Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.apz.20241217 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN PLANNING & ZONING COMMISSION DECEMBER 17, 2024 Commissioners in attendance: Charlie Tarver, Maryann Pitt, Tom Gorman, Eric Knight, Christine Benedetti, and Teraissa McGovern Staff present: Ben Anderson, Com Dev Director Jeffrey Barnhill, Senior Planner Kate Johnson, Assistant City Attorney Tracy Terry, Deputy City Clerk Commissioner Comments: None. Public Comments: None. Minutes: Mr. Gorman motioned to approve the minutes for October 15th, 2024, and the motion was seconded by Mr. Knight. Ms. McGovern asked for a roll call vote. Roll call vote: Mr. Tarver, abstain; Ms. Pitt, yes; Mr. Gorman, yes; Mr. Knight, yes; Ms. Benedetti, yes; Ms. McGovern, yes. Motion passes 5-0. Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest: None Submission of Public Notice for Agenda Items: Ms. Johnson said that 633 W. Francis has noticing issues because it requires a continuance to comply with noticing requirements. 730 Bay Street and 232 E Main Street had proper noticing. Public Hearing, item 1: 232 E Main Street Ms. Johnson noted that there has been a request for continuation to February 4, 2025. Motion Ms. Pitt moved to continue 232 E Main St to February 4, 2025; Mr. Gorman seconded. Roll call vote: Mr. Tarver, yes; Ms. Pitt, yes; Mr. Gorman, yes; Mr. Knight, yes; Ms. Benedetti, yes; Ms. McGovern, yes. Motion passes 6-0. Public Hearing, Item 2: 633 W. Francis, Replacement of Nonconforming Structures Ms. Johnson said proper notice was not made for this item, so she requested this item be continued to January 7, 2025. Motion Ms. Benedetti moved to continue 633 W. Francis to January 7, 2025; Mr. Knight seconded. Roll call vote: Mr. Tarver, yes; Ms. Pitt, yes; Mr. Gorman, yes; Mr. Knight, yes; Ms. Benedetti, yes; Ms. McGovern, yes. Motion passes 6-0. REGULAR MEETING ASPEN PLANNING & ZONING COMMISSION DECEMBER 17, 2024 Public Hearing, Item 3: 730 Bay Street, Replacement of nonconforming structure Applicant Presentation: Mike Kraemer with Kraemer Land Planning Mr. Kremer introduced himself, Garrett Larimer with Kraemer Land Planning, and Seth Hmielowski with Z Group Architecture & Interior Design. They represent the owner at 730 Bay Street. He went over the property background, site conditions, and an explanation about their request. The property is just under 37,000 sq ft and is in the R30 zone district. The subdivision has a PD overlay and has a steep slope on the northeast part of the property. 730 Bay Street was constructed in accordance with the subdivision approvals and duly issued building permits and the home is almost identical to when it was built in the 90’s. It was built under the floor area requirements of that time. Land use code changes have either been eliminated or changed, now making the home non-conforming regarding floor area only; the allowable floor area now is 5,016 square feet. Their proposal is that 275 square feet of existing unfinished attic space will become a home office, convert the 5-foot 6 crawl space into a full height basement, reduce basement wall exposure, and add a two-level garage. They want to remove a large deck and spa to add new on grade patio and spa lowered into grade, remove or reconfigure front, side, and rear decks that count as calculatable floor area, and install a landscape wall and trees to screen home from Francis Street. All these changes reduce the floor area by 1778 square feet. There will be no exterior changes to the property. Ms. Benedetti announced that she is within the 300-foot boundary of this property and needs to recuse herself. She left the meeting. Mr. Kraemer went on to say that the removal of the decks results in purposeful destruction and requires this review. The one criteria that is problematic is the read of 26.430.60b4 which states that staff recognize there is no hardship that hinders applicant from reasonable use of this property if not approved. While this may be true, this application only addresses a small part of this code section and what is missing is the response that the code states “literal enforcement of the dimensional provisions of the zone district will cause unnecessary hardship upon the owner by prohibiting reasonable use of the property”. The only reason this is being reviewed by P&Z is that due to code changes the structure is now non-conforming in terms of floor area only. Enforcing the zone district dimensional requirements for this property will require the applicant to further reduce square footage by 900 square feet. To do this the applicant will have to make major structural changes and demolish exterior walls and build new ones, which will no longer qualify as a remodel and could possibly trigger demolition. The structure does not need to be demolished, only upgraded to meet current energy codes. The proposal to remove exterior massing that calculates against is a reasonable use of the property, finishing interior space that is already present in the attic, creating a full height subgrade basement where a crawl space exists and removing 1800 sq ft of floor area that cannot be recaptured are all completely reasonable uses of the property. Enforcing the R30 zone district dimensions when a remodel in floor area reduction is proposed and 40% demo is not triggered is unreasonable and creates hardship. Mr. Hmielowski said they are making a non-conforming structure more conforming. They are not scraping and replacing where all that debris is going into the landfill, it is an interior remodel where all the work is being done within the built environment. Everything on the outside is being done to meet that non-conformity and all the big things are being done inside, they are making it better from the outside and improving energy efficiency inside. REGULAR MEETING ASPEN PLANNING & ZONING COMMISSION DECEMBER 17, 2024 Board Questions: Mr. Gorman asked if there are any variances being requested. Mr. Kremer said no. Mr. Gorman then asked if anything will be upgraded. Mr. Hmielowski replied yes. Mr. Tarver asked what the floor area would be using the 1994 calculations. Mr. Kremer said he did not calculate that. Mr. Tarver then asked how much bigger the basement is getting. Zach replied it is getting bigger by 400 sq ft. Ms. McGovern asked what the actual interior square footage is in relation to the allowable square footage. Mr. Kremer replied that the decks account for a lot of floor area. Ms. McGovern asked if there was a conversation to bring the decks into 15 percent. Mr. Kremer replied that it was discussed but this is where they landed. Later in the meeting Mr. Kremer said they came up with the calculation she asked for, 5,551 sq ft. Staff Comments: Jeff Barnhill, Senior Planner Mr. Barnhill went over the project and the reviews. Staff find the proposal meets criteria 1,2, and 3, but not the non-conforming structures criteria. Staff recommends denial of the project. Board Questions: Mr. Tarver asked what the term countable means. Mr. Barnhill replied that the countable floor area does not include gross floor area, only what is countable by code. Mr. Gorman asked what constitutes hardship. Mr. Barnhill replied it will prohibit reasonable use of the property. Ms. Johnson said it can’t be self-created, and it must be of a type peculiar to the property. Mr. Gorman asked if the usage within the department has shifted over the years or is this long standing. Mr. Barnhill replied in general hardship is rarely supported by staff as the owner still has reasonable use of the property. Public Comment: Ryan Doremus said that there is a non-conforming structure issue on almost every house in town and it is very hard for them to meet the client, the city, and the codes needs. He said it is so hard to meet the hardship piece of the code so we will just keep having this conversation over and over again. He thinks this needs to be a bigger conversation because they are trying to save and remodel homes instead of scrape and build. Staff Rebuttal: Mr. Anderson said that the topic of hardship is central to land use code. From the staff’s perspective, he agrees with what has been said tonight. They have responded consistently and that is why these things are brought to the boards. Because the code changes overtime, there are things that are no longer allowable. It requires a lot of thinking and discussing. Staff and the applicants have to wrestle with it, and because they are trying to back remodels it makes it hard. REGULAR MEETING ASPEN PLANNING & ZONING COMMISSION DECEMBER 17, 2024 Applicant rebuttal to public comment: Mr. Kremer said thank you Ryan and offered to talk about the hardship part of the code. He wanted to be clear that they are not requesting a variance, they are saying in the non-conforming chapter, subsection 4, it says literal enforcement of the dimensional provisions of the zone district would cause unnecessary hardship upon the owner by prohibiting reasonable use of the property. He is saying if they enforce the R30 zone district floor area on the project, they cannot comply with that without lopping off significant parts of the structure and to require that is unreasonable and a hardship. Board Discussion: Mr. Tarver said they made a comment that they would have to lop off walls, but that is only Ms. Pitt said there are a lot of layers to this, but the overall sense is that they are trying to do some revisions; they want it to be more compliant and more energy efficient, those things are positive to the community. They are expanding and retracting, and we are talking about 100 sq ft here. It sounds like they are doing the right things to make it worthwhile. Mr. Gorman said the project is clearly short of being a perfect project in the eyes of Community Development Com Dev eyes. He said to him it is a question of whether it meets enough of the goals of Community Development to overlook the imperfections. 3 of the 4 criteria are met and the dim variations works in favor with the reduction of the decking, so do we insist on perfection or take something that may be a compromise. Mr. Knight said it’s tough, but he would have to agree with the city that the hardship hasn’t been met. Mr. Tarver said you buy a house and want to do something with it you have to follow the new rules. He said he probably will not approve. Ms. McGovern said the application clearly complies with the first 3. She thinks literal enforcement does not prohibit reasonable use. The one caveat is the slope and that is the only thing that gets them close to hardship. She would have liked to see that they reduced and got as close as possible to compliance. Ms. McGovern asked the applicant if they would like to continue the hearing to work on the project more with staff. Mr. Kremer said yes, they would like to continue to keep working on it. Motion Mr. Tarver moved to continue 730 Bay Street to February 4, 2025; Mr. Gorman seconded. Roll call vote: Mr. Tarver, yes; Ms. Pitt, yes; Mr. Gorman, yes; Mr. Knight, yes; Ms. McGovern, yes. Motion passes 5-0. Adjourn: Ms. Pitt motioned to adjourn; Mr. Tarver seconded. All in favor. Tracy Terry, Deputy City Clerk