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HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.apz.aacp.20111115 City of Aspen Planning & Zoning AACP Meeting - Minutes November 15, 2011 Comments 2 Minutes 2 Conflicts of Interest 2 City AACP 2 1 City of Aspen Planning & Zoning AACP Meeting— Minutes November 15, 2011 Stan Gibbs opened the special meeting November 15, 2011 of the Planning & Zoning Commission in Sister Cities at 5:00. Commissioners present were: Cliff Weiss, Bert Myrin, Jasmine Tygre, LJ Erspamer, Jim DeFrancia and Stan Gibbs. Staff in attendance: John Worcester, City Attorney; Chris Bendon, Jessica Garrow, Community Development; Jackie Lothian, Deputy City Clerk. AACP: Stan opened the Special City AACP Meeting. Jessica Garrow said that tonight you were scheduled to vote on the draft AACP and one of the discussions that staff, P&Z and Council Work Sessions was currently the AACP is used as a regulatory document and P&Z is recommending this new document be a guiding document. There are currently references in the Land Use Code that specifically say compliance with the Aspen Area Community Plan. Jessica said the adoption of this draft plan creates some "gap issues" where the current plan covers most specifically mass and scale through those review criteria in the Land Use Code. By adopting this as a guiding document we no longer have the ability to go back and look and see what the plan says about mass and scale. Jessica said at your first meeting in January you are scheduled to go over those code amendments so that we cover those gap issues. Specifically amend the subdivision section and the PUD section of the land use code would refer to mass and scale issues. The second meeting in January you are scheduled to review a prioritization of other code amendments that are called for in the plan. Jessica said that they have reviewed this with the City Attorney's Office and they are supportive of this direction. Cliff Weiss asked how it was going to work when we have certain code amendments where we are looking for parody between city and county so that their code amendments and ours. Jessica replied that if house size rises to the top then we have to map out a process; we don't have a process yet. Jessica said it made sense to adopt the plan and then go through code amendments. Cliff asked if this would open a window of opportunity. Chris Bendon replied yes all of those gap issues would be dealt with. Cliff said there wasn't much of a gap. Chris said the gap was created on the adoption by City Council; they will have an Ordinance ready to cover those gap issues. Adjo ed 5:3 p into the Joint City County AACP Meeting. tti ckie Lothian, Deputy City Clerk 2 • City of Aspen and Pitkin County Planning & Zoning AACP Meeting — Minutes November 15, 2011 AACP 2 1 City of Aspen and Pitkin County Planning & Zoning AACP Meeting - Minutes November 15, 2011 Stan Gibbs opened the special meeting November 15, 2011 of the Joint Planning & Zoning Commissions in Sister Cities at 5:30. City Commissioners present were: Cliff Weiss, Bert Myrin, Jasmine Tygre, LJ Erspamer, Jim DeFrancia and Stan Gibbs. County Commissioners present were: Joe Krabacher, John Howard, Marcella Larsen, Jay Murphy and Michelle Bonfils Thibeaut. Staff in attendance: Chris Bendon and Jessica Garrow, City Community Development; Cindy Houben and Ellen Sassano, County Community Development. Jackie Lothian, Deputy City Clerk. Public Hearing: AACP: Stan opened the Special AACP Public Hearing for the City and Joe opened for the County. LJ stated on Page 32 Philosophy 2nd paragraph strike We should increase the•• - . • . - _ - - - • - . . . . . - replace with• We can do this Jessica updated the commissioners on public outreach with special ads in newspapers, radio, emails and Grassroots; she received one comment from Phyllis Bronson which was more specific to the Lift One A project. Jessica wanted to open the entire document so that staff can incorporate those changes into the document. John said for the record that we did not give adequate notice; we are technically within all the requirements and finished our draft last week and gave the public one week to comment tonight. Marcella appreciated the red-line on this document and showed her really how little had changed. Marcella said she felt comfortable because they have given the public a lot of notice on this document. Bert said on the face book page that he looked at today and there didn't seem to be any hits recently. Jessica said they changed to the city/county face book page because the AACP page was not getting many hits. Joe Krabacher opened the public comment portion of the hearing. Public Comments 2 City of Aspen and Pitkin County Planning & Zoning AACP Meeting — Minutes November 15, 2011 1. Dave Corbin, Aspen Skiing Company, said he didn't think that the public had enough comments on the draft and doesn't think that the public realizes once the document is approved on the County Side by P&Z it is done and accepted. Dave thanked the commissioners for the time that they have put into this plan. 2. Junee Kirk said it was a long hard effort from the commissioners and thanked them. Junee asked how this has changed from the last draft. Joe said there has been some nuances in language but there hasn't been much changed since the September 156 draft. Chris said if you have had a chance to review the draft it shows every change. Cliff stated that it is no longer regulatory at all. Junee said that she would like to see that changed so it was regulatory. Stan said that issue has already been voted on. Stan said that he agreed with Junee because whatever you put into the land use code are the things that development needs to abide by and doing so will hopefully get out of the situations where we end up in court. Junee hoped to get the code changed quicker than this has changed. Joe said there was a large outcry from the community when it was proposed to be regulatory and a lot of the language is not meant to be regulatory because it is visionary and philosophy and much easier to keep track of a code change. Junee said with respect to heights there should be something about the south side of the street where large structure form ice buildup; can that be put into the AACP. Jessica said that is on page 6; to say explore or reduction of height on the South side of the street to accommodate solar considerations. 3. Richard Lane said that they have followed this from the beginning and it is confusing. Richard said their concern was for height and mass page 19 and did see that addressed. Cliff referred Richard to appendix page 6. Jessica said that it was on page 24 at I.6 and appendix 6. Joe left the public hearing open. Joe asked for comments on the Aspen Idea. John commented that Mind and Body is included in the Aspen Idea and the Spirit is left out. Joe read the portion from the document. Marcella said it transfers to the spirit in the philosophy portion of the document. Jay suggested that the Aspen Idea as far as the land use would be codified in the Ecological Bill of Rights that we have in this document is the Spirit of the Aspen Idea. LJ Erspamer said the Aspen Chamber Resort Association talks constantly about Aspen being a year round resort yet on Appendix page 4 under I.2.a suggested 3 City of Aspen and Pitkin County Planning & Zoning AACP Meeting — Minutes November 15, 2011 using throughout the year and strike : . - . . - -- . throughout the winter and summer seasons. John said on appendix page 5 I.1.b we talked about Explore expanding the GMQS. Cindy said that you were trying to have community documents talk about the benefits of the community; that maybe there is a point system. Chris said explore, expand GMQS point system to encourage community benefits. John said that explore didn't work for him; make it revising that encourages community benefits. Cliff wanted to know where was the link to policy was it recommendations. Marcella said this list was supposed to be achieving sustainable growth practices. John said the whole of this was in the title. LJ asked on I.1.a in the appendix page 5, are you suggesting that someone who tears down their 2,000 square foot home and puts back a 2,000 square foot home. Jessica responded it could include that or not. Stan said there may be a better way than demolition with some projects. John said I.2.a should include property tax revenues that will be part of that analysis. Jessica thanked John and Mitre for going through the document and making the corrections that they did. Marcella said that it was literally intended to try and get tourists, especially second homeowners; more involved in the community and that it would make it a better place. Cliff said he didn't understand I.3.c what attractive signage program and way finding; are we talking around the core. Cliff suggested adding to I.4.c the working group should conduct amenity and lodging product demand anaylsis and delete V.3.d. Stan said they were talking about density. Cliff said the VII.2.2a wanted to explore using County TDRs in the City. LJ said that if you have TDRs in the urban growth boundary and asked if they should put into the implementation plan that we should explore looking into creating TDRs in the river drainage district that affects the nearest community. Cliff said he thought that they shifted this. Stan asked if it said County TDRs from the UGB. Cliff said it was under I1.2 appendix page 6. Joe said it was also under II1.4 appendix page 7. Stan said III.I.a. was not clear in the fact that there might be some other codes rather than City and County Land Use Codes. Jessica said that in Section III and change to City and County Land Use Codes. Jasmine Tygre left about 5:30pm. 4 City of Aspen and Pitkin County Planning & Zoning AACP Meeting— Minutes November 15, 2011 John said they talked about reducing allowable site coverage and he doesn't think that it will necessarily get us where we want to go with this. Joe said that is what the actual policy deals with is reducing site coverage. John said his question was on the policy as well as the action item; because if we reduce the site coverage we may wind up with buildings that are larger, more blocky, more massive and scale. Stan said this was the most important across the street from him lot line to lot line coverage makes a big house seem really big. Stan said he can't see how that house got built and reducing house size and staying with the setback makes sense. John said that by going down this path he wanted to make sure there weren't any unintended consequences. John said if they were going to reduce the setbacks it has to go hand in hand with reducing floor area. U. said we still have a 28 foot height limit. Bert said that he would support John's concept because if you are trying to build with less site coverage and still make it under the FAR. Marcella said they have talked about creating residential design standards customized by neighborhoods so that would address that particular design issue and it also says intentional from base design standards and volumetric floor area calculations. Marcella said that is all getting at how does that building ultimately get built; lots of pieces. Stan said it addresses the visual quality of character which site coverage, the open space just disappears even if the house is the same height or a little taller it just doesn't have the massiveness with all the space being filled up. Joe said that we have policy III.2 on appendix page 7 that will control the size of homes. John wanted to make sure they were not missing something and wind up encouraging development to be done. Cliff would like to eliminate multi sub-grade levels; he didn't want to take away their FAR exemption for sub-grade. Chris said reduce or eliminate FAR exemptions for multi-level, subgrade spaces and garages for single family homes. Cliff said II1.2 appendix page 7 said they talked about hard caps in different zones but single family homes within the UGB are at 5250 square feet and with TDRs you can bring that up to 8150, which is an issue to the hard cap. Marcella said that it was 15,000 square feet within the UGB. Cliff suggested within the UGB a hard cap of 8250 square feet. Marcella stated that would affect the county land. Chris said the language would be amend City and County Codes within the UGB a hard cap of 8250. Stan asked with the City how big a lot would you have to have to get you to 8250. Chris replied big. Stan said within the City it will never happen. Marcella said it would happen in the County. Jessica said you have to be clear about FAR you would rarely hit this in the City and if you are talking gross square footage you will hit this. Marcella said the County does not have Floor Area Ratio so it would affect a lot of land in the Urban Growth Area. Cindy said the Red 5 City of Aspen and Pitkin County Planning & Zoning AACP Meeting— Minutes November 15, 2011 Mountain area will be affected. Marcella said that is it though; think about all the 10 acre zoning and sub-zoning lots so it will affect a lot of property. Stan asked what if we put in as "an explore" so that is advisory to City Council and the County Commissioners. Chris said additional action item explore any city and county code within the UGB as to hard cap of 8250 square feet. Joe said he didn't have a problem with the generic language ending at the hard cap; this has implications for the County's TDR program and he would rather preserve 35 acres in the County than add 2500 square feet to a property in the UGB. Joe said every action has a reaction; there are implications for the County TDR program when you start limiting where you can use the TDRs. Chris asked if was acceptable to have explore. Stan said that he could remove the number on the hard cap. Chris stated to establish a lower hard cap. Michelle Bonfils Thibeaut arrived at 6:00pm. John said page 7 III.2 we were talking about reducing job generation impacts and another job generation is not a bad thing in itself and excessive job generation with impacts. Marcella said this in relation was not necessarily bad. Bert said this was in relation to the size of homes not to opening a business in town; it was focused on residents. Jessica asked if there was support to change the language; there was not. John suggested that III.2.e adding additional roads to the County's scenic protection standards to strengthen them. John suggesting considering adding additional rows to those review standards. John said IIL3 at the end would like to add and density to page appendix 7. LJ said on III.4.c on appendix page 7 at the end of the sentence or reduce that size. Lodging Sector: Cliff added to IV.2.a. room before size. John asked if are intending to identify or recommend a product type on IV.2.b; to whom are we going to recommend a particular product. John said it was in our code and we want to incentivize those projects we want to see. Stan said the spelling of publically on IV.3.a should to be changed to publicly. LJ voiced concern for Bed and Breakfasts in residential neighborhoods. Chris asked if they could put in explore. LJ agreed. LJ said they needed to be careful the language of public/private partnerships; he said it was a great idea but what happens that comes before us APCHA gets free building and so the private applicant will give APCHA support no matter what the size of the building is so he thought that we need to be careful with that language. LJ asked if anybody else had any thought on that. Jessica said this was on 6 City of Aspen and Pitkin County Planning & Zoning AACP Meeting — Minutes November 15, 2011 appendix page l OVI.a. LJ said the public/private partnerships give the public as beneficiary and we don't know anything about the private side of it. Chris asked if it was the partnership or how the partnership is expressed. LJ said the City is the recipient of the partnership; does anybody see the same thing that is happening because all of sudden APCHA is supporting it and we are facing all the problems of mass and scale of a lodge in a residential area that creates a nightmare for us because of a private/public partnership. Chris responded that it might be how the partnership is arrived at because there is a million ways to do it; APCHA has the ability to be an applicant with or without a partner and in that case they should be a partner. Marcella said that you want the ability to look at the partnerships and understand that the public is receiving some benefit. LJ said there is great polarity in the neighborhoods because of these public/private partnerships. Chris said so you want some transparency around the partnership. Marcella said that transparency is a rather vague term; you want the partnership to be on equal footing or that there has to be disclosure of finances by the private developer. Jessica said the thrust of this action item is about addressing the loss of civic buildings and not public/private partnerships so if the group is comfortable we can delete including public/private partnerships or we can address this in an additional sentence or in a different area. John said delete. Michelle said this particular item seems like it addresses the Art Museum or the Rio Grande Plaza; she saw your concern but you are not voicing it. Joe said if you are talking about civic buildings you have to have the public part and then you want to regulate public/private part too, put restrictions on how you do it; look at the application what is the application proposing. Joe said judge the application on what the merits are being proposed not what may be going on behind the scenes between the public and the private and that is his take on it. Many of the commissioners agreed with Joe. John said so those words will be deleted. Jessica replied yes. John asked if in'VI.3.c.center should be easily accessible and close to complimentary community amenities. John asked if we are talking about accessibility from mass transit, trails, all of the above, none of the above. Jessica replied would be all of the above in addition to accessible by people with disabilities or limited mobility. Mitigating Impacts: Jay asked does this include the extraction industry such as oil and natural gas. Cliff asked if we even allowed it in the UGB. Jay said that we think construction whether it is remodel or new development of building and should this have any nod towards any of the other uses that other counties have to deal with more than we do but specifically the extraction industry, oil and natural 7 City of Aspen and Pitkin County Planning & Zoning AACP Meeting — Minutes November 15, 2011 gas; we do have a mining industry which could be re-invigorated for whatever reason. Stan said that they talked about this last week with the silver mines within the UGB and he didn't think that we should ignore that. Cliff said there was nothing we could do to stop that. Jay said that he understood and especially mitigating impacts we have no ability to address mitigating impacts which has been in the news. Marcella said she would delete the word new. Chris asked if everyone supported all types of development. LJ didn't want the housing credits built or approved housing to be pressure on the mass and scale of the buildings to catch up with the credits. Stan said in the City you can't get the credit until you have the house. John said in VII.1.a. he would like a cost benefit analysis with both positive and negative impacts and the differential is what we should be mitigating. Chris asked if we put in parenthesis both positive and negative after impacts. John said that's what is going to enable us to determine what the true mitigation level needs to be. Stan said he wondered if this section was really specifically about negative impacts because we talk about it in other places that talk about the community benefits. Chris said the language is adopted. Marcella asked to take out the word net. John said (positive and negative) that Chris said works for him. Jessica said there was incorrect numbering that she will correct. John said when we get to the concept of full mitigation what were the impacts from where the development is proposed and there needs to be that weighing of the positive and the negative impacts and that will give you that number. Stan said that he understood where he was coming from but he is tending towards changing the word mitigating to quantifying because you want to look at both sides of the coin and we do that in other places in the document but because an development is bad we have to keep mitigating for that but what we are saying is more generally if you can have positive impacts as well but you don't mitigate positive impacts. Stan said what you are saying is there needs to be positive impacts, he would go with that. John said the first policy says study and qualify all impacts. John said the thrust of this we want development to mitigate the negative impacts of that development; he thinks the chapter is still okay. John said the first step in mitigating is to study and quantify what those impacts are. Chris said the next is ensuring new development reevaluates and mitigates all reasonable directly related impacts. MOTION: LJ moved to extend the meeting another 30 minutes seconded by Cliff all in favor. 8 City of Aspen and Pitkin County Planning & Zoning AACP Meeting — Minutes November 15, 2011 John said talks about explore CWH he would like explore and create. Cliff wanted to remove VII.3.d. Joe said change Explore to Examine. Stan asked about VII.4.b. explore methods of amending and changed it to explore and amend. Stan asked if VII.4.f. was a global bucket of square footage; it seemed unspecific. Cliff said it was like a cost of living increase. Joe said they were talking about increases. Stan asked if it was a global percentage for the UGB. Jessica said it was part of the conversation when you talk about the code amendment; is it something that is UGB wide; is it based on only residential development; is it only commercial development; is it just in the city; is it in the county. Chris said he thought it should say explore either UGB wise or city or neighborhood or percentage of square footage; otherwise you have to change it. Bert said that we could leave that off. Joe said square footage increase in pacing. Stan said or it is the square footage to an input to a pacing program. John said VII.3.g. and d. seem to be in conflict with each other, we talk about not pacing and then we talk about the world of vested rights as a tool in pacing system; he thought the intent in there was to allow vested rights to expire. Bert suggested we use the rule of expiration. Joe and Marcella said the duration sounds better. John asked how VII.4.i. meets the policy goal. LJ replied that if we don't have the infrastructure if for some reason in the future they put a new road in and utilities it would support such a plan. Joe said this is assuming that you have established a development quota with the purpose of restricting the pacing route. Jessica said that this comes from a lot of pacing work that staff did a couple of years ago and one of the options that was researched was linking the pacing system to infrastructure; this simply said look at what way infrastructure might play into some kind of pacing system. Joe asked if it would be better or made more sense where development quotas have been established to address. Review Process: Stan said the word PUD in VIII.I.c. using the PUD process. LJ said he wanted to add a word that John added earlier and density after mass and scale. Ellen wanted to make everyone aware that was a big change. Joe said we don't want the PUD process to exceed the underlying zone density. Chris added underlying dimensional. John said he wasn't for changing. 9 City of Aspen and Pitkin County Planning & Zoning AACP Meeting— Minutes November 15, 2011 Cliff said that he had a problem with VIII.3.b. eliminating the COWOP process. Marcella said if you do eliminate it then make it go to P&Z. Chris suggested eliminate COWOP Process. Jim DeFrancia excused himself at 7:10 pm. LJ said on page 19 of the November 15, 2011 Aspen Area Community Plan at the top of the page the underlined sentence changed controlled to managed. Chris asked if there were more comments. Joe asked if we were going to adopt this tonight. MOTION: LJErspamer moved to approve the AACP as corrected by Chris and Jessica in City Resolution #22-11 and County Resolution 08-11, seconded by Bert Myrin. Joe Krabacher moved to adopt the AACP, seconded by Marcella Larsen; Roll call vote: Jay Murphy, yes; John Howard, no; Marcella Larsen, yes; Joe Krabacher, yes; Michelle Bonfils Thibeaut, yes; LJErspamer, yes; Bert Myrin, no; Cliff Weiss, yes; Stan Gibbs, yes. APPROVED 7-2 Discussion prior to the motion: LJ said issues that we don't agree with should be brought up at the Council Meeting and this joint resolution should be sent onto Council. Marcella said what matters is the implementation; we care about how it is implemented. Stan proposed changes to the resolution to eliminate the second WHEREAS. Bert said this is going to be the first plan that is not regulatory. Bert wanted the code amendments passed along with this document. Stan explained that this doesn't replace the AACP as a regulatory document. Chris said that Council has already stated that they don't want to be in a position to adopt the AACP without seeing those code amendments so they understand their own review process to go through. Bert said we are not handing City Council the code amendment to cover the gaps. Chris said that Council has already stated that they will not want to be in a position to adopt these amendments. Bert said those were his concerns. Adjourned at 7:40 pm. ckie Lothian, Depa ty City Clerk 10