September 17, 2024 — Planning Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

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

[0:00] September 17th to order. We have 2 planning board members. Our one planning board member online, one is missing and the rest are present. we We don't have any minutes to approve. Oh, second, pulling up the wrong packet. Here. you just pull up the right packet one second. There we are. Thanks for your patience. Everyone. We have. 2 call up items. I don't know if anyone has any questions or thoughts

[1:02] you're asking or, yeah. Well, I haven't thought it's for the second one. I don't know if any. If you want to do them one at a time. you know. Just order. Wise. did we skip public participation? Oh, I'm sorry I'm all over the place this morning. See, David. David made me nervous. He's in the audience. He's the former planning chair. He made me very nervous. You're right. Public participation first.st So I think Vivian's online. Who can give us the rules of the meeting. Hi, everyone I'm joining instead of Vivian this evening, and thanks for pulling up the slides. Thomas, we're just gonna roll through the rules of decorum.

[2:03] I can see your screen. Okay, thank you. Great, alright. Thanks for joining us, everybody this evening, and the city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive, meaningful, and inclusive civic conversations. This vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members, staff and board and commission members, as well as democracy. For people of all ages, identities lived experiences and political perspectives. For more information about this vision and the community engagement processes. You can please visit our website. And the following are examples of rules of decorum found in the Boulder Revised Code and other guidelines that support this vision. These will be upheld. During this meeting, all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person. Obscenity, racial epithets, and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited.

[3:05] and participants are required to identify themselves, using the name that they are commonly known by, and individuals must display their whole name before being allowed to speak online. we in person and online comments this evening participation. If you're in the Zoom Webinar format with us. And you would like to raise your hand at this time. To make a comment. You may hover over the raise hand icon down below and it when it's your turn we'll call upon you and unmute you, and allow you to speak. This can also be found under the reactions icon as well. I don't think we have anybody on the phone, so I'll skip that part. and I believe my apologies. I'm a little rusty. Do we do in person participation first? st Yes, I will allow you. I'll let you guys take that

[4:04] over. Yes, so we have one person signed up for open comment in person we have David Ensign, you have 3 min to speak. I'll go ahead and pull your timer up here. and please go ahead whenever you're ready. Okay, thank you. Oh, all right. You should be able to hear me. Now, good evening. Planning board members. My name is David Ensign, and I live at 40 20 Evans drive in Boulder, and I appreciate the opportunity to provide comment. I want to thank you for all you do for our beautiful city of Boulder. I'm a member of better Boulder, a group of diverse and energetic community members who advocate for sustainable and smart development in this beautiful city. Our group sent this letter here to you on September 9, th voicing support for family femme, friendly, vibrant neighborhoods work that Carl Gyller and the Planning Development Services team will be presenting during matters.

[5:12] I was happy to see that the letter made it into the packet, so I won't go into all the gory details in there, and I'll just briefly speak on behalf of better boulder. As our members reviewed the progress of this initiative over the summer, we were struck by how well the proposed land use policies align with better boulder's mission of fostering, vibrant, liveable, sustainable, and connected communities. The original motivation for this effort was zoning for affordability, a goal that we think these changes will help achieve. But we also see progress here. In moving towards true 15 min neighborhoods that offer essential services for daily living that are accessible through means other than automobiles. The changes proposed here will be foundational for working on a robust middle income housing strategy.

[6:00] Boulder's Inclusionary Housing program does much to create opportunities for those households who are under 60% of ami encouraging modest housing types will help target those important community members making up to 120% of ami who struggle to make ends meet in our expensive city. We look forward to seeing the city build on this foundation as we address the needs of the missing middle. Having served on the planning board. I was impressed with the scope of the proposal within the guidelines of the current Bvcp. I'm hoping that learnings from this initiative can inform the 2025 major update timing of this project is especially good, not only from the Bvcp perspective, but also it's aligned with the addressing the affordability legislation that is being passed down from the State level. as in the case with any residential zoning initiatives. Residents may be alarmed if they fear that the pace of change will be massive and rapid in their neighborhoods.

[7:04] I hope that public can understand that the expected rate of change is gradual. Boulder's experience with relaxing adu. Restrictions, for instance, has not led to a sudden proliferation of adus. The rate of change has been quite measured, as numerous factors influence residents, decisions to reconfigure their living spaces better. Boulder provides more detailed comments on in this letter, as well as some recommendations for future efforts. I hope our thoughts are useful for you as you provide feedback on family, friendly, vibrant neighborhoods. Thanks so much for your time, and it's great to see. Y'all. thank you, David. And that concludes our in-person open comment period. So now we're going to switch back over to online. Great. Thank you, Thomas.

[8:01] sorry. Just one moment, folks. I I see a couple of hands online. But I'm just trying to allow you to speak just one second with my settings here. Okay. all right. We have a couple of folks joining us online that have raised their hands. We'll start with Oliver. Dick, cousin, followed by Lynn Siegel. Oliver, you'll have 3 min for to speak. Awesome. Thank you so much. Can you all hear me? Awesome? So my name is Oliver Dick House, and I live in Mapleton hill here in Boulder and I would also like to comment on the family friendly, vibrant neighborhoods. Plan that you all will be discussing later on this evening. And I wanted to. I missed the opportunity to be able to take the staff survey and provide my input that way. So I just wanted to say that I am in support of the project. I think it's going to be a really cool

[9:08] thing if you know all the policies that have been laid out by the staff and the board. Ha! Go into action. The one thing I will say is, you know, I live in one of the neighborhoods that would be impacted by the changes. I live in one of the great neighborhoods that do have a mix of typologies of, you know, apartments, town homes, single family homes. and it's really great. Everyone here loves how it is. And I would love to see more of it around Boulder, but I would just challenge staff and the planning board to just excuse me. As these conversations go on to make sure that when the if and when these plans get implemented, that the quality of what is built and the quality of the projects lives up to the aspirations of what we're trying to achieve as a community and getting affordability and getting more housing types created. I would really like to see a

[10:15] more enforcement of, say, the neighborhood parking permit programs because, I do emph, sympathize with people that are concerned about traffic and congestion and parking. And that is something that can definitely be improved on in our neighborhood. We do live in the Mapleton Hill parking permit district, and I think there is a need for greater parking enforcement as well as you know, making sure that the character of the neighborhoods do still remain the same. I mean not the same, but similar similar to the way that people have come to love them and grown to appreciate them. But with all that being said, I'm super supportive of the project. I'm really happy that the city is looking at these things, and I hope it is successful. Thank you.

[11:04] Great. Thank you, Oliver. All right. Next up we have Lynn Siegel. Oh, whoops! Oh, sorry! Hold on one moment! Oh. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you, Lynn, you have 3 min. Go ahead. Yeah, these 15 min neighborhoods. The problem is its growth. Any way you look at it. Case in point. weather weather, vein weather vane across from the Jcc. A whole little city. No services. 0. Case in point, papillios. All the extra people from 400 units, or whatever are there are going to spill into the community the congestion, the traffic, 2,206 pearl, 300 square feet does not meet the missing middle. I mean, it does, technically.

[12:18] but it's 300 square feet. So who's going to live there for any length of time? That and that's how they got their project approved. Just like 3, 2311. Mapleton got their project approved, based on Frewhouse brewhouse. Never happened, you know. That's the way the city of Boulder operates the way the planning board operates. Dreaming. dreaming does not make it so. I wish I could be positive about what y'all do. But I'm not sorry. This is, you know. I came straight from David and sign at work together at the Boulder County Commissioners, protesting, I mean me protesting large houses. Because of

[13:03] the fact that you know Marpa House. the model communal housing in boulder boulder is now, you know, John Kirkwood just tried to stick extra bedrooms in there. They threw all the students out. You know what they were paying there per bedroom. 1,700 bucks for 3 bedroom, you know, units one bedroom, 1,700 bucks, the millennium. I can not tell you what they're going to cost, but it's big. 930 bedrooms there it was 250 with the millennium, and we're losing all the sales tax revenue. The city of Boulder shoots himself in the foot all the time. And it's just not okay. You know, Papelios, this whole development, and Mckenzie Junction, a whole development is caught inside of 3 freeways, a triangle, and 3 freeways. This is not living liveable.

[14:02] These spaces, you know the airport. the airport who owned the airport before. Anyway, you know the Faa gave us the right to use it as an airport if we accepted the funds to have it as an airport. If we don't have it as an airport, then what do you think they're going to do? They want it in perpetuity. But we're spending the big bucks to fight them. Can anyone fight the Faa about as much as they can fight the usps. It, you know it's utterly ridiculous. Don't waste great. Thank you, Lynn. All right. We have one more hand raised at the moment. Chuck Leaf! Who's up next? Chuck? You have 3 min. Thank you. I just need a few seconds. I'm Chuck Leaf. I live at 4 0 6 7 Guadalupe Street in Boulder. I'm the president of Naropa University, and since I couldn't be there in person, I just want to let you know.

[15:05] Chuck. We're having a little time hard time hearing you. Could you mind speaking a little bit closer into your mic, or something. Sure is that working. A little better, I guess. Let me try this way. Does that? Does that help? I think. We'll try to hear you. We'll we'll just if if you could speak up as much as possible. That would be great, because we're having a little trouble. Hey, Thomas, you can restart the clock for him. Thank you. Yeah, I apologize. If sorry. So this is still not working. We can. We can hear you. All right. It's just simply to say that if there are any specific questions about the 1st call up item which involves Naropa, I'm online, and I'll try and do something better if you have any questions to be available.

[16:10] Do we have any other. Okay, thank you. I'm not seeing any of their hands raised at this time. Great. Thanks, Amanda, that concludes our public participation portion. We don't have any minutes to approve today. So we'll go to the discussion. If anyone has any thing that they'd like to call up. We've got 2 call up items for review for the Planning board. Laura, you you mentioned you want to talk about someone want to talk about the 1st one, which was Naropa? No. and the second one. Yeah, I just had a comment. And I'm not going to call this up? 3, 1, 2, 5, 34th Street. I remember when this came to us for Concept review, as it looks like some of the other folks here do, and I just want to commend the the project team for taking our comments, the comments that you received from planning board, and I think, also from city council and doing just an amazing job on that design. That central open space looks really, really user friendly.

[17:19] The additional units that are larger is something that we asked for at that time, and even though there were some concerns expressed at that time about whether that there was market demand for that. It looks like you have made that happen, that that you've decided that there is demand and that you can make that design happen. And I have absolutely no problem with there being 2 entrances onto 34th Street. There. I think that I really appreciate that you showed that you considered options that did not create the second entrance, and, all things considered, the option that you went with would absolutely be preferred. I would think all of us would agree with that. And a really great job. Thank you so much for listening to us, and it looks like it resulted in a really wonderful project. I'm very excited. This is 100% permanently affordable. It's missing middle type housing. It's the possibility of modular construction. Just really great job. Thank you so much.

[18:12] Okay. No other comments. We will. We'll go into. George, can you hear me? Yep. I do not want to call this up, either, but I just had a question. I don't know if the the applicant is on the line are available. Looks like they're in the room, Kurt. Oh, they're in the room. Okay. There might be someone online as well. Okay, sounds great. My question is just if I'm doing the calculations right. Well, you the the statement from so far, Sparin says, part of the objective was to maximize the number of units given the zoning. but it seems like you could have actually done one additional unit, and if you'd been able to squeeze out an additional 150

[19:04] square feet of open space, you could have done 2 additional units. I'm just wondering if I'm reading that right. And and what the thinking was there again. I'm not. I'm not objecting in any way. I'm just trying to understand. Thanks Kurt and Erin Bagnell. So for Spartan architects to answer your question, we could not. We are very, very tight on open space, and so the numbers that you may have crunched might look like you could add another unit. But the distribution of open space that is removed by adding another unit gets rid of that overage. If that makes sense. Yes, that totally makes sense. Okay, I wasn't thinking about that. Yep.

[20:00] okay, thank you. I appreciate it. You're welcome. Thanks very much. Thanks, Kurt. If there are no other comments or questions, we'll move on to our 1st matters. Item, which is family, friendly, vibrant neighborhoods. Update. Thank you. Chair. Good evening, Board members. I'm going to pull up the presentation. Can you enable the sharing? Thomas? Thank you. All right. So tonight we're going to talk about the family friendly, vibrant Neighborhoods project, which is a new City Council work program item for 2024. It'll extend into 2025 and 2026. We expect it basically grows out of the prior zoning for affordable housing project.

[21:01] So I'll talk about a little bit of how it made that bridge to this project and get into the details of the different proposals. These are mostly suggestions that came from city Council at the time that the prior ordinance was being considered as an extension of that ordinance. So, as we've been doing the analysis on this project, obviously, our guidance comes predominantly from the Boulder Valley Commerative plan, which sets the vision for the city in a number of different areas, including land use. So when it gets to matters of land use. It's our land use code. That really is where the rubber hits the road and and where the zoning implements, the the vision of the Comp plan. So whatever changes that we make to the land use code have to be consistent with the current Bvcp. so in terms of land use. You're all familiar with the land use map in the city of Boulder all the different colors

[22:00] there's residential, commercial. We've been focusing mostly on the residential areas of the city as part of this project to look for more housing opportunities to expand. Some choices for people get some different sized units and look at increasing some housing along transit corridors, and really to kind of move towards the 15 min Neighborhood concept of getting more walkability in the city, getting more housing close to transit, so that people can use the transit and also moving into a future phase of the project that'll look at other beyond just housing opportunities, also looking at limited mixed use. So I won't go into that so much, because that's a future phase that'll be more in line with the updates that are envisioned for the Bvcp in 2,025. But we do start with this land use map just to give the guidance of of what is allowable in certain areas of the city.

[23:01] We're all familiar with a number of reasons why housing costs in boulder are are increasing. There's, you know the the uniqueness of Boulder, a lot of demand to live in Boulder. It's a problem that actually is pretty pervasive across the United States, but more heightened in boulder. I think, also. looking at the open space that surrounds the city, the availability of land for boulder is more limited, so that also contributes to housing prices. So everything's always a trade off. And it's things that we go to the Bvcp to get guidance of what changes to make. But obviously housing challenges in Boulder is one of the primary concerns that we have to deal with here in Boulder, and it's a focus area of the current Bvcp to try to address that. So it's also been on the radar of the State in terms of the housing costs in Colorado as a whole. So you're you're probably pretty aware of some of the changes that happened at the State Legislature this year. So I'm going to briefly go over those we talked in February about the Residential Growth Management Bill that basically made boulders

[24:12] our Gms program inconsistent with State law. So that was repealed. But there's other ones coming down the pike that we're looking at. So there's the residential occupancy limits which basically makes occupancy based on family status prohibited per the state law. It also. So it it does. It makes us have to look at our land use code and how we regulate the number of unrelated per each dwelling unit. There's a bill on accessory dwelling units that says that they should be required in each single family house, where where there is a single family house to give an option of a property owner to have an adu and not have restrictions that stand in the way of that. There's another one called Housing and Transit oriented communities which looks at increasing density along transit corridors, and also making projects under 5 acres by right in certain circumstances. So that's something that we're also looking into, so we expect to

[25:14] perhaps be coming forward with some ordinances in coming months related to these bills. I won't talk about the sustainable Affordable Housing bill as that mostly relates to housing elements and forecasts for housing in the future. It doesn't really deal with the land use code as much. So I'm going to jump into the background. How we evolved from the zoning for affordable housing project to the current family friendly, vibrant neighborhoods. So the problem statement that we use for zoning, for affordable housing is largely the same for this particular project there is increasing costs in the city of Boulder, and we recognize that some zoning regulations on the amount of housing that can occur throughout the city can stand in the way or exacerbate housing cost in the city. So we've been looking at it a number of ways. We've passed a number of ordinances in the last year or so that that work towards

[26:10] helping us mitigate this issue like changes we've done to our inclusionary housing or the changes that we did last year to occupancy and adus, and also changing some of the the density requirements in our commercial business and industrial zones. This particular project is focused more on low density areas and medium density areas. So we've updated the goal for this particular project, as you see it on the screen. This is what we have within the the project charter. But basically it's building upon the changes that were made as part of the zoning for affordable housing project, expanding, housing, choice, and supporting transit use by allowing more missing middle housing in the city of boulder, and it looks mostly at the zones that you can see the rural residential or Rr. Residential low, one Rl. One residential medium, one rm. One.

[27:06] and the residential mixed zone, which is Rmx. One. So again, making clear that missing middle is not related to the income bracket, but more the housing type. as as you can see from going in anywhere in the United States. There's a prevalence of single family housing as well as apartments, but not so much in between. There's a lot of housing that would be more modest size that might be more conducive to families in the range of duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes. town homes, or even cottage courts that fall into that category of missing middle. So there's a lot of communities throughout the United States that are looking to update their zoning to be more conducive to these types of housing. So we're looking at more housing and type citywide. but also looking at our site review thresholds at some zones that still rely on the number of dwelling units as a trigger, maybe shifting that more to floor area like we did with the zoning for affordable housing projects. So these are the the goals that we're looking at at this particular phase of this project.

[28:13] So there's been a lot of community engagement on these topics extending from the zoning for affordable housing project. We've heard mixed reviews on this throughout the city, so I've just put up on the slide kind of the the divergent thoughts on this. So for people that are in favor of increasing housing opportunities, adding more modest sized housing will increase housing opportunities, and try to mitigate that rising housing costs, and allow people to have more opportunities to live and stay and work in boulder. It be consistent with the city's housing and racial equity goals. We're still updating our racial equity instrument as we do this project. As we look at different areas of the city when we did a questionnaire on this last year.

[29:04] more than half the respondents were generally supportive of allowing duplexes and triplexes in single family zones. But we'll point out that as part of that phase of the project, it was more focused on the housing type rather than actually increasing the number of possible units in those zones, since we didn't really change the density requirements in those areas. So this this part of the project is is a little different as far as concerns. We've heard about parking. We've heard that the demand of living in Boulder is so high that you know that we might. We probably will just see more expensive housing that we should focus more on in lieu fees or commercial linkage fees, or just requiring deed, restricted units. And we've also heard about, you know, concerns about changing character and single family neighborhoods or parking impacts. So we've we've kind of heard the gamut of concerns about making these types of changes.

[30:02] So just to summarize really quickly what was adopted last year with the zoning for affordable housing project. The focus on that project was more on removing some zoning barriers for more housing in the commercial business and industrial zones. So the density limits of those zones were largely removed and replaced with floor area ratio limitations so kind of capping the bulk of buildings, but allowing more units, so it would encourage more small units in those areas to kind of foster more walkable mixed use areas. We also allowed duplexes and triplexes in the Rl. Rr. And Re. Zones. But again, at the density limits that were already in the code. We got rid of the Use review requirement for efficiency living units which are those smaller units that are about 475 square feet. We also looked at parking regulations and any other things that could be relaxed just to encourage more, more units to be built.

[31:04] So when we took that ordinance to council in the fall of last year the the ordinance was adopted, but Council did make 7 suggestions for things that we should look at as at the time, was a new phase of the zoning for affordable housing project, and has now evolved into this family friendly, vibrant neighborhoods project. But I'll go into detail about all of these. But that's where the scope, really kind of grew out of was. Look relooking at the Rmx. One district, looking at the Rm. One district looking at additional housing density and low density areas. looking at additional restrictions for owner occupancy for adding units in the low density areas number 5 is looking at, perhaps exempting projects that are 100% missing middle housing from the site review process. Also, again, looking at the minimum thresholds for Site Review and removing those dwelling unit triggers.

[32:04] and then also going back to the incentive in the industrial zones for more residential housing. If you remember from that ordinance there was a an extra amount of floor area that you could get by having residential and light industrial on the same site. Council asked us to relook at that, you know, maybe seeing whether R. And D is, is a good use to include in that, or whether all the uses in the light industrial zones should be allowed with residential. Whether that's a good idea. So we've we've been doing a lot of analysis on these suggestions from Council, so I wanted to bring the board up to speed on on the analysis as well as what we've been hearing from the public. So there's a lot to go over in this presentation, I realize. So what I'm hoping to do is kind of get through each topic. If you have a burning question, certainly jump, jump out with it. I'm happy to answer that. But I think we're gonna I'm going to focus more on getting the planning board feedback on each topic. Just so it's kind of more chewable bites.

[33:04] since there's a lot of details to go over. So just as a reminder of how the city of boulder regulates density in particularly the low density residential areas in the low density areas like Rl. One, the maximum density is 6 dwelling units per acre. The density limit in the Rr neighborhoods the rural residential is actually less than 2 dwelling units per acre. So that's our lowest intensity zone. When you get to medium density. It's 6 to 14 dwelling units per acre, and then high density is anything that's more than 14 dwelling units per acre. So again, this is specified in the Bvcp. So the zoning is meant to implement what is in the Bvcp. And it needs to be consistent. So the way that that's been done is through largely minimum lot size or minimum land area per dwelling unit. So in an Rr zone, for instance, it's 30,000 square feet of land area per unit

[34:07] in the Re. Zones that was recently changed to as part of the past. The the prior ordinance to 7,500 square feet per unit, because that would be consistent with the Bvcp. So I should. I'll be updating that slide. Rl, one is 7,000 square feet of lot area per dwelling unit. And then Rl, 2, which is not part of the scope of this project, is actually 6,000 square feet of open space per dwelling unit. I'll just point out that Rl, one is not part of the scope of this number one, because Council didn't request it. Number 2, that it's a zone that already allows a number of different housing types. Already it allows townhouses and attached housing but number 3, the majority of Rl, 2 properties are actually in plan unit development. So we've we've already recognized that there's a lot of challenges with Rl, 2, because every pud or site review has all different rules. So changing. The rules here aren't going to necessarily affect those puds unless they go through amendments. So we already have someone hired for a position to do analysis on Rl, 2. So we're pushing out Rl. 2, until we get some more information and do some more analysis on it.

[35:21] So again, coming back to the the Bvcp. What Council has asked us to do is look at it from a higher level, and and really kind of looking at this language that's in the Bvcp that talks about density. So it does set density maximums in the Bvcp. But it talks about it being more of an average across an area. There might be areas within a area land use that is higher and other areas that are lower. And as long as that averages out and doesn't exceed the the maximum that's allowable. Even though it says that over time the city has more conservatively implemented this through doing it through net density. So Council specifically asked us to kind of look at it through a different lens of doing it through like a gross density.

[36:07] calculation. So the difference, meaning that gross density is where you look at a polygon of land use. And you just look at that whole land use, and you include the public rights of way, open space, public sites, all of the land area, whereas the way it's been done through the zoning is through net density, where it's just on a per lot basis. So we've conducted a pretty deep analysis on this that I'll talk about. So that's that's 1 aspect that we have to look at when we're trying to determine compliance with the Bvcp. So this is the section of of the Bvcp that sets those maximum densities. But it also talks about the characteristics and locations and uses in that, and whatever changes are made to the zoning also has to be consistent with this part of the Bvcp. So I alluded to a phase 2 of this project which will have a component that looks at limited mixed use in some key locations on certain corridors. That's something that has to be explored through the the Bbcp update. And we'll also be looking at, you know, potential changes to these land use designations as part of that. But the

[37:18] the scope of this particular project is really to what kind of changes can be done to get more housing that's still consistent with the current Bvcp. so we have gone out to the public and we've gotten some more perspectives. We've we've attached it to the memo about the changes that I'm going to talk about again. We've gotten mixed feedback on on these topics of adding more housing. So I just wanted to talk about it from a high level. And then I'm going to go into some of the questionnaire results that we've gotten on each of these topics so as far as high level we've been meeting with, you know, plan, boulder, better boulder, boulder housing partners. We had a meeting last night with some affordable housing residents to talk about these changes. So we've been hearing kind of a lot of different thoughts on this. Some of it's very consistent with last year, but I thought I'd share some new ones. So there is

[38:17] people that are in favor of adding housing is that adding more housing, adding more to the supply of housing, will help solve the cost problem and mitigate the jobs housing imbalance. It would allow more housing opportunities for people. Again, we're seeing a lot of families moving out of the city of Boulder, because they can't find housing in their price range or sizes that are in what they're looking for. We have a lot of large single family houses or small apartments. So getting something in the middle would be something that might be more conducive to young families that have starter homes. So that's what's kind of led to the name being called family friendly, vibrant neighborhoods.

[39:00] We've seen a lot of families moving out and enrollment in schools has been going down. So this is why it's a priority of councils. Any more. Units that get added contribute in low fees to our affordable housing fund housing along corridors can add to the walkability of the city and encourage more transit use. And then on on the flip side, we've also been hearing more. You know comments that if we're going to add any housing it should be only deed restricted, permanently affordable housing. We've heard the concerns about parking in neighborhoods and changes to character. Some of the comments that have been attached to the questionnaire are very pointed about not allowing more growth in the city and then on the flip side of that. We've also heard a lot of comments saying that we should go further, and we should allow more housing. So we've been hearing a lot from the community on this. There are concerns that, and we've heard this particular concern. The last bullet point from both sides of the argument that there is a concern about investors coming in and

[40:04] buying up single family homes, and that that could change the character of neighborhoods. So I'm going to dig into the the details of each of the suggestions. And then, like, I said, at the end of each of these topics, we'll stop for questions and discussion. So the 1st suggestion that came from Council was focusing on the Rmx. One zone. So what was suggested was to get rid of the lot area per dwelling unit requirement in this zone and go with just an far So we've if you you know, reading through the memo, we've offered a lot of caution about making changes to this particular zone because it's pretty. It's basically the neighborhoods that are around downtown boulder, like Whittier, Mapleton, Gosgrove, or portions of those areas portions of University Hill. This is an area that was largely developed as a single family neighborhood at the turn of the last century, and then over time became a high density zone. So you have a lot of apartment buildings in these areas. So you have a mix

[41:10] of single family and apartment buildings. But then that zoning was changed because of concerns about traffic and parking in the 19 nineties, where basically, it went back to a zone that's more like a a detached dwelling unit zone. So about so the current requirement is 6,000 square feet of lot area per dwelling unit. So what we've been looking at is, you know, would these changes to allow more units? Would that be consistent with the Bvcp? So again, we've offered caution because this does talk about character of the neighborhood and areas that have experienced impact from parking and traffic. So it's beyond just the numbers. It's it's finding that it. You know, the changes meet the intents that are set in the Bvcp.

[42:00] Looking at the metrics, this is a zone that has a mix of of density. So it's 6 to dwelling units per acre. So we've been looking at changes, as you know. You can't go over 20 dwelling units per acre, but you also have to be consistent with that characteristics and locations descriptor on there. So, looking at the the analysis again, this is focused on the purple areas, which is Rmx, you can see that the actual densities there are very much in the range that the Bvcp sets out. What we did is we did a gross and a parceled density, so gross means just including all the the public rights of way parks, open spaces that are in that land area. And then the parcel is A is a parcel by parcel that doesn't include the public right of way. And you can see that the ranges in those areas is very much within what what it says. 13 to 18 9 to 14 dwelling units per acre. You can see it gets with the parcel. It gets pretty close to that 20

[43:05] dwelling units per acre. So one thing I wanted to point out really quickly is that our land use code in the past. distinguish between established and developing zones. It doesn't distinguish between those anymore. But what it meant in the past was established meant an area that wasn't really anticipated for a lot of changes, whereas if it was developing it was, it would have a new zoning and expect a lot more development. So that terminology was removed by the code with the last Bvcp update. But I just wanted to point out how Rmx one was really considered one of those established areas of the city where there wasn't going to be a lot of change. So we we brought this caution to council, and we we said, You know the current requirement is is 6,000 square feet per dwelling unit. You could go down to about 3,000 and stay within the 20 dwelling units per acre. But again, there would have to be a finding that it would be consistent with. You know, the character of what's out there now.

[44:08] and I think that can be argued because it is a mix of dwelling units already. There's already apartment buildings. And that would be, you know, I think what we're really trying to get at here is because we're trying to get more missing. Middle housing is maybe enabling a property. Now that's only a single family house to have a duplex or a triplex. We're not talking about big developments of apartment houses. When we talk to city council about this there direction was to to go more bold and look at, maybe changing that number down to 2,500 per dwelling unit. or 1,500 per dwelling unit, rather than the 3,000 that we had suggested. So we've looked into that further. And we've looked at each parcel. So what this slide shows is the properties that are in orange are those that are well over the 20 dwelling units per acre. So they're already non conforming. But you can see the ones that are in gray are below that. So there is some

[45:09] capacity to allow more units. But we found that if you went below, you know, down to say, 2,500 square feet per dwelling unit that you'd be pushing up against that 20 dwelling units per acre. And that would clearly not be consistent with the Bvcp. So we're continuing to suggest the 3,000 figure, but again offering that caution about the traffic. You know that language that's in the Bvcp. About the changing character of of that neighborhood. So we've included this in our questionnaire to the community. On this I want to make it really clear that it's not a statistic, statistically valid survey like is usually done with the Bvcp. It's a questionnaire. It's just one tool among many that we we use to get feedback from the neighborhood. But it's also a really good tool to just make the community more aware of what the detailed changes are about and what those changes might look like. So we wanted to kind of show the community that we're looking at existing buildings largely like

[46:14] trying to encourage conversions of single family homes into more units in this area, so showing that the same height limits the same bulk, plane limits, the same setbacks, the same far would apply. It just would enable folks the opportunity to take a house, for instance, and turn it into a duplex or a triplex. And that's what these graphics are showing. The figure on the left shows a single unit, and then the figure on the right shows the same massing, same size, same scale, same design, but as as multi unit. again trying to get at that missing middle. So as of the time we we sent the packet out, I've actually updated some of these numbers. We've gotten over 350 questionnaire responses. Again, not a statistically valid survey. But these are the the results that we're getting 52% of the respondents indicated a lack of support for this change, and about 36 of the respondents indicated support. So again, showing that that mixed reaction to these changes.

[47:25] so that concludes the the 1st part so happy to answer any questions, and we can jump into discussion. Thank you for that, Carl. I do have a question or 2. First.st Can you say more about what tool was used for the public input? Was that be heard, boulder? Or was it a different kind of survey tool? We used be heard boulder for the zoning for affordable housing project. In this instance we did an arc Gis story map questionnaire. So it was a slightly different format, but very similar. The reason we chose to go with the story map is, it allows for the imagery to come up in order and for the maps to pop up and kind of tell the story. So people, by the time they get to the questions they're well informed, Gotcha.

[48:16] I did have a chance to visit the story map, and it was very informative in terms of the tool itself. Are there any ways to prevent someone from taking the survey more than once there are not. So I mean, that's that's certainly something that we put out there, that again. It's it's not that it doesn't have the level of accuracy of a survey. I think, with at least the the be heard boulder we're able to like filter out some of the multiple responses with the arc. Js, unfortunately, we don't have that capability. Okay? And I did take a survey once where I had to sign in and basically verify that I was a boulder resident. Does this tool make any distinguishment between boulder residents and non-residents? And obviously nonresidents also can have a voice? But is there a way to know

[49:03] whether the people who answered it are live here or not. Yeah, there's no verification of that. Okay, okay, thank you. It's been so long. Thank you, Carl. That was absolutely great. So I have. I have a broad question, and I have a specific question. When you were talking about. the goals. I'm curious, is what kind of evidence do we have? on more modest housing, increasing that actually cause an increase in housing to suit those struggling to find housing. I think that's a question that comes up a lot. Does making modest houses? Do we have evidence making modest houses starts to align with the people who can't find housing.

[50:04] I mean, we have a lot of data about the sizes of of single family homes, especially when we were doing the large homes and lots project. We tallied up the the square footage of a lot of the homes in those neighborhoods. So if we're applying the same far limits through this project as currently exist, but enable those to be broken up. I think the point is that you know we do have the housing study. That was done several years ago about people's preferences, like in commuters about what they're looking for, and I think it showed that some people were looking to get smaller sized units instead of the the large single family homes so that they could live in Boulder. They didn't need all the space, nor could they afford it. So is that getting at what you're asking or not, really? And this just harkens back to, you'll hear me come back to this again and again, the affordable component

[51:03] of it. you know, we're seeing with the project on Pearl Street, 300 square feet small doesn't necessarily make it affordable. And I'm just curious if we have evidence for some of the statements that were presented as part of the as part of the project, and I'm hearing that. Not really is that. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing about this project is, you know, making it really clear that you know a single family house of a certain size is going to have a certain price, and if that was broken into 2, even though the 2 units wouldn't necessarily be affordable, they would be comparatively more affordable than that entire single family house. So again, we're trying to open up more housing options that are going to be comparatively more affordable. I know there's an interest in getting more deed, restricted, permanent affordability with these, but

[52:07] you know, the one thing about that is that it can actually cause a disincentive for someone to create a unit if they have to, you know, put a deed restriction on it. And also just we've done had market studies done in the last few years that show that when that kind of requirement is added for adding a unit, there's very little incentive for that property owner to to create the unit. So I think the the push here is to just give incentives for folks to create units, create more opportunities for a person who doesn't need their large house to split it into 2, and maybe have. you know, a house for their aging parents, or things like that. There's a lot of interest. But just when you look at the numbers there's not a lot of money that's going to encourage them to do it, especially if there's a deed restriction. So on it.

[53:02] do we have any data that talks about what these plexes, duplexes, triplexes for what they would hit the market at versus. We know what the big houses are hitting the market at. And I'm curious as to okay, we're making all these changes under this big umbrella of affordable. Where are they landing? What data do we have? That shows what are these? I mean, we've had developers do townhouses, I mean right Sparn before he was silver. Sparn did a lot of townhouses. And you know, they're basically investor investor properties. So I'm just curious. It would be, it would be, I think, beneficial to understand. Are we? Where are we placing? Where are these going to land in the actual market? And are they actually going to move the needle on people wanting to to live in? Yeah, because I think the idea that smaller is going to be more affordable

[54:04] has kind of been debunked across the nation in that it doesn't necessarily, especially in a landlocked community like like Boulder. I'll get on to my second question, and this is specifically to the Rmx. One neighborhood where we've got all of these potentially bigger houses that might become or get converted into multi-units. What I'm wondering about is given the existing housing stock in those neighborhoods. You know they're they're not new neighborhoods. Are we talking about for people to turn them into duplexes and triplexes, and for are they mostly going to have to be demolished before they can be converted? Because that's a big ask. Those old houses have a lot of a lot of limitations. Yeah, I mean, that is a concern that we we grappled with with this change as well. And I think again, kind of lends to the caution we've been bringing up on Rmx. One.

[55:06] We have talked to our historic review staff about this. Obviously any building that's over 50 years, if it was to be demolished, has to go through a landmarks. Alteration, certificate process. I I felt like after talking to them. There was a lot of confidence that you know there still could be a lot of protections for these buildings. So I think our thinking with a lot of these zoning changes that we're going to talk about tonight is that would more be encouraging people to consider conversions rather than tear down and rebuilds. It's it's zoning type changes that would encourage that right? Perfect. Thank you. Those are my questions. I just have one quick question on the gross 1st parcel calculations. Are there other? Are you? Is this something that you guys have thought about unique to Boulder? Or are you seeing that practice elsewhere?

[56:05] I think, as far as I've heard, it's not unusual for a comp plan to be a gross density and implementation. It's not unusual. Okay, thanks. Hi, Carl. Thanks. I had a bunch of questions. And I sent some Via email that are kind of smaller. And listen to your presentations tonight. I now have some bigger questions. And I don't want you to think I'm trying to be lawyerly or Gotcha. But these are really serious questions. Can you define character as its neighborhood character? What? What is the word character when we use it to talk about a neighborhood? And

[57:02] who resides? What does it mean? Well, I think everyone has a different definition of what character is, I think for me it might be the architecture of the buildings, the massing of the buildings, the materials that are used on the buildings, the trees along the street, whether it's single family or apartment, if it can be, you know largely something that looks like a single family, but might have other units in it, but still look single. Family, you know. I think it could be argued that that does has less of an impact on character than if you know we're making changes to allow more far things like that. I think everyone has a different definition. Can I jump in, too? I appreciate Carl's answer. So Brad Mueller, director of planning and development services, and I appreciate Carl's answer. And it just for me, highlights, that planning is not a strict science, right? It's not engineering. We don't want to get

[58:00] grossly prescriptive about things, because then you get architecture by paint, by numbers, and so basic planning principles, such as character and walkability and compatibility. are the purview of quasi-judicial decision making on individual cases, and and we provide those as tools in the toolbox as planners to help characterize things that can be somewhat and intangible. But I think we also try to, as professional, break those down into some of the elements that Carl spoke to. You know, I think you can do that. And and as planners we try to be provide some objective professional analysis about things like architecture and density and massing, and things like that to to bring some precision to it. But it is ultimately a bit of a feel as well. And again, I would encourage us to

[59:02] be comfortable in that point of discomfort, because that is what planning is meant to provide. So I, too, appreciate Carl's answer, because that is. I think the community could benefit from staff and council defining character in the terms that you did which focus on physical characteristics of the neighborhood, architectural types, trees. things that. Yeah. But I, when I, when I read through the comments that your survey received. and I think about the city's racial equity instrument. And I think about our goals. There are a lot of comments that are not about housing types. They are about people types. It is about renters versus owners. It is about the other versus us.

[60:01] It is about newcomers versus old folk. and and I think that that as we. I'm all for these changes. But and and but and I'm I'm a supporter of the Bbcp. In general. But as I, as we go through this exercise, and I think it's an important exercise. I am struck by the variability in the way we apply the terms neighborhood character and and the way some community members do. I'm also struck. And I ask, I think Chris Hagel and I discussed this in in the parking presentation the other night was, we used the word impact. And you know, so we use the word impact as a pejorative. Oh, this will impact me. Well, what is it that's impacting you. So we use this word impact. And is it.

[61:00] is it? I'll have a renter potentially living next to me. And as a homeowner I don't like that. Well. that's too darn bad, especially in terms of Federal law and city, of boulder housing, policy, and so forth. So I would just urge all of us to kind of look at the way we use these things and the assumptions we make about the word words neighborhood character and impacts. Because. you know it impacts me if if I lose my exclusive use of my parking space in front of my house in the city, right of way and it, and it's because, hey, I've always thought that's minus in front of my house. But it's not. It's not mine. you know. So anyway, I'm I'm I'm going to stop there. But I I just urge us to think about those sorts of I don't want to be word police. I think we need to use strong, defined words to to make progress, but impacts neighborhood character. Sometimes I find them euphemistically, really.

[62:14] sometimes awful. So Mark, can I quickly colloquy on that neighborhood character point. I just want to say I really appreciate it. In the memo on page 1, 23, in Staff's Memo they say the character of many low density. Residential neighborhoods has already changed or was transformed by the trends of older housing stock being demolished and replaced by larger luxury. Type dwellings. That is how the character of my neighborhood is changing. All of these 1,000 502,000 square foot homes are either being substantially expanded or completely torn down and replaced with these 3,000 5,000, sometimes 7,500 square foot luxury homes that really changes the character of the neighborhood, especially when the people who buy them don't live there, so would you rather have a renter? Or would you rather have someone with a very large luxury vacation home on your street right like that's already changing. And so I do see that this project would fight against that trend because it would give people an option to maximize their property value by creating 2 or 3 units rather than one extremely large luxury home.

[63:16] Yes. since we're talking about character. bring one thing up, which which I think is a is a major concern which is not talked about in architecture, because I don't want to dismiss people's concerns just because your view of character is different than their view of character. Right? there are a lot of concerns in the community that we're setting ourselves up for more investors. more people who are not community members who are not, who do not have an entrenched interest in this community and a financial interest in this community. and they live here, and they work here, renter or not. There is a big concern. So I think when we talk about character.

[64:01] everyone to Carl's point, right has a different view, and I think we need to respect the community views on what they are as character. I personally respect the views of people that are concerned about investors buying up homes in our in our neighborhoods. and what that might do to the character of those neighborhoods. because they, the investors may not have the same motivations that those of us who live in this community and work in this community have. Okay. interesting. And I realize this is, this doesn't deal directly with our the question at hand of the Rmx. One zone. I will simply ask one. Investors buy properties and rent them so, and I and I was looking at Carl's map and the map. The last map had a number of zones that one another, a number of plots, segments. Yeah, no. Go back. There you go. The orange.

[65:04] the orange are already non-conforming. They were. They were over the 20 units per acre. Right? Okay? And so now we're down to 6 6 units per acre is the Max in in those in those same zones that these are now nonconforming. Well, it's it's technically 20 dwelling units per acre. These are the properties that are over 20. Okay? So so this would. So by its nature, we're talking about multifamily units. We're talking about apartment buildings. We're talking about sixplexes and stuff in these older parts of downtown and north of downtown and stuff where we so do we have any objective evidence that we have more code calls in the orange and the orange segments, more police calls, more. I don't know any we have, we have more problems than those

[66:04] you know. Here it is like, Okay, this is, these are nonconforming. This is not what we want. We can't violate this principle. and we talk about character. And again, it's it's this whole renter versus owner thing. And by its nature apartment buildings are investor owned. And so we provide housing for people who rent. and and by its nature that is not necessarily a bad thing, and under Federal law we we really can't discriminate in housing opportunities in terms of purchase opportunities. Federal law prohibits discrimination on multiple factors, including, you know, mental health status, medical status race. anyway, various things. So I'm going to stop there. But

[67:01] I just again the whole idea that all rentals are bad. All investors are bad, it just it doesn't. It doesn't. doesn't fly with me. Okay, I'm done. Thank you. Other. Oh, Kurt. Hi, thank you. And thanks, Carl, for this. The presentation, or the 1st part of the presentation this is great. I have a question specifically about the density. calculations, and interpretations of those. I'm grateful that we are acknowledging that the Bbcp states that the densities are to be are to be determined based on a land use designation right? It's not based on a particular parcel. It's not even based on a zone. It's not even based on or or a particular area of a zone. It's based on a land use designation. But I I want to understand better. Staff's specific interpretation of that limitation? Are you interpreting that as a limitation on?

[68:14] Does the zoning, the zoned. allowable zoned density that can be allowed there? Or is it a limitation on the actual density that exists. because those 2 are different, because there are properties that are below the density. because for whatever reason, there are properties that are above the density, as we've seen, because it's been down zoned. So how are you interpreting that in the Bdcp. Are you asking about the how we do it today, like under the current zoning. I'm asking. No, I'm asking in. So I it comes up because in in your presentation you say that it if we were to zone for 3,000 square feet to allow 3,000 square feet, one dwelling unit for 3,000 square feet. Then that would still be consistent with the Bbcp density limits, but.

[69:15] I. A lower number would not be. And but so that makes it sound like you're interpreting it as the zoned density, as opposed to the actual density on the ground. I mean with any development project, we would be looking at it on a parcel by parcel basis. So let's say, the the zoning number changes to 3,000. We would look at property. Somebody comes in. It's a 6,000 square foot lot. They'd be allowed 2 units. We wouldn't be necessarily looking at adjacent properties. However, because we're that change hasn't been made yet. We have to make sure that that numeric change is not going to create a condition in the future where a whole bunch of properties develop and that ends up going over the 20 dwelling units per acre. So that number that we're suggesting is a is a number that would hold that line.

[70:12] because if we go below 3,000, or you get to 2,500, and then, theoretically, every property in that zone redevelops it would go over the 20 dwelling units per acre and wouldn't be consistent with the Bvcp. Okay, that answers my question. So you're assuming in the extreme case where every single property develops at that maximum density. That's right. Okay? Okay. And well, okay, I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Process. Question. Carl, are you looking for like a nose, count of? Do we support or have suggestions for changes of each of these as we go through, or are you looking for that idea? That'd be great. If you could

[71:05] go ahead, Laura. Well, I I would be happy to support what you have proposed. It seems like it is a modest change. but a significant change that would be in line with the Bbcp. And if we wanted to go further. We could explore that in the Bbcp update. So I'm more than happy to give the thumbs up to what you're proposing for this zone. I agree with my colleague, Laura. a comment. We just can go down the line. I'm I'm generally supportive of it as well. My my biggest concern is the death by a thousand cuts scenario. where we're putting things in place like the zoning for affordable housing. And now we're putting this in place. And now we're, you know, going to reform the Vvcp. And then there's going to be something in front of us a year from now which changes this.

[72:06] And so my my concern is I'm supportive of this. But what I'm not supportive of is not allowing for these things to actually do what we're trying to get them to do before we're trying to already amend them again. And so that's my comment around that. Thank you. I agree with Laura. and I appreciate that brief summary. I would simply add that the question posed in the packet in the Rmx. One zone about parking, or that, or note the note that you would still retain the Off street parking requirement, which which I maybe you could answer that very quickly for me. What is the off street parking requirement

[73:02] in this zone. It's it's it's by bedroom so well a single family house would be one. And then, if it's a attached housing project, it would be by bedroom, so if I had a 2, 2 bedroom duplexes I would have 4 required. I think it would be 3, because I think it comes to like 1.5 per. So I would certainly. And this is where the integration and implementation of better parking management, better administration of Npps. Anyway, I would. I think that requirement in modern day core areas of boulder where Rmx is is found is is wrong, that we? We do not need 3 off street parking places 3 or 4

[74:01] in the Rmx. One zone, which tends to be our densest area along transit corridors where a you might have 2 families, each with one car or less. So anyway. And and in those zones you can still ride your bike, drive your car up and down the street, and there's still lots of on street parking. So I reaff Laura with the addition of the removal of the parking requirement mark, can I make a process suggestion. which is that I think it probably is too ambitious to expect this project to modify parking requirements for Rmx Zones, and so I would think that if this is mostly just about changing the what's allowed density wise in the Rmx zones, and we're going to address Parking separately. And I think there's probably pretty broad support for some general parking changes in the city. so I would like to separate that if we codify, if we continue to codify, the requirement of a by bedroom.

[75:07] You know. Here we're providing we're wanting. We want family type housing, middle type housing, and we're dedicate. And and we have a smaller lot size. The impact of requiring parking spaces for 3 or 4 cars for 2, 2 bedroom duplexes could totally change whether or not those 2 duplexes get built. I I agree with you. I just think we're going to change parking at a more broad level. Why don't we? Why don't we each. Just give our feedback. Okay? And then we don't have to agree with each other. We just need to give our feedback and go forward. Thanks. cool. So I am. I think generally I'm in. I'm in complete agreement with this. I would just make sure that we somehow begin to get an understanding on. We're putting more units in.

[76:03] Where in the market are those additional units going to land? Because, you know, not saying it the same way that George did. But just the idea of we've got these goals that we're trying to meet. And are we actually getting there? Or are we just making changes? under an aspiration. So that's that's my comment. And thank you for putting this suggestion up there. Kurt. Thank you. I support this in so far as it goes. On the Rmx. One areas of boulder, I think, are really some of the best places, some of the most walkable places in the city, and the best places for having additional units. They're close to downtown. They're close to the Boulder Valley Regional Center, 29th Street, and so on. They're close to Cu they're close to Naropa for as long as it exists.

[77:03] and so I I think that certainly, allowing for additional units in those areas would be really great, I would support the the Council recommendation of one unit per 2,500 square feet. So a slightly more ambitious goal. I also based on my question. I I feel like we're being really vastly over conservative in terms of how much change actually would occur would be economically viable. Right? It's incredibly expensive these days to build anything tearing down an existing functional building is very rarely worth it. And I noticed that a council member I don't know who it was suggested. Instead of zoning. determining the the allowable density based on dwelling units per

[78:05] yeah, on on lot area per dwelling unit. Said. Determine the total number of additional units that could be allowed in Rmx. One and create a cap. and I realize that that may be well, that would be more difficult to administer. But I think that that's how you would really make sure that you remained below the Bbcp density limit while allowing for the greatest number of additional units that, again, I think we need, and that this would be an ideal place. In which to put them. So. That would be my suggestion. For what a tool. Thanks, Kurt. can I? Can. I just quickly call you on that? I just I really understand the motivation for Kurt's comment about wanting to make sure we're not being overly conservative, and make sure that we are allowing the maximum change that we can for the property owners that want to do it while not limiting people based on

[79:09] a theoretical. Everybody's gonna do it right. Which is what the current, the way it's calculated now is. We can't go over 20 dwelling units per acre, even if every single property owner made the change which we know is not going to happen. So I understand where Kurt is coming from. My only concern with the cap is something that came up when we talked about adus, which is basically the race. The inequality of like the race of who gets to do it 1st and get under the cap, get in under the cap, which is not a very equitable way to do planning because people with more money and more privilege can get it done. 1st I concur, Laura. All right, ready for the next one. Let's move on all right. Suggestion 2. So we're we're moving on to the Rm. One zoning district, which is shown in kind of the peach color. Here you can see it in in relation to the Rmx, which is the purple

[80:05] RM. 1 areas are, we're generally created, I'd say, around the late fifties, early sixties. They were zoned around shopping centers. So that's where you see a lot of medium density apartment buildings. And in some cases there's single family homes. But at a higher density in these areas. So again, they're typically in areas that are relatively walkable to a shopping center or around some sort of neighborhood center. Today. They're the way the the density is calculated is it's 3,000 square feet of open space per dwelling unit. So I just wanted to put that out there, and then you can see the the description of it. The land use map description in that corner. When we looked at this zone. I would say, like just a dovetail on the comments about not worrying about the theoretical

[81:01] and not being too conservative. I would say, in this case we kind of looked at the zone in an interesting way, because there's a fair amount of the zone that's actually built out as condos, which will likely not. you know, redeveloped, based all on all the ownership entities that exist on those sites. So there's probably quite a few sites, maybe even 2 thirds of the entire zone that would likely not redevelop. So we've made our suggestion here, based on that fact. So you could make some changes to this zone where you reduce the open space to say, 2,000 square feet. It would give some flexibility to add some units, but we have, I will say, been hearing some concerns from some council members, and you know Housing Advisory Board members and members of the public about reducing open space. It's a it's a concern. But if we were to go to tech. If we could potentially go to 2,000 square feet of open space for dwelling unit, there could be the potential for an additional theoretically 800 units in these zones. If these these non condo properties were to develop.

[82:12] I think Council. When they heard about this, they were generally supportive of the change. But we did hear from a couple, maybe one council member that was particularly concerned about the open space reduction. But you can see, we have a table here that shows how we looked at different scenarios. So the one that's highlighted in the in the peach color is what we're recommending, you know, just a modest increase of 23% of the the number of units that you could get there. So that would be around 2,000 square feet of open space per per dwelling unit. So we we put that question out. I'm sorry, Carl. I'm getting confused between amount of open space per dwelling unit and amount of lot area per dwelling unit. Are, those are using those terms the same? Or are they different? They're different. Okay? Because the chart says, 2,000. Yeah, we we did that as just a, because it's very difficult with with open space, because it's based on the design. It's very difficult to determine the potential

[83:10] number of dwelling units. So we did use lot area just to give up a figure of an idea of how many units could be added. So thank you for asking that it. Those zones are the ones that are open space for dwelling unit are very challenging. It's why we we didn't touch Rl, 2, because it's 6,000 square feet of open space per dwelling unit. And it's very difficult to determine, because it's all based on design rather than just looking at a property and figuring out how many units can go there. We just wanted to be able to give that figure out as as what? Because they're supposed to be generally equivalent, because they have to fall in that range of 6 to 14 dwelling units per acre. So this is the imagery that was sent out as part of the questionnaire. It shows again, an example of same height, same

[84:01] restrictions, except in this case. Obviously it would have a little bit less open space. But you could see a single family house potentially be a duplex or on a larger site. You could see more units being added in this case. When we asked the the question about this particular zone. the respondents were about 54% against largely, and about 35% were were 4. The change that's pretty much all there is on that one. It's not as complicated as Rmx one. So all right. Questions. So if you had an existing condo. my mother lives over in 30, th and anyway, off the 30th in Arborwood, anyway, and so that I believe that's in this zone. Is that right? Rm, in this armor wood? Yeah, I'm not sure. Okay. Anyway, it's a bunch of

[85:08] condos, a lot of open space. This is actually pretty dense, but there's a lot of open space. My question. I'm not talking about my mother's condo. I use it as an example in would. if we change the amount of open space required. Would a project like that rather than redevelop because of all the different ownership? You can't do that, but would they? Would? Would a developer be able to come in? Or the condo community say, Okay, we're going to give up a portion of our current open space and add a building. Theoretically, theoretically, they could. A lot of those projects are in puds or site reviews, so there would have to be buy-in from all the owners, which that's what adds to the complexity. But if you know there was agreement to, you know, lose a little bit of open space, build a new building, add some more condos, and everybody

[86:04] in the association agreed you. And they went through an amendment process. Yes, they could add units it just would. Wouldn't be as likely. Right? Yeah, okay, not very practical. Okay, thanks. Yeah. Go ahead. Ml. so, Carl, I think I saw on this one and the previous one, that over 50% of the respondents to the survey were not in favor lack support, and I think on the last one as well. How does that impact we keep hearing? Here's what the Council. you know, is is proposing and all. But what role does this public input play in shifting the focus, or the priorities, or any, or shifting anything. I mean, as with any project that we bring before you relative to changes to the Bvcp. Or ordinances to change the land use code. This information is brought to you to influence your feedback that you give to us, and ultimately we bring that feedback to council.

[87:11] and then this will influence Council's decisions. In some cases it you might see a project get tabled or not move forward, or you know, if if there's a lot of resistance. So all of this plays into the process, and what ultimately City Council directs us to do so. Staff doesn't have Is there not a process in Staff's? analysis that would. Then you would come to us and say. or to city council, or whomever, you know, is making decisions. And say. because this amount, this significant amount of public input did this. we're looking at shifting this or changing that does that it doesn't happen at the staff level. Is that what I'm hearing you say? I mean, it's it certainly influences our work as well. I mean, that's why we're communicating it to you tonight. Show you there. There are certainly concerns with these changes.

[88:08] but it didn't change anything. Is that correct? Did you make changes because it lacked support. We haven't made changes. We're going to be going to council next month to to bring the same information. You know. Council might then make some changes to to how how far this goes, or whether it moves forward. All of this plays a part in that, so it shows up at the decision making as a component. Yes. thank you. I think it would be helpful if we're going to get into discussing the survey results as they're reported here that we also look at the same time at the self-reported demographics of the folks who participated in the survey, and that is at the end of the presentation. Because I think that's important context for how we interpret these things. And I assume that staff is also looking at that context.

[89:03] I would also say that that as public input is most measured at the ballot box by who we elect in a representative government to serve on council. And and I find these sorts of surveys. While I understand, it's like, let's get the community involved. They're so problematic because whether anyway, this is super problematic. Because we, they're anonymous. They're they aren't resident, based. You can enter multiple times. So it's the value of them is questionable at best, and can be misleading in terms of the direction. And I think that's sometimes why we see a disconnect at levels of the ballot box and the online survey about

[90:01] increase density in the neighborhood. Active. I think Carl's been clear that this is not a perfect survey. And so it's a data point. We need to interpret it as we interpret it. I don't know that we need to belabor it much beyond that. I think it's a data point, and that's about all it is, it's completely imperfect, non statistical data. Point other questions before we get into feedback. Let me do. We reverse Feedback Kirk. Why don't you go 1st and we'll go down the line this way to Laura this time. What makes you think I have feedback. Well, at least a thumbs up, or something. I have feedback I support changing the the density calculations from lot from open space per dwelling unit to lottery per dwelling unit. I this was totally not intentional that I asked the question under the call up where I was screwing this up.

[91:13] but it does highlight, at least for me how these lot open space per dwelling unit calculations are complicated. So that's part of the reason. I will go a little more broadly, too, and say that in if I ran the circus we would not be requiring private open space. But we would be requiring having basically an excise tax on development for public open space. The best cities in the world have often very little private open space. but frequent and high quality, public open space. Where people can get out, they can mix, they can interact it. It uses the land more efficiently, and so on. Think of all the wonderful plazas in Europe, or some of the great little pocket parks that you've seen, and so on.

[92:13] and the the open space in these projects I find, often ends up being private or semi, private or questionable, and therefore it doesn't pro promote community the same way that public open space would, and it becomes an inefficient use of the the land. because, you know, if I've got my private open space well. I'm the only one, or maybe a few other people are going to be using it as opposed to the whole community, potentially using. So that's part of why I support moving to a a lot area for dwelling unit calculation. But I would also love to see this idea at some point, this idea of a basically a public open space or park excise tax.

[93:07] you know. So I I agree with what the staff has up the suggestion. Number 2. What I would like to say, and additionally, is. I really appreciate. The analysis of what exists relative to what might exist. You know, you talked about the condos and all the multiple. I think that's important information to bring to the, to the conversation, so that you know it's not vanilla all over the city, right? It's there's things that belong to an area that are unique, that I think help describe. What it is. how we might effect

[94:00] the way this area, this zone works out. So I appreciate hearing that part of it. Thank you. I concur with Kurt. For the most part, I simply want to say that. So if the changes that that are suggested. I support the idea of public open space being important. I agree with a hundred percent. I think there's opportunity for public open space. That is not necessarily a park that is city owned and maintained, but is a development owned public space that benefits both the residents of that development. and I think the city should require that in essence. as projects are developed, a Condo Project townhouse project. that the open spaces

[95:00] that are part of that community essentially be open to the public, and I know that another development shouldn't be able to count that open space as part of their open space. But I think the the message is. that the the small little private open spaces aren't really the kind of benefit that the community likes, that the community likes bigger open spaces that are programmed, that have tennis courts, or whatever it might be, and are available even if I live across the street. And technically, that's not my park. But it should be. So. That's that's my input on the open space part. I'm opposed to this change. I'm okay with the minimum open space that is currently calculated in this area. I think there are, you know, to support what others have said. I think there are

[96:00] developments can evolve to more efficiently use the open space for the needs of that development. But when I think about Boulder and what this town is about for a lot of people. It's about access to the outdoors. It's about open space. It's about the ability to breathe. And it's not necessarily just about public open spaces that we have. but also the spaces that are unique to the community's development that they live in, and their own private open spaces for their families and things like that. And when I think of things that are attractive to families, since that's 1 of the premises of this project. And why people would want to be here rather than in one of the L towns. where they might get a slightly larger accommodation. is also to have some open space, and think, if we remove that, I think we may be compromising the nature of this project. that being said

[97:02] from a practical standpoint. talking about a very small slice in here. And so I also appreciate you guys kind of putting that in perspective. Because I you know, we're we're talking about a small slice of a small zone. So thank you. So I would support this change both in terms of moving to lot Area and in terms of reducing the overall requirement. And I come at this from the perspective that we are talking about medium density housing in this case, and actually getting a handle on how much open space. This is per dwelling. and you think about that in the, in the context of a standard footprint for what we might consider medium density forms townhouses, duplexes, etc. already going down to 2,000 square feet

[98:01] a lot of space, I can tell you. This is a person who has a 500 square foot yard, and it is a family paradise. So that may be a personal bias. But I think we have a lot of examples of built form in medium density areas where we make deal with a lot less open space per dwelling unit, at least in terms of what people use and notice in their daily lives. I support Staff's recommendation to move from open space for dwelling unit to the far limit of the Rmx. One zone, and that's the proposal, right? What's in yellow at the top of page 118. I support it, I think about the projects that we've seen coming through where a lot of the open space just ends up being the border areas right? And it just ends up being a setback primarily and not anything that is particularly usable, because it's already a pretty small area of open space compared to the lot size. So if we can get more dwelling units in our medium density zones. In this way, I think it is a. It's a good positive change. So I support

[99:08] moving on. Okay? All right. Moving on to suggestion. 3. So this is where we're going to be looking at the low density residential zone. So this is RL. 1 and rr. so in this case we did the the same net and gross density analysis focusing on the yellow areas of this map. So this is like South Boulder so you can see that the gross and parceled is actually quite a ways below the 6 dwelling units per acre maximum. So even the the net density in a lot of the Rl. One zones is is below the 6 dwelling units per acre. So it it does speak to some changes that can allow more housing in these zones that would still be numerically and metrically consistent with that maximum that's in the Bvcp. Again, we have to make an argument, you know that it's not just about the density.

[100:10] but it's also about the description of those areas, the character of of the neighborhood. So what we've looked at. And again you can see the different yellow areas here, the gross and parceled calculations. We get back to the the Bvcp. That talks about the the 2 to 6 dwelling units per acre, but also the fact that it says that it consists predominantly of single family detached units. So what we looked at with both of these zones was basically, you know, not going over the 6 dwelling units per acre gross, but also not enabling a condition that theoretically could go over like where a neighborhood could go over 50% not detached dwelling units. So that's what's informed our analysis.

[101:01] So we we ran a number of different scenarios looking at. So the current requirement for Rl. One, for instance, in the in the table on the the top of the slide is, it's 7,000 square feet of lot area per dwelling unit. We looked at 3,000 square feet of lottery per dwelling unit. 3,500 square feet of lot area per dwelling unit. 4,000 square feet of lot area per dwelling unit and 5,000 square feet of lot area per dwelling unit. So that what this table is basically showing is that all of these examples technically could still fall under that 6 dwelling units per acre. But certain scenarios would actually enable an increase that if if it played out over time would be more than 50% of of the zone. So what we focused our our recommendation on is is the 39% increase which is over 4,000 dwelling units again over time.

[102:01] And what we've been asked by Council is to look at allowing more duplexes. So we looked at this, and we've produced a number of different maps scenarios showing all the areas or all the the lots that could be eligible under these different circumstances. But again, we're. you know, pointing, you know, the Board and Council to an increase that's less than 50% and that's why we've narrowed in on that 4,000 square feet of lot area per per dwelling unit. When we presented this to Council there was general support for this, but there was some concern. It was a little more mixed on council. There were some council members that felt that. You know. If we're going to allow an increase and allow more duplexes in the neighborhood again, making it clear that we're talking about the same setbacks, height limits, floor area ratio limits, but just allowing duplexes. The the ordinance changes that were done last year. If if you wanted to have a duplex, you'd still have to have 14,000 square feet to get to a duplex. In this case, we're

[103:06] you know, we suggested 4,000. You still fit within the Bvcp. But in talking to council. There was a lot of interest in allowing that, but really focusing duplexes on where there's bus routes really just focusing those air like basically taking that yield and moving it to transit corridors. So since we talked to council, we've done more analysis. And what this slide is basically showing is if we looked at 3 different scenarios of increase. So if you, we allowed, say, a 30% increase in the number of units again, each lot being a do like becoming a duplex. a 35% increase or a 40% increase that basically correlates to 3 different scenarios. And that's either a 250 foot distance from a bus corridor, a 300 foot, or a 350 foot distance. So it really comes down to is, if you know Council ultimately did want to allow this along transit corridors and have a, you know, an increase at these levels. This is what we're looking at.

[104:16] So what we could do theoretically is, instead of allowing duplexes, you know, on a lot that's 8,000 square feet. You could just say that lots that are 300 feet from this corridor that's mapped, shown in the in the code. You're you can do a duplex. So it would focus that additional intensity along areas where people can take advantage of transit. So there was some interest in in council for this. So I think we're going to go to them next month, and we're going to ask them, you know. Does this still seem like it makes sense? If so, do you think it should be a 5,500 350 feet. Does it still work to allow a duplex on any sized lot?

[105:00] Is that as the crow, I mean 350 feet as the crow flies. Not I think it'd be as the crow flies, not not around the block, and we'd have to get into the nuance of how it's measured, you know, like, from this property line or from the edge of the right of way, we'll probably have to map it out. If this is where this ends up going. So that's what we're going back to council with. This is what we've communicated to the to the community through the questionnaire, again showing the same massing and bulk of a building. But you know, at this time broken up into a duplex. this this time, you know. Looking at the questionnaire, we got a lot more pushback. I would say. So. 62%, you know, the respondents indicated lack of support. 31 indicated support again, with all the you know things we talked about with the questionnaire, the the, you know, multi voting and things of that nature. But again, I think this is still helpful. Just to kind of mix this with all the input that we've included in the attachments. Mix it with all the comments that are included. I think it does give you a picture of of what we're hearing.

[106:07] And that's that's that topic. Questions. Go ahead, Claudia. There we go. Okay, thanks for this one. I think this is going to be a big one for us. I know that supporting transit use is in the Project Charter, that you've laid out. and that many zoning reform efforts around the country have started around transit corridors. and I definitely understand the synergies there from a transportation demand management perspective. I also know that there is significant pushback on that focus on transit corridors, from housing advocates because of how that can tend to concentrate the more affordable and accessible housing in areas with the highest noise, with the worst air quality and with other safety impacts. And so I am curious if you can share any context on

[107:00] on, is there emerging best practice around this question? For where we should actually be locating middle housing with relation to transit and other amenities. I think that's a good question. I think you know, as we do all these things, there's trade-offs. you know. You want to put housing in a place where you know you encourage bus. you know usage. But obviously there's going to be those noise and potential pollution externalities. So I don't. I can't think of any studies or best practices that come to mind, but I think in general everyone always talks about linking land use and planning. And this is one of those examples of doing that I can follow up on that I just as a thought exercise. I mean, I I've been thinking about? What are other? What are other locational amenities? Since we are in theory talking about family friendly housing as part of this project and transit might be one of them. But schools are something that we talk about in this community. We're losing school enrollment at our schools. And

[108:07] if we're talking about creating housing for families is proximity to schools, something that should be looked at. So just curious. Why, why, specifically, the transit focus? And if there are other possible areas of focus for locating this kind of housing. I mean, that's all feedback we're looking for. I mean, we certainly could look at that. I mean, I think we put out the option of corridors, and there was traction there. So, Carl, I'm wondering how you arrived at the distance, the 100 we basically. So in when I looked when I was talking about that table. if we went with a 40% increase that yield of possible number of units again. This is theoretical over time. It's shown on the table there. As as the 4,325 number

[109:03] it. So we looked at it from the standpoint of if we're allowing, allowing that amount of increase, what if we, instead of just allowing it throughout the zone? What if we concentrated that along the corridors. So we had our mapping folks actually look at all the active bus corridors and moved all those units along it. And then that dictated the distance. and it came to to be about. You know what we were thinking around 300 feet when you spread it across the city. So we tend to advocate for the 15 min Neighborhood. Why wasn't that used 15 min to the transit or to the school, or to the amenity that we're wanting to to to bring more people into accessibility for why isn't it relative to?

[110:03] We did consider that I mean, obviously like a 15 min. Neighborhood considers like a quarter mile walk. and the thing about that is that once you go to a quarter mile based on the number of bus routes, you end up encompassing the whole zone anyway. So because there was interest in spreading this across the city throughout the whole zone and this number of units. That's why it came to that 300. Yeah, it seems. it. It seems theoretical more than real in my, in my thinking. I mean if we're looking at. you know. Anyway, I'm just curious. So the transit corridor was the was the one way you looked at creating more density in the Low density. Were there any other? I mean, you didn't talk about any others. But were there any others that didn't didn't quite make it to the presentation other ways of adding density.

[111:01] other strategies for making density be relative to something. I don't know that we looked at any other examples. It was more just kind of this number of units, and in a location that was conducive to transit. I think the again the 15 min Neighborhood discussion, I think is going to become more prevalent as we go into the Bvcp update. So again, we're kind of just at the beginning stages of this project. There could be more. You know things, or we that we look at as part of the update. Right? Thanks. 3.rd Thanks. 1st of all, I appreciated Claudia's questions about possible proximity to other amenities, and I think schools is a key one, but other ones might include parks. libraries, rec centers. maybe certain kinds of retail really sort of getting at that. The the kinds of amenities that are looked at in a 15 min. Neighborhood kind of concept. But, as you say, with a smaller scale, maybe more like a 5 min neighborhood, or whatever.

[112:12] So that's just a quick comment. My question is, if we're concerned about the verbiage in the Bullet Valley Comp plan about these these land use areas being predominantly single family. Why are we only talking about changing the dwelling units. the the lot area per dwelling unit and not the minimum lot size. Because if we change the minimum lot size to the same degree. You could create single family houses just on smaller lots and achieve the same density. I think the reason we looked at not at this point changing the minimum lot. Size is getting back at the whole, encouraging people to convert

[113:04] their existing single family to a duplex, because if you maintain the minimum lot size for, like, say, a 7,000 square foot lot or greater it would keep that building on the site, and and you wouldn't have a subdivision that you know could encourage them to demolish it. To meet setbacks for the property line, so we thought that not tinkering with that lot size would encourage more conversions. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to skip my question for comments. All right. Wants to start. Thanks again, Carl, for the analysis and for walking us through. I am supportive. I probably think this doesn't go far enough. I'm not particularly concerned that

[114:04] every single person who is eligible to make their home into a duplex will do so. I think it's going to be somewhat rare that people take advantage of this. and while I understand the need to stay under the BBC. P. Cap. just in terms of like dotting the i's and crossing the T's, and you know, not making a change that could theoretically violate the Bbcp. Not super happy that we have to do that right, because I don't think it's actually realistic that we have that everybody who's eligible to make a duplex is going to do that. That's just not going to happen. I do like the idea of picking a number that is less than 50%. I would go as high as 49%. Again, understanding that that's just not actually going to happen. It's not going to get anywhere near 49%. But if we have to keep our nose clean with regard to the Bbcp, I would pick a number like 49%. Figure out how many units that would allow, and then distribute it. I really love the suggestions from Claudia and from Kurt, looking not just at transit corridors. I do think that transit corridors are a good place to put more density, but also schools, rec centers, parks, libraries, and grocery stores. In particular. I would say that those are great places that people want to live near.

[115:16] yeah. And I also, I like the fact that this will probably concentrate the available lots that could have a duplex conversion to smaller lots, because it's those bigger lots. Those are the wealthier homeowners who are probably not going to take advantage of this provision. So i. And then, if the smaller lots are the ones that do the duplex conversions, they are also the ones that are going to be more affordable and hitting more of that actual lower and middle income market that we are looking for. So I really like this change. I would push it to the maximum in the theoretical sense, knowing that that's not actually going to happen in reality. And again, look at a wider variety of amenities to to concentrate the available lots.

[116:02] Kurt has his hand up. Go ahead, Kurt. Oh, I'm sorry that was a stale fan, but I will this opportunity, anyhow. I also support this. I am highly skeptical of how many duplex conversions there actually will be. I think, about the house that I live in. It would be impossible. The the I I can't see any way that you could convert my house to a duplex without basically tearing it down and and building over anyhow. So I I feel like that concern. I I certainly appreciate the desire. I think it would be great if there could be conversions to duplexes. I I'm just very dubious that more than a tiny number of those will happen. So based on that, I feel like going to the the reducing the minimum lot size would be a better approach. It would actually result, I think, in some additional units on small lots which would make them significantly more affordable.

[117:12] So that's my suggestion. But overall, I do support this. Looked like you were eager to go next on. I'm always eager. so I support this in concept overall. I I do agree that the practicality and the expectation that we would get to this 40% at the 4,000 square foot, I would certainly say we could take it that to the next step, whatever that was, the 3,500, or whatever the next step up was that seemed to yield a pretty large potential increase. I think, is probably going to yield a very small. There we go. it was 3,500.

[118:00] We jumped from 39% to 73%. As a theoretical increase. I think the in actuality it will be quite small. I am opposed to the transit corridor criteria for for 2 reasons, one. The criteria that you've laid out is way too short. I I live in an ecopass neighborhood that we we lots of people ride the skip and stuff and very few residents of of my neighborhood that that use the skip. I just did some calculating using Google Maps. They're like a thousand feet, you know which is which is to Ml's Point. That's a 5 min walk a 7 min. Walk something like that to to the skip, but 350 feet, even as the crow flies is, is like a very narrow corridor. So your your biggest criteria is is like way too narrow, and the other the other reason I'm opposed to it is the vigarities of Rtd. That if you're

[119:07] telling s0me1 0, today you could build a duplex. But tomorrow, Rtd. Who we have seemingly no control over whatsoever decides to change a route. And suddenly their development right is gone. It's I wouldn't want my development rights tied to Rtd's route planning. So I would oppose that as a as a criteria. I'll I'll go next. I'm generally opposed to this. I'm okay investigating it in in transit corridors. I I see this as, and and the reason why I'm opposed to it is a very specific reason. I see this as driving land values up in Boulder. I see this as

[120:01] potentially. I agree with Kurt that I don't see many conversions right. that these are going to be tear downs and builds. and as I've seen in my neighborhood smaller lots get torn down. Larger lots certainly get torn down. I I think we have to approach it from a slightly different angle where, you know. we need to be concerned about the large luxury homes going up. But we also need to be concerned about demolishing good housing stock that are family homes today. many of them around a million dollars. when what will replace them with a new Bill Duplex could be 2 to 3 million dollars each. and that is a real concern. And I see that happening with this type of thing being put in place. so I would rather us see go the other direction

[121:00] and make sure these large luxury homes aren't being built, but also that we're able to preserve some of the housing that's being targeted in this for families, because that remains some of the more affordable. And when you talk about relative affordability that's relative affordability. There are houses in Newlands right now that are still a million, one, a million 2. But if they are permitted to redevelop under this and put a duplex under that, for instance. that's going to be a 2.5 million dollar duplex on each side. That's reality. So I am opposed to that from that perspective that I think we're going to get the exact opposite outcome of what we're trying to achieve with this Maria. So I support this one in concept and I think, as I suggested with my question earlier, that I I do not support limiting this to transit corridors, I think that is

[122:06] not an equitable way to do this in terms of who gets access to neighborhoods and at a duplex level of density, at least at the level that this is likely to have any effects. Is not something that we need to limit to what we call our transit corridors right now. yeah, I I, this is a. this is a tough one. I, my feedback is that I think you should definitely broaden the thinking up on how to create density here. obviously beyond transit. And we've already, you know, talked about the other amenities that might become a reason to bring more people to them and that that could actually be quite dynamic. But, you know.

[123:03] turning a single family home, as other people have said, into a duplex is not an easy thing to do, so that I think brings its own set of challenges. But, however. if that well, I don't see the chart up anymore, but if the idea that it's $4,000 per dwelling unit and you've got a you know, 8,000 9,000 square foot lot. You could have 2 houses. They don't have to be duplexes. Then you could have 2 small houses. It's basically expanding on what the adu was already proposing, except it wouldn't have the limitations that adu has. It would enter into the thinking as small houses. Not necessarily a backyard house or not. Necessarily, you know, a big house in a smaller house. It it would change the landscape to say, we can have that original neighborhood again, maybe, and have these series of small houses.

[124:06] and I don't know what all would need to evolve in order to make that rather than a plex. the sort of intended outcome. but maybe expand the thinking so that oh, let's facilitate it to go in this direction as well. All right. minutes. I think we got everybody. Okay. I just want to react and and caution us that I don't know that we have a mechanism for making people stick with small houses right like it's not a choice between a thousand square foot ranch house and tearing it down and having 2 expensive duplexes, or we get to keep the ranch house. That ranch house is probably going to get torn down either way and either become a duplex or a large luxury home. At least that's what I see happening a lot of the time. and maybe if we don't allow the duplexes, maybe the ranch house will exist a little bit longer. But all these houses reach their lifespan. People outgrow them, and they want to expand, and they want something bigger. And there are people who are willing to buy them, tear them down and make large luxury homes.

[125:11] So I don't know that we have a way to prevent those houses from getting torn down. And then I just also want to mention that duplexes. Plexes are more energy, efficient and more efficient in terms of construction materials. There are more efficient land use than having a lot of small separate dwelling units. So I'm not against plexes. I like plexes. If people want to do small cottage courts, I'm okay with that, too. But from an energy efficiency, perspective sharing walls is more efficient. Why don't we do the 4th one? And then we'll take a break after we get comments. Okay? And after this one the other should go quicker. I think this one's kind of related to 3 in the sense that because of the concerns about

[126:02] allowing duplexes, you might have a lot of investors come in and buy up the properties. and if they become like rental properties, there's concern about what the upkeep or noise or parking impacts. We've been requested to look at having an owner occupancy requirement similar to what we do with like adus right now, where there's like a declaration of use that gets recorded that one of the units would be owner occupied. and then the other becomes a rental. There's been some interest in doing this for for the duplexes. So I will say that we we've done a fair amount of research on this. It's not while it might be common to have an owner occupancy. requirement, for like an adu, it's not very common for another principal dwelling unit. So we understand the concern about you know, having, you know, trying to keep an owner on the site

[127:03] and also trying to encourage more ownership. You know opportunities throughout the the city. our thinking, you know, and Council has asked us to continue to keep this in the scope of the project. There has been a lot of support from the community for this particular requirement. I think Staff, looking at it from the the level of the goals of the project and trying to remove zoning barriers, barriers, and encourage more people to add units that this adding an owner occupancy requirement kind of goes counter to that, that it probably puts another zoning barrier for someone to create another unit. So we've not been recommending this move forward. But despite that Council has ask that we get community feedback on this option. So what we we heard is from the questionnaire. About 67

[128:02] percent of of those that responded were in support of having some sort of owner occupancy, requirement, and I will say just anecdotally, in our conversations with folks on both sides of this particular topic. There are those concerns on both sides, those that are, you know, open to allowing more housing and those that aren't there. There is some commonality in this in this concern, so I'll put that out there. But that's that's all we have on this one. We we just we included in the memo. you know, where we've seen this. There is a state bill in California that allows a single family property owner to add another unit. And there are some instances of owner occupancy requirements. We've reached out to the communities like Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz. We haven't unfortunately heard back from them about whether they're seeing much interest in it. I will try to reach out to them again and see if I can hear hear about it. But

[129:02] that's what we have. Anyone want to start any questions? So thank you for this, Carl. I am wondering we've gotten some input about, you know, the owner occupancy. And we know, you know, I hear Staff's perspective and and the community what I'm curious as to one of the and it's not a zoning barrier, one of the barriers for just people, and I see this in adus, adding more housing by right. Is financing. you know, just I mean, we're looking at construction costs of up to $700 a square foot. I mean, that becomes outrageous for people

[130:00] to invest in their property and create more housing. My question is, as a way to try to retain and gain affordable housing has inclusionary housing funds. for we know that there's now a stream for middle income housing. Has that been looked at as a way to help bring money to those properties and bring them then into, you know the second unit. the one duplex, or, however, that works into the affordable housing program with the city to invest in these rather than invest with the big developer, to invest in these one by one by one single family owners with that. With that money. I don't know that I know the answer to that does do either of you have an answer.

[131:00] because it seems that that's 1 way to alleviate 2 things, one, you get permanently affordable housing. And 2, you actually get it built. you know, built by people that live there. So it would help deal with the economics, and it would potentially hit. you know, a mark on the how do we grow our permanently affordable housing stock? So that's just a question. I guess there's no answer, but I put it out there as as a thought. I have a question. This might be a Hella question. I thought, when when we see projects across the board here on planning board. we're often told that we can't dictate whether something's even for sale or for rent. So how does owner occupancy even play into that? If we can't dictate when something's for sale or for rent. how could we dictate owner occupancy? Because that would that would imply that it's been sold

[132:02] right? Well, I think it. It depends on how that's set up. And I think you're talking about the Site Review context, where we also don't have criteria that speak to that on whether or not something is rented or for sale. So there is one place where where you can dictate it, and and I think there have been considerations made. and not requiring that, I guess. probably practical and legal. So just to clarify your answer. I know it's complicated. But are we saying that it by reviewing this, that that in a Site review context, if we wanted, let's say only for sale residential in Boulder that that's something that Boulder could actually impose. And then we would have the ability to opine on that.

[133:02] But we just don't now, because it's not imposed by Boulder. Well. I think one. We don't have criteria like that, but there are also legal considerations that we would have to make. I know that there is a case out there where a city tried to prohibit rental. and required everything to be for sale, and it was found to be in violation of the Fair Housing act. Well, I think that helps inform me, at least because I don't. you know, in those contexts, if we can't even. Well, I'll I'll save my comments, but I just don't got it. Comments! I'll start I'd love for this to be something that we do. But to the point that I was just making. Now I just don't see its relevancy. Given what we see as planning board. I would love for the majority of people in neighborhoods

[134:02] to be homeowners or renters of people that own in that neighborhood, so that we we have as vested interest as possible. because I think there are deep concerns that are driving this right. There are companies like Blackstone, that are now the largest single family homeowner in the country. and those things continue to accelerate and risk gutting neighborhoods and turning. You know, things like this into Airbnbs and vacant places, or or things that maybe people don't want. And while I understand people's concerns on this. I'd rather focus on areas that I think are more defensible.

[135:02] So I'm also not in favor of us trying to require owner occupancy for duplexes. And one of my major reasons for that is because I think it would be a barrier to people actually doing it. So if we want duplexes to be constructed, throwing up barriers that make it more difficult or more expensive to do. That is not what we need to be doing, and once the duplex is built, it probably will change hands many times. I do think there is a concern in this country with investors using housing as an asset as an investment vehicle rather than caring about a neighborhood. But that is a nationwide problem that's much bigger than anything that we can solve, and I don't think that this would be the right tool for us to try to use to to solve that problem. So I am not in favor of trying to impose an owner. Occupancy, requirement.

[136:03] Kurt. give your hand up. It's it's almost the same color as your background. It's hard. Oh, really sorry! I should try to change the color of my hand for my background. I am strongly opposed to this. I feel like it is in many ways largely availed the vilification of renters, and I I find that that is deeply inappropriate. George brought up a couple of points, one about Blackstone and other kinds of very large scale investors. To my knowledge, there's 0 investment by those kinds of of entities in boulder because the economics just don't work for them. The the cost. the purchase cost relative to the rental cost just doesn't work. They buy in, you know, sprawling suburbs of Tucson, and stuff like that. George also brought up the issue of airbnb, but that to me is a completely different issue. I I strongly think that we should regulate Airbnb, you know. Short term rentals, as we do

[137:12] but long term rentals to me are are a very different issue. It's related to what happens with adus under the current or past occupancy requirements for adus. So my wife and I built an adu. We've had a tenant in there for the entire time since we built it. Ml. Knows this very well. And in the past we've left the the city for a while for my wife's work, and so on, and rented out our house. and then come came back today, or or under those rules, or under these proposed rules. If we were to do that in order to rent out our house, we would have to evict our tenant right. because we would not. We would not be able to rent out both of the the properties and to me that that serves no purpose. It's just harming everybody. And so I strongly oppose

[138:12] this concept. Keep Ml. So I agree with basically what's being said about this? I, my feedback, would be to. Instead of exploring additional restrictions. I would say, explore additional incentives. So what can we do that will encourage people to do the things that we say we value and that we want? How can we sort of flip the conversation to take us to. How do we get? And you know the comment I made earlier about inclusionary housing money is this.

[139:01] I think that there are ways that we can incentivize the outcomes that we're looking for in these neighborhoods, because a lot of these neighborhoods where they're not the vacant homes. People have lived there for decades and decades, and so there is a real desire to evolve with the changes rather than have the changes happen to us. and I think in that in that light explore the incentives. mark. So I would be opposed to the ownership requirement, as as stated here, and I support Staff's recommendations primarily for the reasons Kurt stated in terms of the vilification of renters, it's something that I think is far too common in this town, and it's a changing dynamic in the world, and younger. I'm all for building familial and generational wealth via housing stock, and I think that

[140:16] a broad diversity of people owning homes is an important is an important thing. At the same time it it shouldn't be the the only way and method, and those that choose to rent, just like those that choose to not have a car need to be afforded the same rewards and protections as as those you know. I know we we we give people a lot of things towards homeownership, interest, deductions, and that sort of thing. But I think that in general, I think, as our youth is mobile and so forth. Anyway, home ownership is not

[141:01] necessarily the ultimate goal. Sheltering people and having affordable housing for people is is the goal that we need to focus on lot to go around. So I also support Staff's recommendation here, and I would not support an owner occupancy, requirement for any of these changes. I think my colleagues have already spoken to a lot of points that are important to me, including how we value renters in our neighborhoods. I think there definitely is concern in the neighborhoods that I think we should try to reframe as not about home ownership versus rentals. but about creating more stability and neighborliness. And I think the city has already started to do some work in this area around code enforcement and other things that really deal with quality of life issues that people are concerned about, that can happen really regardless of your housing tenure. They have to do with both owners and renters, so I would encourage the city to continue

[142:01] to lean into that side of this issue. I also have some very practical concerns about any owner occupancy requirements, and that they're incredibly difficult to administer. And I would imagine, easy to game for people who have the resources. and that does create a large and inequitable barrier to doing any of these kinds of housing changes. Is that good? Carl? Yeah, thank you. Let's take a maybe a just a what do you think? 10 min. Do you guys need a 10 min? We only have one bathroom in here. So I just want to make sure everyone has time to go downstairs. Why why don't? Why don't we take? Why don't we reconvene at 8 35, And and and and try to get through the rest of the meeting. Thanks

[153:06] is my. My screen's not sharing, is it? I'm not seeing. Alright. It's still not showing up. Huh? Yeah. Start just buying you time. Hella. would you prefer mine?

[154:00] Yeah, it's true. Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, it it just it just says your screen share is loading, but it's not showing up.

[155:06] You can try. You can always send me the presentation, and I can share it and navigate it if you would want to do it that way. Are you trying to share your screen? Or just yeah, I was trying to share it. Apologize for the technical difficulties.

[156:10] I'm sending it to you, Thomas. If if I can't get it to come up, maybe see if you can. Okay, sounds good. See you tomorrow. Do you want me just to get started without the presentation? Yeah. Okay, so

[157:01] suggestion number 5 relates to something that came up with the original ordinance for the zoning for affordable housing project. and it was an idea of if we want to get more missing middle housing, maybe we could create an exception or an exemption from Site Review for missing middle housing. We brought this through all the way to council and Council opted to not include that in the ordinance. They wanted us to do a double take on it. So basically think about it more. Think about whether we wanted to do it. it basically evolved into. Let's focus on getting more permanently affordable housing. And instead of that, create an exemption from site review for permanently affordable projects. So when we talk to council in April, there was support for creating an exception that would obviously trying to encourage more affordable projects in boulder by giving them a process that's not, as you know.

[158:04] as involved as Site Review. And we talked with our housing and human services folks. They they do have an administrative level design review. That's that uses similar criteria to site review. So we thought that we could put something in the code that just exempts out 100% permanently affordable projects from Site Review, but they could be reviewed in that administrative process. So council was in support of that. So I guess the question for planning board tonight is is planning board support of that. A question can you give us, like a practical example? Would be super helpful to illustrate what you're trying to achieve. and like what the what the difference would be would be super. Yeah. I mean, it'd be like, I'm thinking of some recent projects like Paylo Park, you know, out by Calmia, was a Bhp. Project that had to go through Site Review. There was one up off of 28th street by the rally sports that had to go

[159:03] through site Review. So you know, obviously, any site review project. It requires time and money, and and that, you know, is a delicate balance for particularly an affordable project. So if we're already applying similar design, related criteria as part of this administrative process, because it could save. you know, affordable housing developers, a lot of time and money. and and in in return basically encourage hopefully more affordable projects. When they went through the given those, let's take those as example. When they went through that site review process. Was there any additional value to enhancing the project from the perspective of staff or or I don't remember those specific projects. But were there any changes made through that process

[160:02] that were important? I mean, I wasn't involved with all those projects, so I can't speak as an expert. But I can't recall any like major changes with those projects. at least for those those examples. I mean, we just saw one tonight that was up for call up that we saw it for concept review. And it went through site review at a staff level, I think. and then we had the opportunity to call it up and make them do it for us if we wanted to, and we declined, but I do think that the the comments that we gave them at Concept review significantly changed the design of their project, and it became a much better project. But that may be the exception rather than the rule. Right? So I guess I'm just gonna give my feedback real quick. If that's okay, I'm in favor. Why don't we go for questions before? Because we're still in the question space. Okay? I was just trying to speed us up. But I'll I'll I'll

[161:03] As a practical matter this would apply only to 100% affordable projects. Does anyone in Boulder do that except Bhp. it's possible. But usually it's Bhp. and so Laura gives us a good example of how a concept review helped improve a Bhp project. Conversely, I I remember at Iris 28th Street. This is going up now. There were a number of concerns we had that really couldn't be addressed because of the Federal funding nature, like access to the pool. And there's lots of things that federal projects that projects that are 100% permanently affordable.

[162:00] you know, are subject to a whole different set of. They have a different set of constraints, and there are, and there are. There are things that we can't constrain in those in those projects. So I'm just thinking out loud that I mean, would you think that's a fair characterization that we can't constrain many projects that are Bhp projects in ways that we could a private project paying into our the Inclusionary Housing Fund. What do you mean by constrain? Like condition. you know, we said. Anyway, our, our, it seems like we are more limited in the way we can condition. A permanently affordable project using Federal funds than projects that don't or am I

[163:00] just imagine that I think generally they are subject to the same site, review criteria as other projects. and then there might be practical limitations, or I can think of another limitation that we're actually going to bring to you very soon. Related to some principles, and how the financing works under lightec funding. but I think that those are the exceptions. It doesn't come up very often. Okay, thank you. That reminded me of another project that we we had on plan board when you were here, Claudia, and there was. It was in gun barrel there was like a there's like a a facility like a like a shared facility. And we actually, we actually kind of gave feedback, I think, unanimously, as a planning board to kind of shift around right to push it out.

[164:03] That's another example. Where think that feedback was important, probably, at least in the opinion of a lot of the people on plan board made could make that project better. anyways. following question this, this Staff Level Site review you wouldn't be a you would not be eliminating the Staff Level Site Review. Or is that the proposal just like it? Would it would eliminate a a site, review application and lur a land use review. So it would be a basically, there's an administrative review process that housing uses already where they they apply. You know, I think it's the older version of the Site Review criteria now, but they do evaluate certain projects through that. So it would be putting all of the permanently affordable projects through that process. Okay. I'll oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Ml, following up on that do

[165:02] like right now do the permanently affording housing projects go through that housing, that staff, housing, review or no. They just come to planning board. I think most of the projects go through planning board. I think it's when they do like the off site projects that don't ordinarily require site Review. They apply this, those criteria to those projects. I think those are the ones that go through that administrative. Okay? And you're proposing that if they don't come to planning board. Then they would have to go through that correct. Got it. So what is it? What's the practical. this change like? What does it practically do for Bhp from? Is it a is it a monetary thing? What what is it? What's what's driving it? I think it's just to make

[166:02] affordable housing projects even more feasible to try to get more permanently affordable projects if they can save some money and devote that into other things? Do do you think that there's been a Bhp project that has not been able to come to the city because of this process that I don't know? Are we really solving something? No, I think I think part of this comes from, you know, best practices, from other jurisdictions that talk about how, what are ways that you can encourage more affordable housing. It's. you know, exempting them from, you know. processes that may take a long time and take a lot of money. but this hasn't been an identified issue that has actually stopped any project. Not that I'm aware of anybody. Have any questions. I have a question. Oh, Kurt! I guess my hand is still invisible. Sorry, I tried to change the color of my hand, but it won't. My understanding is that in order to be eligible for prop 1, 23 funds starting in 2027, we will need to do this, anyhow. Is that correct?

[167:17] It doesn't necessarily say you can't put them through a site review process. It just means that you have to get to a decision within 90 days. So whatever process you're in, you have to get to a decision much faster. I see, so it can still be. Excuse me, it can still be discretionary. Yes. I see. Okay. thanks. Guys. Any other questions. Anyone want to start with feedback. Go ahead, Laura. So I I like this idea. In general. I'm in favor of trying to streamline. Discretionary reviews have a benefit, and they also have a cost right, and the cost to Bhp is both monetary and time staff time that they could be devoting to other projects right? And there is a limited pool of money that they have, so it might not have stopped any projects that they're trying to develop, but it might give them less funding for the next project. So.

[168:18] and I think saving money for affordable housing is a good idea that, said. I. Just recommend talking to Bhp about it and acknowledging that there is a cost, and there is presumably some benefit like hopefully, we have made some of their projects better in their own eyes and in their community's eyes? And do they think that that's worth it right, or would they prefer not to have to go through the discretionary review process. I think that's really important feedback to get. If you haven't gotten it already. If you haven't gotten it already. I'd love to know what they said. Yeah, I think in general, we've gotten feedback, and that there's concerns about the time and cost of the process. But I think I'd like to have more specific. You know conversation on this particular topic. We have talked about it briefly, so I would love to ask them directly, is it worth it like, be bluntly, brutally honest? Is it worth? It? Is the value that you get from going through this project and thinking about your projects, and how they have physically changed because of going through this project.

[169:10] Is it worth the time and the cost? Because they care about their communities, and they care about the design and the usability by their users. So I think they're they're really well positioned to give us good feedback on this. Kurt, your invisible hand is up. No, yes, thank you. I support this. Every dollar that we are able to save. Bhp is a dollar that can go into actually creating additional housing. Right? So I think it's less on a project by project basis than on a sort of systemic basis in terms of the overall cost to them. I've heard. I don't know if this is true or not. I've heard numbers like it costs half a million dollars to go to site review for a large project. W. Whether that's accurate or not I don't know. I heard that from a developer, but I do think that to the extent, as I said, to the extent that we can save the money. I I think that this is

[170:10] a positive. It's yeah. We make some changes in projects. It's not always clear to me that site review is a net benefit. So I support. I completely agree with what Laura said. I think that this is a perfect case of asking the one person that does these. and follow that. Follow that trail. Okay, sounds good. I'm torn on this. you know, I think I think to be perfectly honest. It's like, well. you know you're on a planning board right? And you you offer up a perspective and insight, and

[171:01] you know it does. I think it does have value at times. and I also think that the the question for one question for Bhp was not, What does Site Review cost? But what is what would the incremental savings be from this staff level review that if they produce essentially all the documentation and everything required to do the staff Level Review. Okay, Planning Board. we seem to meet darn near every week these days. So you know how how many, how many weeks does a how many weeks, and how how many real difference in dollars is is saved by the by doing the staff overview versus a planning board level review so, and and getting those answers, you know, developers love to toss out numbers like half a million bucks to go through site review. Well, is that is that your you know, is that your dock package that you would have to do anyway, to get a permit. What? What is that number? So anyway, you know those those numbers are tossed about casually, so I would like more info on this. But I'm not just

[172:15] Gung ho for it. Okay. although as developer, it's gone through site review, even went through Site Review today on something else. Site Review, asking a developer if they want to go through Site Review, and if they see value in it is like. you know, asking a fox guarding the hen house what what we should do right? I just I don't see the value in that, because their answer is going to be. It doesn't have value to us. The question to us as a city and as a planning board, and as a city council is, does it have value to us as the city? Have we improved these projects? Is it is the juice worth the squeeze to? To Mark's point. much of the site review process is going to have to be created by the developer. Either way. Site Review just is an additional check and balance or hurdle that that developer has to go through.

[173:11] and when they have to go through that hurdle, and we were able to cite off of memory, forget about all the other things that have happened, 2 projects that have had consequential benefits from a nearly unanimous perspective on planning board. I don't know why we would eliminate this unless Bhp can really prove out that there is cost that is, driving it to the point where they are not able to produce the housing that they've been tasked with, and I don't think there has been any. Certainly there's just been shared tonight that leads us to believe that. I have heard people complain about going through Site Review. But complaints alone is not a reason not to support it, and

[174:00] having seen projects improve through that process. and most of those projects go through. I see no reason to change this. but but that being said, it's it's always valuable to get feedback from them, because I there's a difference between eliminating something completely and saying, Okay, what are the pain points, you know. Maybe there are some pain points to the point where there's legislation coming in 2027, where we're going to have to accelerate this process to 90 days. Maybe there are ways that we can make it more efficient to them, and still get the outcomes that we need as a city to make their projects as as good as they can be. So I have a number of hesitations about eliminating site Review on these projects. I mean most of all to say that you know Bhp, which is the organization doing most of our 100% permanently affordable housing right now. you know, is a trusted developer in the community. They have some very good outcomes, and yet we, as a planning board, still have had

[175:04] some important positive impacts on reviewing those projects? and you know, if one of the goals of potentially making this change in Site review is to get more affordable proposals in front of us, you know. Maybe in an ideal world it's not just Bhp bringing us these projects, but that also introduces other players where I don't think we can make these assumptions about. Everybody is going to be coming in doing quality placemaking. And I'm actually quite concerned with quality placemaking when we talk about larger developments, and particularly when we talk about affordable developments in the city, because these are somewhat rare places, and just because they are affordable, does not mean that they should be cookie cutter. Maybe that's the best way to put it. Just one more quick comment is, I don't know if it's worth exploring. Is there a mechanism for us to do? Concept review, but not Site Review? Because I think most of our value comes in the Concept Review stage.

[176:09] Carl, you said this was going to be quick. I think 5 was longer than I expected. That's very all right. Well, unfortunately, I'm still not being successful here, getting the the slides up. The next one relates to the Site Review thresholds. So you'll recall that it's either the size of the site. the floor area being proposed, or the number of units that determine whether a site review is required or not. and 7. Quite a few changes were made in the zoning for affordable housing project to eliminate any of the thresholds that related to number of dwelling units, and really put it more as floor area. so that it would not create a deterrent from adding housing units. There were some additional zones, or we didn't make

[177:00] changes to the the thresholds relative to the number of dwelling units. So this project would look at the rest of those zones and change it to floor area. So in in your memo packet we've included the the proposed changes and and the zones. I do have them on the screen here that I can't share for some reason. But We we took this to city council, and they were supportive of the changes to the thresholds to remove those dwelling unit triggers. So we just wanted to get your feedback on on that. Carl, can you clarify when we go from a when we go to an FAR. From a number of dwelling units and associated

[178:01] open open space to far I understand that the idea is you can get more dwelling units. you get less open space. Not necessarily. The the open space requirements would still apply. When you do a project. it's not going to change the overall. But it's not per unit. Is that is that the significant difference? It depends on the zone. Right here. We're just like talking about what is actually going to require a site review application right? And and so it won't be triggered by, or if it is triggered by number of dwelling units. The fact that you turned them into far, not dwelling units will remove it from the process. Is that what the thinking is? No, it's just right now it. It says in many places in the threshold that if you do 5 or more units right, you're

[179:01] automatically in a site review. So instead, we would just change that to a floor area. If you're building this much floor area. you're in a site review project. So when we talked about this last year board Member Norbich would remember that we considered an average of 1,500 square feet per unit. So instead of doing it based on unit, we just did 1,500 times 5. And that gave you a number. So in this case, we're we're talking about doing similar type changes where it be 7,500 square feet of floor area instead of the 5 dwelling units. So again, to not make it so, it's a deterrent for doing housing units if if I can jump in. I think I remember a case where for a building of a certain size, if they did 5 large units. They didn't have to go through site review, but if they did 10 smaller units in the same size building they would have to go through site review. So the idea was, don't disincentivize having more units by creating that site. Review trigger based on number of units. But base it on the size of the building. Yes, does. That is that jogging?

[180:18] And we're also proposing to change lower the the threshold for the the BC. Zones and and the industrial zones, so that at least more projects would have the option of doing Site Review. Because sometimes, you know, developers want to go through site review to have that flexibility. So we're looking at changing some of the triggers to just give that flexibility so reducing the acreage minimum. For when they would elect to do a site review questions? Or can we go to feedback. Can I follow up about the minimums? Yeah.

[181:01] my question is, why do we have minimums at all, especially for the Ig and IM zones. For example. if someone wants to take a very small lot or do a very small project. but do something really different. And they want to go through site review. Why are we blocking them? Yes. Well. I think there's certain zones where the way it's set up in the code like it's generally in the more established areas. Like as I was talking about before the older areas of the city. We don't want to see site reviews popping up on single family dwelling sites all over the place. We don't want to have a prevalence of puds, you know, on these like 14,000 square foot lots. So there! There were so certain zones where there is a minimum to discourage that, because those are the areas also where you tend to, instead of getting a modification to a setback, it's more appropriate that that type of site would go through a variance process where there has to be

[182:06] hardship based. But I think mostly we don't want to see a whole prevalence of of site reviews on really small sites that aren't really appropriate for the Site review process. Anyway. But my question was primarily about Ig and IM, which seems like it's a different kind of situation. Oh, you're asking, why do we have any kind of acreage minimum there at all? Right. for I specifically for Ig and IM. I mean, I think, based on what I was just saying. I think they're there's an argument to maybe changing that to 0 so that any site could come in. I might have to think about that a little bit more to see if there's any issues with that. But. Okay. Thanks. Should we go to feedback? I'll start. I haven't started. I'm okay with that.

[183:05] I'm good with eliminating the number of units as a criteria and going to floor floor area. I also am in agreement. I'm looking at the changes proposed. It's on page 134 of the staff. Memo. If anybody wants to look at the specifics and I'm thumbs up. And I think that Carl thank you for offering to consider Kurt's suggestion of not having a minimum in Ig and IM, and I I think that's a great suggestion for you to explore. I'm happy with all of these. Kurt. Did you already give your feedback. You're invisible. Saying Laura said. I made a suggestion. It was just a question. But I. Making that suggestion. So thank you, and I support it.

[184:01] All right. Great. Last one last one. Okay, so this, I'm hoping is pretty pretty simple. So for the zoning, for affordable housing ordinance. We and we wanted our council basically asked. How can we encourage more residential in the industrial zones? But how do we also make sure that residential doesn't drive out light industrial uses. So to to thread that needle, we proposed a change that would give basically a floory a bonus for residential floor area. If a certain percentage of the site remained or was built as light industrial. So basically, if you do, a mixed use project in the industrial zone, and you keep point 3 of the floor area as light industrial, you would get a bump in your residential floria from 1.0 to 1.2 5,

[185:00] and we went out to some developers, and they sounded interested in that and that that could incentivize residential and incentivize either the creation of light industrial on that site, or or your mixed use. So that was supported by council, and it was incorporated into the code. So it's it's now in the code. But then Council looked at it again and thought, maybe there's issues with incentivizing more research and development type uses, since we're already seeing a lot of interest in that. and they asked us to look again at whether that's a good idea. Like, should we include R&D in the list of uses that we want to incentivize for the industrial zones. and after re-looking at it, I think Staff continues to find that they're there's reason to encourage research and development. We? We have

[186:00] a lot we're known for R&D, and startups in Boulder, so it seems like something that should be supported in the industrial zones. But it did make us look at a lot of the the uses there, and we started thinking, maybe there's some light manufacturing uses, or or even bigger manufacturing uses that would be incompatible with residential uses, that we shouldn't encourage them together. So we came up with a revised list of uses that you could have on the site to get this residential bonus. So we brought this back to council. They were supportive of the list. The list I have is, you know. residential mixing with business support services. building material, sales, warehousing or distribution facility, wholesale business, light manufacturing. building and landscaping, contractor, equipment, rental and repair non-vehicular repair and rental services and service of vehicles. We felt that on a larger site you could mix these uses and those would be appropriate uses. We felt that the other uses that are listed in the light manufacturing category in the use standards were probably not appropriate

[187:17] to encourage with residential. So we're proposing to just narrow. That list down. So Council was was good with that list. We just wanted to hear from you on that. just to just to clarify. So this is just modifying uses that are already been approved. This is not changing any additional thing correct. since we're modifying uses my question around the uses that are permitted, because this is always it's so nuanced as to how you view these things. Is office in any way included in that light industrial? Or could it be interpreted that way by who's building it.

[188:00] or has it been excluded in a way that you find satisfactory that we won't get essentially office workers in this space offices not included in the list, it would only be those offices that are either considered administrative offices which are accessory to an industrial use or an office that actually falls under the R&D definition. thanks. Can you expand? We've we've seen a mighty lot of R&D projects. So what is this office that falls under the R. And D, how is that different from the big R&D projects? Are they the same thing? Oh, just anything that comes under the definition of R&D, there, there's going to be components of those R&D uses that are going to have an office component. But if if it becomes a full office and it's not R&D, it's going to fall under the office definition. And it's not going to be subject to this. No, so I'm guessing. I'm thinking about life, science buildings.

[189:07] Would they fall under this? Yes. and so how does this? I. So the ordinance already exists. You're just amending to add the R. And D in essentially no, the R. And D is already in it would just be. It would actually just be narrowing down the list, narrowing down the list, narrowing down the list, but also raising the question again about whether R. And D should be one of those uses. and you decided it should. We decided it, should we? We're suggesting it should right? So does does keeping it in does it in any way impact the ability for industrial to have enough opportunities in Boulder.

[190:03] I mean R. And D is is now listed as a industrial use right? But you said you were thinking with other industrial uses. I don't have a specific answer. I see what you're saying. So when you were asked to to reconsider if R. And D. Belongs there or not. What was the reason to reconsider? I think because of the fact that there have been a lot of life science uses coming into Boulder, and maybe it doesn't need to be incentivized. And you decided it did, because I think our thinking was that, you know. Again, boulder is kind of known for startups and those types of businesses. So we would encourage that and also encourage those particular types of projects to have residential, you know they might have a a big parking lot that they could build some residential on right. It's encouraged with a bonus, but it's not required right. Thanks via

[191:00] I've got a question. I I thought I understood this, and then I was listening to you. I thought, no, I don't understand this. So so currently, the ordinance allows, or it gives a bump in the in the allowable floor area. in industrial and industrial spaces. and that we have that list, industrial spaces, and we have the list of things that are allowed. And now we're talking about adding R&D, no R. And d. Is already R&D is already there. So this list on page 137 of the which list below is a list of uses that would not be eligible for the increased residential floor area. Next use those. Those uses are now eligible. They are bonus. So we're proposing to take those uses out. So the only thing we're actually talking about doing is narrowing the list. We're not talking about expanding the list. It

[192:02] we're talking about narrowing the list. Okay? So on. Page 137 of the packet, cold storage, locker, outdoor display of merchandise, outdoor storage. self-storage, facility, general manufacturing and how do we do? How do we define? And this is where definition of words gets really important. General manufacturing from light industrial use. Is there that up for? Yeah, we have it defined. Okay, I you know I won't. I won't make you define it, anyway. Okay. Recycling center recycle. Okay. I would. Okay. Now I understand. Thank you. There are questions. feedback. I mean just to Kurt. Yeah. 1st of all, I support retaining the ability for R&D to get the bonus. I think that R&D. And residential can be

[193:07] compatible. I don't know how often it would happen but I think it shouldn't be prohibited. I think I trust you on the the list of things to remove just one very minor detail I saw building and landscaping contractor listed in both lists. so both keeping it in and taking it out. So just Fyi. But overall, I suppose I'll go. I'll go. Yeah, I kind of makes sense. I am. I kind of voiced my concern in my question, which is. and you kind of mentioned it, which is like the idea of. For instance.

[194:00] let's take a startup life sciences business. Who's got, you know, series a funding of 30 million dollars. and they take down a space at 40 bucks a foot just because they can, and they out compete light industrial that we need as services as resonance of boulder. That's where my concern lies. I don't know how you I mean, you're like already, kind of nitpicking uses and things like that. So I think in general, I'm supportive of that. I would just like us more to like, revisit this in a few years, and say. You know, are, are we are we getting the outcomes that we want as a community? Because I don't have any issue with it specifically, except for that concern of just uses out competing. You know, services that we need as boulderites. I would say that as long as we are in the context of allowing for residential uses alongside light industrial, that the question to be asking is, which are actually compatible uses in terms of of land uses coexisting relatively, peacefully next to each other.

[195:12] and in that case, that yes, R&D is a potentially compatible use. And I also agree with your list of unfriendly, noncompatible uses. These all seem to make sense things people would not want to live next to so Once again I go back to when we were doing the use tables in the East boulder sub community plan and I, you know you guys, had a consultant put together this nice, straightforward, graphic descriptions of what uses were allowed. and I found them to be way, way, way, way, way, way. too prescriptive and narrow. And so, for instance, I don't know if you guys are familiar with green. Guru.

[196:06] green guru collects bicycle, inner tubes, other use sporting goods, etc, and repurposes those things into various consumer products, and they they are a recycling center. So, and they they are at 47th and Pearl Parkway in a in a light industrial building they are. They are emblematic of what we would want to preserve right. but we wouldn't. But by by this list we would not. They would not be an appropriate tenant in a in a mixed use building that had residential. So the developer, if they're going to redevelop the space and those metal shed buildings will get redeveloped. Someday. So again, more than anything else. I find that the city of Boulder generally tries to put way too fine a point

[197:03] on uses and and the market, you know, if if you're going to have a cleaning and laundry plant that smells of chlorine all day long, etc. You know the market isn't going to really support much housing upstairs from that from that facility. Conversely. I don't know. Living above a cold storage locker sounds quiet. you know. I mean, there's not much there, right? I don't know. Why would you say no to the residential bump above a cold storage locker? I don't know. So I I I guess if you're asking, do I support narrowing the list. No, I don't support narrowing the list.

[198:04] I would say I'm generally supportive, although I do appreciate the point that Mark just brought up that I had not thought about yet. which is, you know, does the city need to regulate this, or will the market regulate it on its own? And I don't know the answer to that, but I think it bears thinking about. But. generally speaking, I think that these seem reasonable, and I I mean, I think that the ordinance that we're modifying here is a great one. Right? It says, Hey, we're gonna try to incentivize people to retain these light industrial uses by giving them additional residential capability. And so hopefully, it's a win win, both in terms of retaining light industrial businesses and in terms of getting more residential out of it. Right? So I think this is really great. So from that perspective, do we want to narrow the possibilities of who could potentially take advantage of this? Or do we want to rely upon the market? To figure it out? Is a great question, I think.

[199:05] yeah, I think this is this is one of those that it's good in principle. but I think that it could be challenging in practice. And I really appreciate you know, the input that check it out in a couple of years and see what's happened. Because I think you know again, my concern, as I said before, is what's going to happen to this? To the small industrial in some in some of these. you know, moves to create housing. So yeah, I think good in principle. challenging in practice. All right. Well, thank you for the feedback. In conclusion, I just wanted to talk about next steps, and then I'll be done. So

[200:00] we're going to continue with community engagement on this. We we do look to do some like office hours. Once we have, like a draft ordinance put together. Right now, I mean, it really depends on the complexity of the changes we're going to be going to city Council in on October 17.th We'll convey the community feedback. We'll convey the feedback that we've heard from Housing Advisory Board and planning board to council, and then they'll tell us what to do with each of these suggestions, and we'll begin the work on the draft ordinance right now. We have a pretty quick turnaround to get this done. We're looking at potentially, coming back to planning board in November. But again, I think it's going to really depend on the complexity of the changes after we talk to city council, but ultimately bringing it through council in like January or February, is kind of what we're aiming to do. So that's that's the next steps.

[201:02] Thanks. But thanks again. Thanks, Carl. Thank you, Carl. Thanks for taking us through that. I think we have one more matters. Item. right agenda. I think the last matters. Item is just an informational item that was sent to you to keep you informed. If if you want to provide any feedback you're welcome to. But there's no planned presentation. Yeah, I had. I had said that. So basically, Fema created a new map that the the city has to adopt. So it just requires a change in date in our land use code. So that's there's a link to the ordinance for that. But it's not required to come to planning board, but we felt it prudent to inform the Board about it. I'm opposed to changing the date. I'm opposed to your opposition. so that concludes

[202:01] things except for a calendar check, and any other thing that we need to hear from anybody like Brad has something I just want to thank you for the really robust conversation on a really difficult topic with a lot of nuance, and appreciate your taking time to be aware of all that nuance, and to Helen Carl, and all the staff that have continued to work on. This is not the low-hanging fruit right? The low-hanging fruit was, I don't know, in the eighties or so. So this is pretty far up the tree now. So thank you for your time. We're going to keep it coming at you for the rest of the year. So, thanks for being available. I just had a comment about this project, and it got me thinking about. So this whole project refers back to the Bbcp. And so when we say, Gee, we we want to increase opportunity for middle housing, missing middle housing.

[203:05] And we say, Well, okay, how can we do this? But everything we do has to conform to Bbcp goals, and I am a Bbcp champion fan. Love it. But then I get to thinking about that. We have this partner in the Bbcp. Which is the county and and our ability. So in this plan changes mildly every 5 years, and substantially only every 10 years. So as our goals and the interests of the city progress. we're really tied to the plan that we've adopted, and I don't mind being tied to those plans. What? And I asked Brad. Maybe it was even a year ago. I you know I was like, why do we have the county at all in this in this plan, and Brad gave me a really good answer

[204:00] about well, we it. It helps us to create boundaries about where we can annex, where we can expand those sorts of things. But this reminded me and and recent county both interactions, just as a citizen and as an applicant and stuff with the county reminded me of just how different the county is from us. and their interests are from our interest. And and this plan that has to be adopted by the County Commissioners and the County Planning Commission is directly affecting the decisions we make about the number of units per acre in the core of the city of Boulder. So, my, my, I'm I'm going to get to a question here, and that is why don't we have, take the opportunity as we develop a revised Boulder Valley comprehensive plan to limit

[205:02] where the county has. Input? So I think about a Venn diagram. Yeah, instead of instead of being this, 2 circles, 100% overlaid, and everything has to be approved by all 4 bodies. Why isn't it like this and that. The 4 bodies approve the areas of mutual interest. And and we're talking about Rmx, one zones downtown like, what does the counting have to do with that? Yeah, I think. And and we'll be able to articulate this better when we're starting to bring some of the comp plan items forward. But I think you'll find it really is the Venn diagram that overlaps. So while it is a single document that is for body approval, there are numerous sections that articulate that for things that are in the city only the city will determine. X. And so there, there's a lot of articulation of that, and I think we'll be able to clarify and demonstrate that hope. So

[206:01] because of the county. I think you guys have been outperforming the county by leaps and bounds in. and we're not allowed to comment on the record for that. Huh? We're not allowed to comment on the record. Of course not. But anyway, you're getting it from, I'm allowed to comment. So I'll just say you guys are ahead by leaps and bounds. I just wanted to add a quick item that I think is germane to the discussion that we just had about family-friendly, vibrant neighborhoods. Point of information I wanted to share that my community, the wild Sage Co. Housing community up in holiday neighborhood. just celebrated its 20th anniversary over this last weekend, and that was a pretty big deal for the residents there, both past and present. We had a lot of former residents come back and visit. but I think also a bit of a landmark for the city. because the surrounding holiday neighborhood, which is also now 20 years old, you know, was really considered a national model at the time that it was built.

[207:03] You know, and a lot has changed about affordable housing since then the economics of that model have changed quite a bit. but in terms of the built form that we have up there, which is a lot of what we were talking about tonight. It really remains a great example of how middle housing can support families and community here in Boulder, and it was just on my mind, because I know holiday neighbourhood comes up a lot in our public discourse around housing recently, and I wanted to extend an invitation to any of my fellow Board members or members of staff who haven't been up in the neighborhood for a while to join me for a walkabout anytime that you would like to. So please reach out if you're interested. Great. Thank you. Okay. thank you. Hey? Thomas, I think we were supposed to give you feedback as to who was available for a bonus meeting. Did you get what you needed from us? Yes, for that October

[208:00] meeting on the second Tuesday. Yeah, I heard back from, I believe, 6 out of 7 Board members that they were would be able to attend that great. I don't think we need to do a formal vote on that if you want to, you can. I don't want to, unless we have. Well, your procedures are a little bit out of date on when the meetings are happening. Anyways. are you saying if we want to, we can add it to the calendar, or if we want to take a vote about adding it to the calendar. If you want to take a vote about adding to the calendar you can. Otherwise we'll interpret you, making yourself available as concerned sounds good, great. So the meeting is on is what I'm hearing. Yes, and that is for October 8.th Okay. yes, thank you. Hi, Thomas. And just one suggestion to Ml. Sent an email the other day asking

[209:04] certain certain meetings retain their tentative date tentative note on the calendar. Even though they were. they seem to be a for sure thing is that. anyway, I'd love it if yeah, all of those are updated through the fall. Now. Okay, yeah, alright, thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Ml, and I have one other question. Are the December and beyond meetings going to hybrid only. No, that was also just a old format on the December calendar. We're all going to be in foreign countries, so we may as well, come, thank you. Anybody have anything else. Yeah, just quickly, since Hela brought up the board procedures. Do we know the status of the update of those. Yeah, the mark actually brought it up at our agenda meeting as well, and I spoke with Laurel about it. Who's taking the lead on those. She's going to look at the calendar with Charles to try to find a

[210:05] a time to fit it in. The calendar is pretty full. But yeah, hopefully. we'll get it done sooner rather than later. Okay, sounds great. Just wanted to know. Thanks. Great. Meeting is adjourned. Bye, all. Thank you.