding more area, which necessitates the provision of urban services to serve the subsequent increase in population. The Bvcp or Boulder Valley comp plan states that adequate urban facilities and services are a prerequisite for new development. Urban services and related infrastructure and facilities are some of the things the city provides to support its population successfully. The Bbcp defines 7 services that are being analyzed as part of this study. They're highlighted at the bottom of the screen, and Aecom is going to go into more detail on each of those a little later in the presentation. the area 3 planning reserve which we're talking about is the location where service area expansion is possible. It's the last area that we have defined right now, where service area expansion is possible in the city, the 1990 area 3 planning project led to the creation of the Reserve in 1993. It was formalized and incorporated into the Comp plan in 1995.

[127:11] It's identified in the plan as the portion of Area 3, where the city maintains the option of expansion for future urban development in response to priority community needs that cannot be met within the existing service area. The existing service area includes areas one and 2 on the map on this slide and they're highlighted in pale yellow and light gray. The reserve, which is just north of the service area, is highlighted with the pink location icon on the map. It sits just outside the service area north of us, 36. It's approximately 493 acres in size. The city owns approximately 219269 are privately owned, and the Forest Service owns about 5 acres. The process for service area expansion into the reserve was also set in place in 1995, to ensure a methodical approach to potential expansion.

[128:05] In 2015 the process was revised to incorporate the urban Services study as the 1st of the 3 steps in the process, all 3 steps are detailed on this slide per the comp plan, the purpose of the study is to quote, learn more about the feasibility and requirements, to provide urban services to the area and to understand potential phasing and logical areas of planning and potential expansion, it does not assume expansion is a foregone conclusion, nor does it consider future changes to policy. Once the study is complete, there are 3 courses of action that can be taken. The 1st option is for you planning board to review the study and for council to accept it. Then planning board and council would hold public hearings to determine whether to move, to step 2 which you can see in the middle of this slide. The unmet community needs study. If authorized staff will incorporate this study as part of the 2025 Comp Plan major update. Once it's complete, a determination would need to be made regarding step 3. The Service area expansion plan, which you can see as the last step in the process.

[129:08] The second direction is for Council to accept the study and decide not to proceed with step 2 at this time or council can choose not to accept the study, and not to proceed with step 2. If either of the last 2 options are selected. Council still maintains the ability to revisit acceptance of the urban services study in the future, and that would basically reinitiate the three-step process at any time this evening, as Kj. Mentioned. And I'm talking about, we're focusing on Step one, the urban services study. It's a technical report, and, as I mentioned before, it doesn't make policy recommendations or plan for the future of the reserve. It serves as a business-as-usual baseline analysis, and its goals are to document existing conditions related to urban services and public infrastructure, and understand how these could be extended into the reserve to objectively analyze and describe the type and extent of services needed in the reserve under a range of service demand scenarios

[130:06] to develop an initial understanding of potential impacts, costs, phasing and funding of providing these services and to give decision makers information to help determine if the city should continue to explore potential service area expansion and just to clarify. While not part of step one steps, 2 and 3 that were illustrated on the previous slide would provide an opportunity to have a community conversation around unmet needs to reflect on the economic, environmental, and social factors that may shape future development and to provide a forum for policy discussions in terms of our timeline, we settled Staff and the consultant team settled on a twelve-month timeline. To complete this 1st step to date our consultant team, Aecom has completed the existing conditions, research and the development of a range of demand scenarios. And they're now starting to evaluate these scenarios and based on feedback from the meeting that we held in June, and this meeting with you. They'll work to complete the scenario evaluations by September or October, and we're expected to complete the study by October or November in advance of the Comp plan, update in accordance with the 2022 Council request.

[131:19] So in terms of engagement as a technical study rather than a policy setting process. We're using the informed level at this time on the city's engagement spectrum. This will change if planning board and council decide to continue with the process. We'll move up the spectrum to date. We've sent communications to council on 3 occasions, and we've shared each of these communications with you in October of last year we sent an IP memo describing the scope of work and schedule for the project. In February of this year the city manager's office sent a heads up, confirming that the project was proceeding on schedule. In April of this year we sent an IP memo describing the existing conditions. In June. We met with counsel with this presentation, and we're meeting with you tonight.

[132:02] We also just regularly update the project website and then just quickly to go over council feedback, which is, yeah. IP Memo, IP stands for it's information packet information packet information packet. So it's just in your packet. Intellectual property. No, no, okay, thank you. Just information pack. Sorry I should have clarified that next time I'm going to quiz you and see if you remember. So just to quickly go over Council feedback, and that's included in your memo like more detail about it. The discussion with them identified a desire for a 4th scenario which our consultant will include in the final analysis, and they were also interested in identifying and exploring more creative and innovative approaches to the scenarios to consider climate change and the analysis specifically of water supply and infrastructure to ensure an inclusive decision-making process that incorporates diverse voices, and to make sure, we document our assumptions and rationale for the analyses and staff and the consultant team are currently working on ways to address and incorporate some of this feedback into the final report.

[133:10] And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Deanna Weber from Aecom to get into the actual study. Thanks, Sarah. We'll now focus a bit on existing conditions first, st and then we'll talk about the scenarios. So on the next slide you'll see. The site itself has gently sloping topography about one and a half to 2 and a half percent really supportive for urban development. Also, you'll see that the planning reserve itself is about 493 acres in total. So almost 500 acres and then the eastern portion that you can see in green. There is identified in the Boulder Valley Comp plan, land, use map as future parkland, and that's about almost 200 acres is about 189 acres total.

[134:04] You can see, too, there's some industrial commercial uses and several re residential neighborhoods located in the vicinity, and then in the central part of the site itself, a number of existing privately held properties, and then you can also see city of Boulder property in the yellow there as well as the Orange and then Forest Service land in the darker green. So if we go to the next, when we look at the existing conditions on the next slide. Really, we can consider what are the urban services currently, serving the site. There's basically boulder does not have any water lines within the planning reserve. Some water lines run along the planning reserve boundary and are much smaller diameter pipelines. Boulder does not have wastewater infrastructure within the planning reserve, and there's no existing stormwater master plan for the area and the flood plains have not been mapped yet.

[135:01] There's limited transit service when you compare it to other parts of Boulder and the connections across us 36 are limited. The Boulder Valley, the Boulder Fire Rescue Developed Department provides a full range of emergency response services. So fire Rescue Station 5 is located at the corner of 19th Street and Violet Avenue, currently the Boulder County Sheriff Office District one is the nearest police station at the North Foothills Fire Annex. and essentially it's projected that that the land identified for future parks and recreation and the planning reserve would be needed to support future Regional Park for Boulder County. So you go to the next slide. We'll talk briefly about future planning considerations. As we've noted. We've got limited transit service, basically limited city infrastructure. So additional analysis is really required to understand on site and off site improvements as it relates to water, wastewater, etc, and also stormwater. We also this part. This

[136:12] particular task order, this effort does not identify the impacted flood plains and has not also identified wildlife and vegetation resources, so that would need to be forthcoming in the future. So if we shift now and really start talking about the service demand scenarios. I think it's important to identify that those urban services that are defined in the Comp plan include public water, sewer, stormwater, fire police, multimodal transportation, etc. So the scenarios were developed 1st with an in person, scenario workshop. After the existing condition, analysis was completed, staff from planning and development services, utilities, transportation and mobility, finance, housing and human services, parks and Rec. And the city's Alt

[137:03] city's attorney Office helped us develop assumptions for each service demand scenario, and the purpose was really to understand the relative scale and proportion and dimensions of conceptual outcomes. It's really served as bookends to look at order of magnitude terms of the potential development opportunities. And that really helps frame a rough order of magnitude, of cost and revenue impacts for us as we move forward in the study. So these 3 service demand scenarios. We'll talk about just a minute. But first, st if you take a look at some of the assumptions we used, we assumed mix of uses. Including some non residential community serving opportunities tax and revenue generation based on the finance data. We've got parkland. We talked about that the lands purchased with parks and rec funding to be used for the regional park, including parks, neighborhood serving parks as well.

[138:06] When it comes to residential property. We did. We assumed that there were no large single, you know, no large lot, single family, home properties. It would be a mix of housing types and densities anywhere from 8 dwelling units per acre all the way up to 50 dwelling units per acre. We are assuming that we're using the the height, constraint, the height limit for city of boulder for the property. And also when it comes to transportation, we're assuming that the streets would be multi have multi-use paths, pedestrian and bike friendly facilities that water and wastewater demand would be needed, based on the utility data and emergency and see services really based on data provided from police and fire department. So the next slide highlights. Really, those bookends for you, the scenarios at a glance, when we're looking at what we call scenario one all the way up to scenario C. When we talk about non residential property, that, or square footage that really assumes everything from community centers to neighborhood, serving retail and commercial, etc. So you can see a range there.

[139:20] We've also identified anywhere from about 4,300 dwelling units. Again, those attached dwelling units, not single family home anywhere from 4,300 all the way up to approximately 6,700, and then the population. You can see they're projected based on the dwelling units. And then the parkland we've talked about earlier, and as Sarah mentioned, it was requested to develop a force scenario where we would take that parkland, the identified parkland area, the 189 acres, and use a portion of that for residential. So we would see potentially, we would anticipate those numbers going up.

[140:02] So some preliminary takeaways to consider when we look at those bookends of the scenarios 1st related to water, so water demands will be modeled in the future, and it will help us determine if the existing water supply is sufficient to meet the needs of both the existing area and the planning reserve. So my preliminary evaluations indicate on and off site improvements to the transmission and distribution. Infrastructure to increase capacity will be required. Also, when it comes to public sewer, those projected wastewater flows are currently being developed. The loading of the wastewater would be used to identify the capacity of the boulder, water, resource, recovery, facility, what needs to be potentially increased to serve the planning reserve. And then, as we mentioned earlier stormwater and flood mitigation. Right now there's not. There is 0 existing stormwater infrastructure on the site that would need to be addressed. And then we would really also need to look at a a, perhaps even a new stand alone. Stormwater plan that would require an update to allow for discharge policies for future development.

[141:17] And then, multimodal, as we've talked a bit about already. There's been no detailed conversations to date with c.at this time. This is really high level. We're looking at assumptions based on traditional responses to the vehicle trips, just as what we call the baseline or business as usual condition, which then, potentially, you know, obviously, we would wanna introduce great opportunities for pedestrian bike multi multimodal opportunities. And also really look at what right away preservation and connection among neighborhoods. So on the next slide you'll also begin to see some of the safety, and many info Chris Brewer, my colleague from Aecom, will discuss.

[142:02] Thank you, Deanna. and just to reinforce before I talk about these things again, our goal with the study ultimately is to qualify the fiscal implications of both future private development on area. 3. In context, what with what we expect to be the public sector. Costs in terms of horizontal development, horizontal infrastructure, but also public services. So what we wanna make sure we get right in terms of the infrastructure side is thinking about what the likely right of way allocations are gonna be for streets and sidewalks and parks and trail systems. and then ultimately think about how much land remains for private development and allowing us then to think about the densities of development we're expecting. And obviously those are ultimately going to correlate with our key takeaways here. So thinking about public safety. So, for example. our initial conversations, both with Fire department as well as city manager's office, to clarify that we are expecting at this point

[143:04] existing fire staff is probably going to be sufficient, but that if we, you know, increase the population base by, you know, potentially 10,000 residents, we are going to potentially need more ambulance and medical response. We have had initial conversations about the need to deal with wildfire risk on the fringe. So there's an acknowledgement that that may require some either higher costs or different ways of thinking about how we plan forward and harden for fire risk. and then on the police side. Obviously, if we're adding significant population base to the community, there is an expectation that additional staff are going to be needed. I think we're also expecting that this will probably shift some of the more basic boundaries of of city district police district, so that may change and it could ultimately have a set of impacts in terms of staffing as well. So again, if we add

[144:01] resident base as well as an employment base. We would expect to see some of those implications. I think, from an amenity standpoint. one of the areas we've had a lot of recurring conversation about is is the park development on the site? Obviously the acrid was purchased from funds, from the permanent Parks and Recreation fund. What our clear understanding at this point is that you know. all the land that's been allocated is going to be needed to maintain parks and recreation facilities based on national benchmarks. So if there was a decision made to reduce the developed urban park component within this project, there's an argument that that land would probably to be found somewhere else to meet the National Benchmark. So one of the key policy questions ultimately, but not for tonight. So as we again get through the initial analysis to be completed.

[145:02] there's a a we have an ongoing team of of specialists across water, wastewater and transportation to help frame what we're expecting in terms of order, of magnitude, horizontal infrastructure, improvements. I've been spending a fair amount of time thinking about what are the offsite infrastructure implications so in terms of water distribution costs in terms of potential changes to water treatment. thinking about that and then understanding ultimately those costs from a horizontal standpoint both on and off site in relation to what we expect, the incremental tax revenues to be most likely property tax, but also sales tax and other revenues as well, so essentially giving the city a framework for the trade off on the project. That right. Thank you, Chris and Deanna. That was a lot of information, I know. But before we get to key questions for you, I'll just quickly go over next steps. Aecom will be working on the demand scenario evaluations from now until October, maybe November, and then they'll develop a more detailed understanding of the required infrastructure.

[146:20] improvements and associated fiscal impacts, as Chris mentioned. And then our plan is to come back to you this fall to review the final urban services study. We have tentative dates for October 15th for you to review, and the 17th for council to accept. And these dates just so, you know, will more than likely move out to November, based on the addition of the 4th scenario. It's going to take a little more time to crunch those numbers. Those are our next steps. And then what would be helpful for the Aecom team to know from you tonight is if you have questions or comments about the assumption we've used for the scenarios or the scenarios themselves. And if you have questions or comments on the urban services and infrastructure areas that will be analyzed, based on the scenarios. So with that I will give it back to you. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much. That was a great

[147:12] presentation. And so I think that clearly lays out the what we have to comment on tonight. And so who check online as well, who has questions and comments for either answering either of these scenarios. Do we want to do questions and comments together, or questions? First, st then comments. let's do a round of questions first, st and then we can comment, how does that that good with everybody? Okay. Kurt got some questions. I have questions. The 1st question relates to the shooting range out there. I was out there yesterday. I'd never been north of Harlequin Gardens on 26,

[148:07] and I was out at the gate to the shooting range. The shooting range was closed. but somebody was shooting. And so the question is, I think, that the bounds of this don't include the shooting range. But if that's true, my question still is. what is the legal status of the shooting range? Will that change? Are you considering how the presence of that could affect livability. Usability of that area. Great question. Scurt you are correct in that. The shooting range area is outside of the planning reserve boundary, so that would be out in the unincorporated portion of Boulder County. so as far as any

[149:02] sort of link, you know. Appropriateness of land use questions we would, you know, have to direct those to our county counterparts. And colleagues over there for for those kinds of determinations. honestly, we haven't. You know we haven't thought that far ahead in terms of the just the the sort of relationship of of that particular use being adjacent to the planning reserve and potentially, you know, residential neighborhoods any. Any type of development in terms of a realistic timeline is is likely any anywhere from 5 to 10 years out so. I think those questions would be addressed at some point in the future when when we had a lot more detail about what those uses would be, and where they'd be located. Okay, thank you. My next question is also sort of process related. This. This entire process is all or nothing right on the planning reserve. In other words, there's no mechanism to

[150:08] to say, let's do this process, but only to a piece of the planning reserve. Actually, actually, no, it it it is possible to identify phase a phased approach and and really identify what would be appropriate as far as feature, annexation, and and I should mention as well that at least the way that the process is designed to go through the 3 steps at the end of the 3rd step. That is, the development of something called the service area Expansion plan, which is essentially equivalent to an area plan or a subcommunity plan. The the final step of that process is essentially that it would convert either all or a portion of the planning reserve to Area 2, meaning that it is then eligible for annexation. But it wouldn't necessarily.

[151:00] and exit into the city outright. That would be a decision, you know, to be made at some point in the future, but but certainly not all of the planning reserve would need to be made or converted into area 2. It it can be parceled out and done in phased way. Okay, yes, thank you. That's helpful. But I was thinking more in terms of specifically the urban services study. Do I have that right? Yeah, you are. Yes, you are correct in that. The urban services study is, we're looking at the whole area holistically so that we can get. You know, a really order of magnitude, understanding of of the whole thing. If it were to be if it were to be an extra developed at some point in the future. Okay, can I jump in and just add to that, too, since this isn't a policy step. but rather, it's a technical one. There really wouldn't be any utility, and parsing it as half the acreage or part of the acreage. It's designed to give information for future policy discussions which very well could be. Well, let's look at a 3rd or half for all.

[152:07] Let's look at this intensity, that intensity. That's the step 2 and and well, actually, the step 3 that Sarah spoke to. So we want to get all the information we can to make informed decisions in the future. So you all can make informed decisions in the future. Great? Thank you. And then my final question, I think this is my final question is about the financial part. and I'm not a finance person, so I don't. I I didn't follow everything, but I guess the bottom line question for me would be in the end if we were to go ahead with some level of the of annexation and development, and so on. Would it

[153:01] pay its own way, or would it need to be essentially subsidized by the rest of the city. I'm assuming that your analysis will be able to answer that question. Is that kind of the goal, or at least part of the goal. Okay? At a at a planning level. The expectation is that we would be able to provide the city with an expectation of. you know over a future 20 to 30 year period what we thought the you know, the property tax revenue implications could be some of the other revenue streams. and then put that in context with what we expect, the rough order of magnitude on and off-site infrastructure costs to be so. That is the expectation. Okay. great. Oh, I lied. I have one more question. It's about this, the the regional park. So when I'm reading the portion of the comp plan

[154:01] related to the development of the or the urban expansion. It talks about neighborhood parks, which are a scale of 5 acres. Community parks, which are scale of 50 acres. It doesn't talk about a regional park. so are there other places in the Comp plan where this a regional park is called for? Or where does this concept of a larger scale regional park even come from. Yeah. Good good question, Kurt. And fortunately, we didn't weren't able to have a representative from Parks this evening. They both had had some conflicts. But the regional park is defined within the parks and recreation master Plan that was recently adopted and updated. I think a year or 2 ago. So the you know, the sort of spectrum and range of parks, as you kind of described is, you know, goes from pocket parks and neighborhood parks at its smallest level, up through community and ultimately regional parks.

[155:08] You know, which serve a a community and a population beyond just the city of Boulder, and really look to that whole regional area so that that is defined within the parks and Rec master plan. The you know, the purchase of those lands was made back in the mid nineties through special revenue funding and tax that, you know, was identified for acquisition of parkland, specifically for a regional park, as as part of a need that was identified all the way back then. So it's been something that has been on the radar of parks and recreation for you know, going on 30 30 years now. And is something that we're trying to consider and and incorporate into the analysis. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. Okay, I'm just, I'm going to go in the order that I think people raise their hand. So I'm going to go, Laura, Ml, and then Claudia.

[156:10] Thank you, Mark. I have a bunch of questions, so feel free to tell me to hold off for round 2 if I'm going too long. So, following up on Kurt's question about regional parks, Christopher, could you give us some examples of what are regional parks that already exist in Boulder. The the closest comparison that we can make is Belmont City Park, and then, I believe, there was another example as well. I I will say that I think the the sort of definition and and the full development of a regional park. Is not something that fully exists within boulder. Right now, I'd I'd say that the the parks that are that have been identified and and serve as kind of our largest parks are either. Either, you know, partially developed like Belmont is is partially developed.

[157:02] But not fully yet. And so there, there's not a good example, that we can point to within boulder. There are some other examples within the metro area that are, you know, significantly larger and tend to accommodate a mixture of both. Sort of passive, you know. Recreation trails things like that, and also active recreation, like soccer fields, baseball fields, that kind of thing. I would say. Boulder reservoir is probably the closest analog that I could think of. as far as a regional park, just in terms of its regional draw and interest for the for the entire county, and really surround here. And I think that the reservoir is considered a regional park. Thank you. And following on the Parks question, you mentioned that in order to maintain our parks level of service, we would need to develop all of the planned parcels that we currently own as parks that are designated for that purpose. When you talk about the levels of service, does that take into account our open space as well as our developed parks? Or is that simply for developed parks? Only.

[158:09] That is, for developed parks only. Thank you. okay, other types of questions. In the presentation there was a mention that there's an assumption that this, whatever is developed here in the planning reserve would follow the city's height limit. I would have thought that that's a given rather than an assumption. Is there any question about that? No, it was just the basic assumption that our you know, the the range of scenarios and the range of densities that we've assumed, that goes up to that sort of 40 to 50 units per acre. That's that's based on the fact that the 55 foot height limit essentially caps you out, it'd be very difficult to reach any kind of density. Beyond that, without a change to the to the high limit. So so

[159:01] it it may just be terminology. But yes, you're you're correct, that it's a given that the the height limit would continue to apply here. Thank you. water resources. I appreciate that. There was that discussion about considering the impacts of climate change on our future. It's not just basing water projections based on what exists now, but also the future going along with that, though you know water conservation is something that I would say the city of Boulder is not very advanced in. Are you also looking at other models of how dry cities around the country currently conserve their water, make it go farther. You know I did a bunch of facilitation in the city of Sacramento around their water conservation plan, and we are nowhere near maximizing the capacity of the water that we currently have with wise water use practices and infrastructure. Is that something that is being looked at in this planning process is not only our water is going to have to go farther, but also our practices can

[160:00] change to make it go farther. Kj, can I interject and answer that one? Thank you for that question. I would say that. Well, what I want to share is that we have a work plan. Item. this particular year that's just getting initiated called water wise landscaping. There are other water initiatives throughout the city. So I think the real recognition is that's a citywide priority, and one that would, of course, apply to this area should it be annexed. And such one of the things we want to make sure that we are thinking about is, if there's something that's smart for the whole city. We're looking at it already for the for the entire city. So it would be a matter of whether those items become relevant at such time that there were any development there. But just to give assurances that those types of things are being looked at

[161:02] in a very comprehensive way. Here, in the next 18 months. Okay? And and can we assume that when we are looking at our water needs for the future, that that we will be considering that some portion of our our water use will go farther than it currently does. We can be. And we're going to identify some of those way that there are savings in the study. But again, this is a way to project potential need. And if anything, we wouldn't want to project that need so conservatively that it wasn't accurate at the time. If anything, if it shows that you know, if we say that the need is a gallon per person, and it ends up being 0 point 9 per person. All that means is that the infrastructure needs would be potentially a little bit less, and that the density could be potentially more. So. We're trying to make sure that it's

[162:00] acknowledging of those future conditions, but not overly relying on it for the purposes, again, of of doing an assessment about the needs that are associated with potential development. Okay, thank you, Brad. That makes a lot of sense. Hey, hey, Laura? While Brad's up there? I I can. I colleague on that with a question just real quick, because I have this in the in the document that we were given. It says water demands will be modeled at a later time. and I'm like, Wait. isn't. I think the later time is with the finishing of the study. But I looked at. Yeah. So later time is fall to get the final study. Okay, it just seemed like, not years from now. Yeah. Okay, all right. Okay. Sorry to interrupt Laura. Go ahead. Okay, was somebody on staff trying to finish that thought.

[163:01] I think Brad finished it. I stumbled on it. But yes, that will be a next step of this step. Okay. It's. Part of this step. Thank you. Okay. Great. Okay. Another water question. I did have the opportunity to watch the City Council presentation, and QA. And Lauren had asked a question about underground storage of stormwater. and I wasn't quite clear on the answer of whether that is a practice that that the city could consider for this new annexation or potential annexation of area 3. Yeah. And I'm I'm gonna kind of echo some of Brad's comments before that that we're, you know, we're trying to utilize our standard practices and existing policies as part of establishing this baseline, so that we understand you know conservatively what kinds of stormwater structure would be required. Now, if the if the outcome of the study and the results from that, you know, identify any substantial amount of stormwater infrastructure or a need for us to explore other measures. Then that becomes the policy conversation that we're going to have as part of those future steps. So I don't. I don't anticipate that we'll be modeling that type of approach, you know, in the current urban services study, we had

[164:23] obviously providing some some parameters around, you know what's what's in scope and what's out of scope, because it'd be really easy to, you know, identify a number of different innovative approaches. And we have to. We have to try to establish a a, basically a floor that we can then measure against. For some of these future conversations and decisions. Gotcha. So so we should assume that all of the assumptions are going to be kind of business as usual assumptions, and you know we can have the more creative conversations when we get to that policy stage on how do we do one better than business as usual? Okay.

[165:00] That's that's exactly right. And and one thing I will notice, too, and in response to some of the council comments, and we've already you know, had conversations with Deanna and Chris about this, but in the final study we do intend to include a a short section that identifies what some of those innovative approaches and alternative types of ideas could be. We won't fully analyze and explore those, but we will be providing some additional information around things around water use. You know, microgrids, energy solutions, other kinds of things that we can propose as you know, elements for future analysis as we as we get into those future steps. So we're not gonna try to ignore them. But but we, wanna, you know, just be able to provide and highlight, maybe what some of those opportunities might be in the future. It. And Laura. I just want to just piggyback on that, and just say and give a shout out to our utilities department and our water group especially, and they've been intimately involved in this and working with aecom to help them understand what we're doing now. So they are very much

[166:09] in this conversation, and if this moves forward they will have a leg up already because they're involved in. They've been involved in this from the get-go. Just so, you know. Great to hear. Okay, I have just a couple more questions which I'm happy to either hold or go for. Mark. What do you think? What's up. Let's let's go ahead and and jump and save them, and we'll see if they get answered in the next couple people. Okay, ml. thank you. So can we put the 4 scenarios that are being looked at up? Do we have them in a brief, in a brief overview there, just. I'm thinking about the additional information to consider that was asked of planning board, and I'm. We have. We have the 3 in the in the power presentation. So, Sarah, I don't know if you're able to pull those up. And then the 4th scenario will would just include

[167:07] a portion of the park plan. Yeah, just give me a second. Reduce some of the commercial square footage. Okay, let's see. yeah. And so it's just the table. Here we go. Okay. I could have done okay. There it is. I was hoping for a visual, I know, and we don't have that right now, because we're kind of at the level where we're just kind of number crunching right? You know, we used some. We had to use some visual internally to just figure out how to analyze. But we don't really have any kind of schematic or anything like that at this point. Okay, so I'll try to ask my questions based on this level of of consideration. So I heard you say that

[168:01] innovations right now we're looking at everything based on a business as usual. and innovations will be. I'm trying to look at Christopher. There he is. Innovations will be kind of pieces that are there, but they're not part of the so I guess my question would be, is, you know this is 2024. Why isn't that like front and center right in the middle? The fact that we need not only sustainability, but we need resilience, you know we need water is is is vital. There are. You know, the living building challenge is out there, and it's been proven where 0 new water comes on site. Blah! Blah! Blah! There are technologies out there. I'm curious as to why in our

[169:02] out of the gates scenario, thinking we aren't putting on the table. that mandate. that we do the most efficient and effective land use project that we can for the 21st century. It seems that we've got this prime opportunity. There's nothing been done on this site. Can we produce all its energy? Can we produce all its water? Can we do these things? And should they just be kind of this little aside? Or is there a way to And that's this additional information to consider that it's intriguing me is that I get it. I get the fact that let's just see if you know the future looks like today.

[170:01] What does that look like? But the truth is, the future doesn't look like today. So anyway, I I'm curious as to why we aren't making a bigger press in that I see Brad ready to see Hi Brad. So I want to be real clear that Staff understands that there are opportunities with future growth all future growth throughout the city, and certainly in the design of this site, should it be chosen to be annexed again. That's a question that's not even before council before the community. That's the step 2. We're certainly not agnostic or ignorant to that point. This simply isn't a policy document where those types of things can be embedded. It really is math. It's saying that, you know, if if we are going to have different levels of development at certain intensities, what are the potential implications to

[171:00] our systems. And, for example, if if there's a a point where a 5 inch water line is needed under one circumstance and then 7 in the future. We want to make sure that that potential possibility is at least known for you as policy makers and council as policy makers. If it turns out it can be 6 inch or stay the 5 inch. That's all the better, of course, in the future, and we could have policies that drive towards that in the future. But absent those policies in place today. We don't want to give you a false sense of complacency, and then find out that in 3 or 5 years, if development moves forward on the site, that those technologies aren't in place yet. So that's the rationale behind that. So looking at a scenario that would. And I understand that these are more quantitative and qualitative. But

[172:00] to have to have those kinds of like a hundred percent on-site energy production, 100% on-site reuse of water, those kind of scenarios to be analyzed even in a in a big, in a high level, analyzed as part of these kinds of analysis, does it? Does it not make sense? Just so that we know? Hey, you know, here's business as usual. But we have we have this other possibility? Other cities, other countries, other worlds, are doing this. Should we be so far fetched thinking. here's this other other way of looking at a feature. Yeah, and that's what I think you heard Sarah and Christopher and others speaking to the fact that we will make sure the final report includes recognition that there could be a diminishing of some of the demand for infrastructure or services based on on those types of things we may or may not be able to quantify it and say, well, that might be, you know, mean a 10% reduction potentially in in the size of waterlines and making stuff up. I'm sure somebody's cringing at my numbers. I'm throwing it.

[173:22] But but you know we we will try to qualify that, but not quantify that, because that would be a huge rabbit hole that we would all go down and spend, you know, months and months and months going down. When really the key question that this is all driving towards is in Step 2. Do you? As policy makers Council specifically gets to determine this want to move forward with determining whether there's a need or not. And Brad, this is Deanna from a Ecom. Just to add to that, and thank you. For bringing up. You know, all of those components of sustainability, resilience, etc, that we're firm believers in and and committed to and

[174:05] the next steps in this process would be to identify some strategies related to energy, water, mobility, greenhouse gas, emission reductions, ecosystem services, etc. And to really explore some of those innovative and best practices and articulate what are those opportunities that the planning reserve potentially has moving forward? And in a normal process we would identify business as usual, which we're doing, and then really begin to start modeling what we would call a good, better, best best being net 0 energy, and or even, you know, energy positive. So at this point in time, in this particular effort to frame these bookends, we're looking at business as usual. We're identifying those strategies, and the next steps you'll see we'll come back with that. But we're we're not moving so fo forward as to be modeling those good, better, best scenarios moving forward. But that could be certainly an opportunity in the future.

[175:07] Not sure if Kj. Or Sarah, if you have anything else you want to add. I, I just. And Kj, you can weigh in, too. But, Amal, I would just say, like, I understand what you're saying, and if it is decided we will move forward with the community needs assessment that will help inform what those potential scenarios for the planning reserve might look like that. You're saying we're just, and we're all, you know, like, sometimes we have to back up, too, like we're excited to kind of think more ahead. But we're trying to just kind of keep pulling ourselves back at this point just to lay that groundwork. But then we definitely are interested and, like, Brad said, aware of and open to exploring those at the step that makes sense, and that the Bvcp requires us to do so. So those are on the table. They just aren't in the data at this point. They're on the table. Potentially after we do, the community needs assessment and figure out what's needed and then get direction from you and council as to what we should be exploring in terms of policy direction. If

[176:09] you want to continue to explore the possibility of development in the reserve. and it sounds like Mason might have a colloquy. Yes, I've been waiting to say that it's my 1st time getting to say that word. I'm stoked so I'm Claudia's all right. Mason jumps in now and then. I'll come back to you, and I'm not going to do all my questions, just just a colloquy. So is it right to assume that this whole, the way this process works is annexed. and then these are private property owners who don't necessarily have to do any of those awesome fancy things. Great private part. Just put, yeah. okay? And you're quite. Well, I think like when we. We don't do. We don't annex and then buy all the land, and then do what we want with it right.

[177:03] That's yes, that's correct. So the about half of you know, half of the planning reserve is privately owned. The other half is owned by the city, much of it identified for future park land. But if the area were identified as area 2 and then eligible to be annexed into the city. Most likely these would come forward as individual development proposals. Upon which then. as as you know. You know. There would be annexation agreements. There would be discussions around transportation demand management. And and you know, you know, traffic studies and who's paying for what infrastructure all those kinds of things would would happen. Only, I would say, if large portions of the city owned land were to be brought forward for some type of development, either through a partnership with

[178:00] older housing partners or other private developers, that you know that potentially would be something that was more kind of larger in scale in terms of, you know, some some type of horizontal infrastructure being being built at at one time. Most likely it's it's all it's likely to happen in a more incremental approach. Mason, you have another one you want. You can. Okay, we can go in order. Claudia, go ahead. Thanks. I wanna zoom out a little bit. My, my questions are more about, I think context and how we're going to end up evaluating the information that we're expecting to get back later this year. So my 1st question is, how do we account for urban services that are not directly provided by the city of Boulder. And I'm thinking specifically here about transit and schools.

[179:02] I understand that that's not part of our capacity planning. But do those needs in an area of this size, change any of the scenarios that we are looking at. And at what point do we start in our deliberations? Do we start evaluating information about those needs. Yeah, it's a good. It's a great question. Claudia. So the 7 urban services defined within the comprehensive plan. Those are the those are the 7 that we're specifically focused on in the urban services. Study. It is true that we we also won't. We will. We won't want to ignore some of those other urban services as you mentioned, so transit facilities, you know, provided by Rtd. And then schools, also libraries. Now that library is a separate district from the city city. Those kinds of community serving types of services that may or may not be delivered, you know, expressly by the city.

[180:04] I I think that as part of this study, we're very focused on some of the kind of the nuts and bolts and infrastructure of and cost impacts related to that. But all those other ancillary services will absolutely need to be considered. If if the process moves forward into the you know, into future steps where we actually start. You know, thinking about the organization of land use on the site and and those other kinds of components that would that would be needed to really build a community out here as opposed to just, you know, individual land uses. Okay, thank you. And then my second question is. what kind of capacity planning have we done? Is being done? Will be done for additional development within city limits, especially since we have a changing landscape of land use, housing and transportation policies both locally and coming from the State level. So what kind of information are we going to have about needs within city limits that we can evaluate alongside of these findings that we're going to have about area 3.

[181:17] Yeah, thanks for that question. And the really, the comparison and the the evaluation of community needs happens during step 2, and specifically within the comprehensive plan. There are 3 criteria that are identified. that would need to be met to say that those community needs are of sufficient priority that we should move forward with the service area expansion. Basically, what that means is is that If, after this urban services study which provides us this baseline of kind of infrastructure and financial information about what the potential implications are. City.

[182:00] If that is accepted by city council, and we move into Step 2, which is this, community needs discussion and would be incorporated into the comprehensive plan update starting later this year. That is where that conversation happens between. Here's what expansion looks like. But then here's also the comparison of what our internal capacity is within the current city boundaries. We've actually, I'll give you a little spoiler, alert. We've done some some preliminary analysis on that you know. It's not to a level of detail that we're able to share that at this point. But certainly that is the kind of thing that we would be doing and doing some additional analysis, particularly based on some of the the recent State legislation changes and other code updates that that our department and others in the department are are working through. You know, with all of you, and and changes that have already been been made, but also changes that we're looking forward to making over the next several months. So I I. It's a very valid question. And I think ultimately, that's going to.

[183:03] That's gonna be the crux of the discussion between community members and decision makers of is internal capacity enough to meet the need? Or do we need to look outside? And we need to look into that expansion area. I I wanna make sure that I'm getting the the question I had in mind answered. Here I hear what you're saying about the evaluation we need to make about if there's unmet unmet need as a criteria for opening up development in area 3. What I am asking about is when we have statements in the scenario testing and I think there were some, you know, preliminary results presented to us like existing fire department staffing looks like it might be sufficient to cover that area are when we say that, are we talking about about existing conditions right now within city limits and the services we're providing? Or are we also doing projections?

[184:01] For adding housing capacity within city limits when we make that kind of statement. So if we, if we come back with a scenario that says you know we think such and such capacity is sufficient, or is insufficient. How is that tracking back to the trajectories that we're already on within city limits. Okay, thanks. i i i better understand the question now. So the the discussions that we've had with our various departments related to capacity. Those. The levels of service are all based on. There is individual department plans, and then those are documented within the comprehensive plan. They should already be accommodating and anticipating. You know, continued growth within the city, that we've already adopted through our subcommunity plans or other area plans, so it should it should accommodate. For you know the relatively modest growth that we see within the city currently, in addition to that expansion into the into the planning, serve.

[185:05] Okay, thank you. That's much more what I was getting at. Right sorry for my 1st answer. Fine. Wasn't quite. Me! Thanks. Got it. Okay, I'm going to go now and then. We'll we'll finish up with any more. Okay. When earlier, you had shown the I think it was. Deanna had the map up of the area 3, and it showed a large green area to the east. That was currently own, as I understand it. That is, the city owned property within area 3. That has a designation of park land. Is that is that correct? And can we pull that up.

[186:03] So on. Slide 13 is what we were referring to shows the green area to the east. There. That is it. That's noted correct as essentially park land, because it was essentially, you know. funded through park purchase funding. Yeah. Okay. My question is, have we screwed ourselves? There's a history in Boulder, of designating things on map, out of convenience that subsequently, years later, suddenly doesn't, it makes no sense. And so here we have this area 3. And if we read that the way it's shown well, all the parks are going to be on the southeast corner, and all the development will be, you know, we won't have. And obviously that's not the scenario that anyone wants or expects.

[187:05] and when we say, Gee! If we take the metric of our peer cities, and how many acres of parks, of what type per 1,000 residents, or whatever we don't. we're not lumping them all over there, but bite by doing it this way. Have we somehow obligated ourselves that that we can't build that southeast corner, and we can't have parks in the northwest corner. Obviously the answer is, of course not. But but we but really by showing it this way, have we? Have we, begun creating an issue. Well what I would. What I would respond to that mark is that these aren't land use designations. This is this is ownership, right? So the green areas on the east are owned by the city of Boulder. The actually the yellow parcel that's up in the northwest is also city of boulder that was purchased with funds from the housing and human services. But it doesn't. The the land use designations. Don't

[188:21] percent. You know, there there really is. Isn't any land use designations out in this particular area, at least not of any any level of detail. So the rest of the land that is just shows the aerial view underneath is all privately owned. So you know, ultimately again, policy question for a future date. But there could be conversations around land transfers and other kinds of things you know, related to that. And and certainly, as as I think, we all kind of know intuitively that you're you're correct. We wouldn't want to consolidate all of the park space on one side and all. You know the residential neighborhoods on the other side. We would want to integrate those things.

[189:04] But but I will say that the you know the lands that were purchased with the parks and recreation funding. They do have a very specific you know, requirement mechanism that's associated with them to be used as regional parkland. If that if there's a decision in the future that that should change, then that would need to just go through the appropriate disposal process with Parks and Rec Advisory Board and council and others, and then there would have to be a consideration of how how is that? Parks and recreation fund reimbursed for those for those lands. Okay, yeah. And and that's the answer I was hoping for. I would. I would simply caution. And I'm getting into commentary. I'm sorry. I would simply caution that as conveyors of information, even at this wildly early stage, that that's

[190:04] that is clear. And maybe it's just. I'm the only one out there that gets confused by this. But that's clear to our decision makers, our council community members, etc, because we have a we have a history of, you know, things like an oso designation. creating all sorts of havoc that was really unnecessary when we we show things and people kind of create their own expectations. So that was a comment and a question. The the other one I have is, you know, and I. I started this by saying, Gee, let's concentrate on the urban services study and and how to what we think of that. And and it's striking that we have assumed kind of status quo things on some level. But we've had to make assumptions on other levels. So one assumption that we've made is 0 single family homes. I'm not advocating that we don't assume that.

[191:12] But that's not. That's that's essentially a policy decision right off the bat, to say no single family homes. I support that policy. Decision. But that's a policy decision, because in the rest of the city we allow single family homes. And so I use that to illuminate an area that I have a concern about and ask a question, and that is the assumption is, we're going to use the current Dcs for all roadways, infrastructure, calculations, etc. I find the Dcs to be holding the city of Boulder back from achieving many of its goals, and to be a document

[192:01] unlike many of other documents it. It does not comport with our broad goals. So the question is. can we can we like we assumed no single family homes? Can we say, you know. Okay, yeah, we got the Dcs over here. But other cities have street roadway construction and planning documents that are more future oriented than the D-c's. Can we make that kind of broad assumption up there, or is that is the only one we're able to make about single family homes. Yeah, let me let me clarify the single family one just just a little bit. We made an assumption that there is no no sort of large lot, rural, residential, single family homes. We, we basically use the holiday neighborhood kind of as our

[193:02] as our minimum baseline. So there could be detached. Small lot, single family homes, you know, trying to again trying to meet about 88 units per acre kind of minimum level of density. So there could definitely be detached single family homes as as part of our assumptions. Just not, you know, a very, very low density. One unit per acre kind of assumptions. Okay. I guess. Related to the Dcs. you know our, our, our and Chris and Deanna. You can speak to this, too, but you know our, the transportation subject matter, expert city, Tom, and working with our with our transportation department folks. we needed to have some baseline engineering standards that we could use in order to actually calculate, you know, some assumed construction costs and amount of right of way and all those kinds of things. I do think that we've made, you know, made some choices and made some assumptions to make sure that we are

[194:01] 100, including additional. You know, bike and pedestrian infrastructure. Thinking about that as a duplicate network. In addition to vehicular you know, access networks, things like that. So we've made some decisions to incorporate additional kinds of things. But we did. You know we did use the Dcs because it is a useful standard and it and it is the current standard that we use. You know, within the city. And so it was difficult for us to take a leap of that faith and change that. Okay, thanks for the clarification on the single family home. Then I I may have not read that fully. Okay, second round, I'm done with my questions. So, Laura, do you still have additional questions that are not answered yet? I do thank you. Just a few. I'll try to go quickly. So did I understand correctly that that Bhp parcel is also city owned? Or is that owned by Bhp.

[195:01] There's there's actually 2 there. There is a Vhp own parcel. That I believe is the one that is the Solar Farm that currently, and then is a city of boulder owned parcel. It's about 30 acres that was purchased with housing funds. So that's that's a city owned parcel. So those are 2 separate parcels. Okay? And then for the city owned parcels. You know, we, on planning board, have talked about this in various contexts that when the city owns the land, that's an opportunity to do something that with affordable housing that you can't do on private property is that the assumption that you are making for the city when you are estimating what you're going to build in those city-owned parcels. when you look at the densities that you might put there. Are you thinking of those as primarily affordable housing, kinds of development that could not be done on private property? i i i would say yes, and, Chris Brewer, if you've got something to add to that.

[196:01] I think we had discussed our our new scenario scenario, for as having an expressed putting development on some of the parkland, and obviously the assumption could be that that housing could be identified as affordable. I think, for the sake of the fiscal analysis, we would need to develop some assumptions to understand what that would mean from a fiscal standpoint to the city. Again, we're not master planning the site we're not thinking about returns to a developer or returns to the city from a financial standpoint just fiscal proceeds. If that makes sense. So. at least, as I understand this point, our scenario 4 would at least explore what some of the implications would be if we put additional housing on the parkland. I think 50% of the parkland. Okay, if that's correct. Yeah, that's.

[197:00] And we are in the process right now of developing the fiscal assumptions for the project. and so we would have to think for a minute about what? The if there was an explicit assumption about an affordable housing component on that parkland, how we would treat that from a fiscal standpoint. So that's something we would have to develop. Yeah, I would encourage you asked for our feedback, and so I'll get there. So I'll save that. But I think that bears a lot of thinking about in terms of potentially the potential for missing middle housing, which is the product that is so hard to obtain on private property, and that city-owned parcels, whatever those parcels may be, offer a really rare opportunity to get that product in the city. So I would encourage you to look at that. And next question. horizontal infrastructure. And and Kj or Christopher, I really appreciated your explanation that it's very different when you're thinking about developing a large city owned parcel versus the kind of annexation by annexation property owner by property owner. Kind of thing that's on private property, but for large parcels.

[198:07] When you think about? The financial implications? Have you thought about some creative financing solutions like Metro district bonds that push the repayment for that infrastructure? Spread it out over the future rather than having to be fronted by the city. Chris, I don't know if you've got insight into this. I mean again. It's to the. I'll I'll just. I'll just maybe note that you could expand. But you know, I I think it gets to right now if we can quantify what the dollar amount is, then we can start to figure out and have conversations around. How do we ultimately cover that? Or you know what is the mechanisms that we could use? we haven't. We haven't expressly, you know, gotten into a lot of detail about funding mechanisms, because we're you know, we're still just calculating what the what that fiscal impact even looks like at this point.

[199:01] Okay. So this is again, kind of a case of you would assume a business as usual, level fiscal impact. But then maybe there could be a conversation about creative ways to lessen that that burden. Yeah. And I would just simply stress that. You know, we're getting to these conversations right now. I think we would certainly talk with city finance staff about how what the options could be for how it would be financed I would normally assume. You know, just a general obligation bond approach. But I think we're certainly happy to talk, you know. Work through Kj, to talk with finance, step about different ways of thinking about how it could be financed. I I think we just wanna make sure that we're being consistent. So I I think we're open to talking about ways that it could be financed. But we wanna make sure that whatever we come up with can be applied consistently across the scenarios to make sure that we're maintaining apples and oranges, as they say.

[200:01] If that makes sense. Thank you. And and again, this. This may be a question that goes more to policy in the future. But I did like, I said, listen to the city Council discussion about what kinds of business uses would be in that non-residential kind of more. Yeah, the non-residential space. And just wanna flag that we've had a lot of conversation in the city about some of the light industrial uses that we are losing and don't know how to retain, like the auto repair services and the timber yard that's in East Boulder and you know. when we look at Area 3, is there opportunity to try to make sure that some of those uses can be viable based on on how we develop the planning reserve. So I don't know if that's something that you're also considering your scenarios when you think about those non residential uses. Yes, actually, we we we did have a lot of conversations around that when we were putting together those initial 3 scenarios and and tried to actually make some accommodations for those kinds of uses, those kinds of light manufacturing types of things within some of those.

[201:15] you know, kind of get the lump together into that one square feet of non residential use, you know, within those ranges. I will say, one of the comments we received from council a few weeks ago. Was there? Was perhaps a little bit of concern about the amount of non residential space that was included, and and they asked, as part of this port scenario to actually reduce that down to something that you know would be considered neighborhood serving, you know, retail commercial that would be needed for for the population there, but not something as a either a citywide or kind of regional level of commercial scale. So we've got some work to do to, you know. Figure out what that what that right number is. But we did try to accommodate some of those types of uses in the original scenarios.

[202:07] Thank you. And then, my last question. I just wanted to, you know, bring up. We got a an email from making calls about making this a truly 15 min, walkable kind of place, but then also making sure it's connected to the rest of the city through bike lanes and pedestrian paths and the arterial network. And you know, my assumption is that the city does want to think about that. It's probably not part of this urban services study because a lot of that would happen outside the boundaries of this area. And I. So my question is around, you know, if we are making assumptions about upgrading the arterial network because of the development in the planning reserve. I assume that those costs are not included in this study like, we're not trying to make the area. 3 planning reserve bear the full costs of development of improvements to the arterial network. So that question.

[203:00] Make, sense. I would say the the intent of the study is to at least qualify what we expect. Some of the off-site costs could be. Because, Kj, if I'm saying that correctly, we're trying to understand rough order of magnitude, what the off-site implications could be. So. Right. So in terms of offsite implications, I I get, I get how that would apply to something like more sewage treatment plants or additional water capacity that's off site. But would that also apply to like street improvements, to connect different parts of the city. i i i would say I would say street improvements. maybe not across the entire city, but certainly improvements that would be necessary, and and kind of a direct result of potential development in the planning reserve. So certainly, like intersection improvements or other kinds of connections. You know, those. Those are the kinds of things that we would be analyzing and including and providing some description of.

[204:07] I do think that there and Megan picked up on this in his comments to you, and I know it raised some questions with Council as well. Some of the reference that we had in there related to possible improvements along us. 36 as an example and adding vehicular capacity. There. You know what we've what we've determined and had conversations with our transportation and mobility department. And Garrett is on the call in case he wants to chime in. But you know, basically, what we're trying to do is identify. Here's what here's what some of these typical impacts would be. And here's what you know, adding this number of people or adding this number of vehicles could conceivably have the impact on the system itself. Now, that's not that we're not proposing that. That's actually what we end up building. But we want to identify that as a baseline case. So that then when we come back

[205:05] and there if this is to move forward and there are individual developments, we can have the conversation of well, we don't want it. Vehicular capacity to us. 36. So now, what do we do in order to mitigate that right and mitigate those other impacts. And I think that same kind of concept applies to some of the arterial impacts or even the water. You know, transmission system. Other things like that are there things that we can consider and do in the planning and ultimately in the development of this area that would limit or mitigate some of the impacts that we're identifying through the study. If that makes sense. Yes, it does. Thank you. That was the end of my questions. Okay, are there any questions before we go to quick comments? I'm out. I hope so. Because we have, we're gonna we're gonna have comments office. Okay?

[206:05] If it isn't a question, you can turn me up right? I do have a question. I do have a question mark on it. Okay, so here's my question. So, assuming that the development of this area will be used to meet unmet goals in the city, will there be included in the analysis, that data piece that is, here's the goal. Here's where we are at meeting it in the city proper. And here is what development of this area can do to help us meet that goal? Will that information be available so that we can see how this development is getting us? Toward meeting our goals. The urban services study would not necessarily describe that. Because again, we're attempting to just quantify what some of the infrastructure and fiscal impacts would be. I think your question is more appropriate to be addressed through that step 2. Where we're talking about the community need. And that's where we can identify what those goals are, and how or if

[207:18] the planning reserve actually moves us in the direction of those goals? Or is there are there other opportunities within the current city boundary to achieve those goals? Or is it a combination of both. So what's driving? The increased quantification in each scenario? Right? It's getting bigger development, bigger development scenario 1, 2, and 3. What's driving that if not to meet our goals, what's driving that. Sure. Sure. Well, we're trying to. We're trying to establish you know, bookends essentially, or a range of opportunities in a spectrum, so that we can test, we can better identify and test where there might be threshold levels where we're crossing over. And you know, for example, scenario, a kind of the smaller scenario that might lead to. You know, I'm gonna throw a number out of a hat. 20 million dollars worth of infrastructure improvements.

[208:16] If we move to Scenario B. Where that starts to get larger we may cross a threshold where sudden you need a new water treatment facility, and you need 3 other things on top of that. So now you're talking about a hundred 1 million dollar price tag. So the the range of scenarios there is. Really. it's it's basically giving us an a way for us to stress test the system and find out where those breaking points are. Looking to see what's possible. And then we decide how how we use it. Okay, thank you. Okay. I just went back and was reviewing the packet, and we did number 2. The question first, st which was, Does the planning board have any questions or comments? Yeah, we had a few

[209:05] number one is, and this is where I think we should conclude in a pithy fashion. Does a planning board have any questions or comments on the scenarios that have been developed to inform the analysis. So you can make any comments you want. But but that's the ask tonight from Staff is, do you have comments on the scenarios that are going to be used to inform the analysis. Kurt, you're ready? No, I just want to clarification the scenarios are the scenarios. ABC, yes, okay, thanks. And then we'll add a 4th for the final study. Yep, yep, yep. Any anybody have comments on the scenarios that Haven't already been addressed, or anything else. Laura has her hand up.

[210:00] It's thank you. Yeah. I'll just reiterate that for those city-owned parcels I would highly encourage you in every scenario to think about those and the value of them for affordable housing, because that is something that I would imagine that the city would like to support, is using our city-owned parcels when it is residential to obtain affordable housing outcomes that simply are not possible on private property, that that's just a resource that we cannot squander with market rate development, in my opinion. So I would. Yeah, for the modeling assumptions. That's what I would encourage. And then again, for some of those non residential uses. You know we have talked. And, Christopher, I think you've said this very eloquently, that some of our light industrial uses in the city are changing right and what we can expect to see. For example, in East Boulder, where we have designated light, industrial space is more like maker spaces and breweries, and it's less of the sort of service industrial uses like auto repair services and the lumberyard. And if there is a way that we can in our assumptions.

[211:11] you know, assume that we want to protect some of those uses instead of just assuming that that changeover is is going to happen, and those might be different kinds of parcels and different kinds of densities than you would see in like an East boulder, light industrial space. So I would encourage you to think really hard about that in the assumptions. I think those are my only 2 comments about the assumptions. Mason. Yeah, on the assumptions. We're on the comments right? Yep. Work comments away. So I appreciate that you have different scenarios to try to create bookends. I imagine that is kind of your approach to creating some sort of confidence interval around the estimates that you're making. I imagine this kind of analysis. There's what we call in my line of work a lot of swag.

[212:03] So I don't know. The one thing that I think might be useful to be add. And I'm blending over into another point that we're supposed to comment on. Maybe later is. the city has probably done this type of analysis before. I know there's been annexes in the past, and it would be interesting to have a little bit of background on what we've assumed in the past, and what has actually happened, and how close or far away we were. just to inform. You know how good we think our assumptions maybe are. or estimates, maybe, are next Kate Claudia, do you have comments. I think my final comments on this would just be to echo a lot of what ML. And Mark and also city council, based on my reading of their deliberations shared is that I do have concerns about using current policies and practices as the baseline for this kind of scenario development. We are trying to understand our city needs and development practices

[213:20] 1020, and more years into the future in a rapidly changing policy and climate environment. So I understand it's it's difficult to like nail down. How would you choose more forward looking scenarios like? What would you base them on? But in the absence of that going forward, please. I would like to see some some very extensive documentation of assumptions. Right? So how is it that we get to that number of potential housing units. How, what? What water usage is being projected, what level of of car usage is being projected, etc, like, let's please document assumptions incredibly, carefully, so that we can start to play with other policy scenarios and futures.

[214:13] Kurt. Thank you, Claudia. I want to follow up on those comments. I'm very concerned about this notion of working on the business of business as usual assumptions. because I feel like, if we do anything end up developing this in any way that's close to business. As usual, we will have failed. it will be a failure. This is not what we should be looking at. We should be thinking, how can we develop this to parallel the best of you know Freiberg or Copenhagen, or Vienna, or something. Pick your fantastic European city, and and that should be our

[215:03] our goal, and I have concerns that that that by even raising the issue, the the the possibility sort of, or the baseline of business, as usual, that we're setting an expectation that that's kind of the the the the bottom point, and we want to do 10% better or something. Well, I think 10% better is not enough. And so I I feel like there is a policy assumption built into starting from business as usual. and there's always going to be policy assumptions built in no matter no matter what we start with, and so I think we should start. We should say it is axiomatic that this is going to be an exceptional place, and if it's not an exceptional place, if it can't be an exceptional place because

[216:04] it doesn't work financially, or we don't have enough water or whatever, then we shouldn't do it. So I kind of feel like we should. We should be turning the process around a little bit. And instead of, you know, working on business as usual, and then looking at. Oh, what is that gonna require? And how does that work? We should say these are the requirements we're going to impose first.st You know we are not going to as an example. say it is axiomatic that we are not going to widen 28th Street, us 36. Take it as axiomatic that we're not going to expand stormwater capacity. All the stormwater needs to be handled on site. For example. you know I don't know what these assumptions are, but but start from those axioms really, and then work. To what does that mean that is going to be required? Or what is the outcome, then potentially going to be in terms of what gets developed? And is that something that we want to go ahead with? And what are the finances and so on.

[217:20] Can I just ask a clarifying question with that that feedback? Do you have any insights or recommendations about how we would build consensus about around what those would be given, that there's not a public process involved with this 1st step. And I think, you know, that's why we. We acknowledge that if there's a decision to move forward in step 2, which is just a decision to either move forward and looking at it or not. but then there would be a public process. So I think we maybe are a little hung up

[218:00] as staff in wondering how we're going to fulfill the mandate of getting through step one to step 2, to have those conversations without turning it into a whole public conversation about coming to consensus on that. And recognizing that we're on a timeline, that to do step 2 that has to happen with a comp plan update. And if it doesn't hit by the beginning of the comp plan. Then we'll be deferring it out. 5 years. Sounds like my colleagues have ideas. Yeah, yeah. So that's a question to everybody. Really I do. I'm gonna call them myself, and I was just too anxious to not I think that you partially answered it. By your 1st reference to the Bbcp. That if you look at the goals and the descriptors within the Bbcp. And I look at it all the time now, and I get inspired by it because it is a forward-looking document. It is a goal oriented document. It is about what we want in the future, and much less about what we want now or in the past, and I think the the transportation master plan.

[219:18] I haven't spent much time with our Parks and Rec. Master plan, but Boulder produces lots of master plans and lots of planning documents, and I don't want to be dismissive of them. They're really good work, and I think they are at their best clear about their goals. And so when I think about using the Tmp as kind of a baseline for how we would evaluate and put fiscal numbers on roadways and right-of-ways and infrastructure versus the D-c's. You know. I think it's a big conflict between the D-c's and the Tmp. So I would seek out and summarize adopted documents that the city has, that

[220:17] the Tmp. Was unanimously adopted by Council. The Bvcp. I think, is a masterpiece, and it was unanimously adopted by the Council and the county. So anyway, I think the answer is in all the stuff we have before us right now, and it's and we don't need to do additional work other than to consolidate and coalesce those thoughts together. That's that's my answer to that question. And, Kirk, I know you. If we can keep going down the line here. Okay. And, Alan, we're on a beautiful roll. I love this because I think that the

[221:04] the confusion I've been having is, it seems like we are moving ahead with this very pragmatic process, and we don't have our guide in front of us, and I think Mark has unpacked it twice, really nicely. 1st talking about well, if we can make an assumption about single family houses and the maximum property for those we can make assumptions based on where we want to end up. There was no public input to say, Hey, you can't limit the size of the properties there. So I think that there is something within the capacity of this process to carry assumptions into the thinking. and I believe that Mark, bringing to the to the point that

[222:01] we have the documents that can guide us. As to let's make assumptions based on the guidance that is being provided by the plans we already have in place. They've already been approved. They are our documents. I think we just have to expand the thinking to include the idea that something is guiding something is guiding this number, crunching. We're trying to get somewhere, and I think that that is a is a vital and a critical thing to be considering as we move forward, so that we don't just see in these scenarios with how did we? What drove this versus that. I think Laura made some excellent points around. You know what are the assumptions that are driving? All of these scenarios?

[223:00] I think, to put that on the table as a okay, we're making assumptions. And then to qualify them with our documents would not, I don't think, would take us backwards, or would supersede the process? I think it would. It would really clarify and help help make sure that we get somewhere. That will bring us the value that we want to get at the end of the day. So I I love that discussion. And obviously we all have aspirations, and we believe in the the Boulder Valley Comp plan, and all that. What I hear Steph saying is. scope, creep. What we're trying, what staff is trying to do, and guys let me know if I'm misrepresenting is create a baseline, a if business, as usual. we're gonna have to build all this. And it's gonna cost all this much, and then from here we can talk about that aspirational. Now, what I hear you guys saying, and and I I totally

[224:08] Why is Vibe the word coming to my mind that feels like the wrong thing to say here. But I'm vibing with is, you know, we should be aspirational. We should shoot for the moon. We need to, like, you know. build for the plan for the future that we want to have now, or we're never going to get there? Which I agree with. So I think maybe a way to go into the middle not to create. You know, scenario number 5 when you were trying to do 3 is If you're doing what is being suggested using the planning documents as a general guide for a best case scenario right off the bat to try to help frame the discussion around something a little more creative, innovative. All those positive words.

[225:00] I think you could use some significant swag assumptions in that, and just say, Hey, if we do this, if we use your instrumentation plan and we do this, then we think it's going to impact this by X amount. And I don't think you have to do a ton of research and be exact. I don't know if you feel comfortable with that? But I think what what's being asked for here is is a scenario that matches our city's aspirations. I'm gonna go to Laura, and then back to you. Is that good? Okay, Laura. So I just want to say that I 100%. My heart is with everybody that we want the city to be aspirational, and we don't want business as usual, and as Kurt said, and as I think I heard at the City Council meeting, but I forget who said it. If we are just doing business as unusual, when we, if we decide to move forward with the area 3 annexation that we will have failed. And I think that we all agree with that. Every single person here probably agrees with that.

[226:04] and at the same time, as a facilitator and someone who's worked with consultants. I do not know how on earth they would ever figure out and be able to to PIN down what are the aspirational assumptions that they should include in another scenario, and I think that absolutely would impact the schedule impact the budget in a way that probably is not acceptable to any of us in terms of that, it would kick it out of the ability to do it in a concert with our Bbcp Update. That would be a major major change to the schedule and the budget, and a major decision so much as I would love to support the idea of making this a very aspirational analysis or having that capability. I don't know that we're at the point where we can do that. I think from a practical standpoint, I think that what staff have outlined is the path forward is to document these 3 different levels of potential growth in a business as usual way. But then also, document. What are some of the things that could be looked at in the future as ways to reduce the potential cause and impacts and be more creative to me, that feels like a really elegant solution that I support. And I just want to put that out there that I recognize the challenge that staff and consultants are up against, and I really do not know how we would direct them to do anything else.

[227:21] Kurt, since you started this, I'm going to give you the final word. And then we're going to conclude this. Okay, thank you, Laura. Yeah, I appreciate that commentary. My part of my concern is just that I think we're all in consensus, and so is city council, that, as, as Laura just said. business, as usual, is not what we're going to be doing. So why are we spending time and effort modeling something that we're not going to do to me that doesn't make sense. I understand the notion of trying to get a baseline, but we could also set a different baseline.

[228:02] And and to me. That would be it. Would. It would provide a better target to to look at variance around rather than variance around the the business as usual, scenario, basically getting back to Brad's question about how do we develop consensus? I I think it's certainly a good question. I think you're actually hearing. We we said that this was going to be inform level of engagement. Right? So at this point, we're not talking about consensus among the community. I think I think we're talking about consensus among council primarily and and planning board. And I feel like we're hearing that I certainly am hearing a lot of consensus around that or support on this board and that

[229:03] from from what maybe my wishful thinking reading of city council was was that they also a lot of them were feeling this way. Too. So it seems to me that at least at this level. the consensus is there? Maybe not on all the specific details. And maybe that's more what you're looking for. But on the general goal of let's make something that is truly exceptional ale. Not at all that that to me it feels like there is the consensus there. Okay, that concludes commentary from the board. I want to give Staff an opportunity, Christopher. Anyone to comment on anything you've heard. You don't have to, but we can. We can conclude. Or you guys can comment if you like.

[230:04] You know, I'll I'll just comment that I wanna appreciate all the comments and the feedback that we received from the board. Certainly these are things that we heard from Council and others, and we continue to have conversations between. You know our team and the consultant team as to how we can best respond. I I do think you know Laura and and Mason raise some some great points about the scope of the work, and and really just the ability for us to kind of manage and and anticipate and provide the information. We we do have some limitations there. We've we've got some schedule challenges as well, in order to, you know, get their urban services study completed, and and ultimately be able to make a decision on whether or not to move into step 2 as part of the comp plan update. Otherwise we'll miss that window and and we'll be back in 5 years having the same conversation. and it. The only other thing I might mention, too, is, you know, the business, as usual case that we're using is is still rooted in our current plans and policies and the best practices that we have within city. So we're we're not.

[231:12] you know, we're not looking to other communities in the front range or across the country to, you know, establish our baseline. We're we're using data and information water usage. Those kinds of things from our city departments and from our experience here in Boulder. So I I wouldn't anticipate, or I wouldn't characterize our our business as usual cases, as being, you know, grossly sort of unaspirational, I think. There, there's a lot of really good policies that are already built into those assumptions, but certainly we'll be. We'll be looking to try to. You know. Provide provide a response, and provide the information that you're looking for going forward. Yeah, I was just going to piggyback off Kj, we can also like just kind of document, some of those policies that we have been looking at in the Bvcp. And I think like when we say business as usual for Boulder, that's

[232:12] kind of a higher level than business, as usual. The way that we think about it, I would say normally so. Our business, as usual, is pretty high level. We understand your concerns and want to think more forward thinking. And we definitely want to continue to have that conversation as we move through this process. But, as Kj. Said, we really appreciate your feedback and your taking the time to really think about this and give us constructive feedback. It's very much appreciated. So thank you. Okay, great. Thank you all. Obviously a lot of thought on Staff's part and on the Board's part. So I'm going to close it, and we're still on