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HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.council.20160315Special Meeting Aspen City Council March 15, 2016 1 At 5:00 pm Mayor Skadron called the special meeting to order with Councilmembers Myrin, Daily, Frisch and Mullins present. ORDINANCE #7, SERIES OF 2016 - Temporary Moratorium on the acceptance of land use applications in CC, C1, NC, SCI, MU-Emergency Ordinance Jessica Garrow, community development, told the Council this ordinance declares an emergency moratorium for the commercial zone districts. It only includes the commercial core, C-1, mixed use, service commercial industrial and neighborhood commercial zones. It does not include any residential, public or lodging zone districts. It would not impact residential single family home development in the West End, Cemetery Lane, East of Aspen or development in the Lift 1 Lodge area or the civic spaces for the potential city hall relocation or the county buildings. It is a limited scope moratorium. The goal is to enable Council discussion of code amendments to incorporate the AACP into the land use code. The first is use mix and the second is design. Use mix attempts to minimize the negative effects free market residential has on the commercial spaces. In recent years we have seen some of the sterilization that has happened in the commercial core and C-1 zones when residential has been built above commercial spaces and the commercial spaces have remained vacant. There is a concern this has spread into other zones that allow free market residential uses. The second piece is the moratorium allows ways to regulate commercial uses that ensures spaces are filled. The design point allows Council to discuss height, parking and commercial design standards. We don’t want to repeat the rush of design applications we saw in 2012 when we last discussed major code amendments. Ms. Garrow gave an update on what came in today and last week. Last week the Mountain Forge building came in and is located in the mixed use zone. It is an expansion of commercial and adding some free market residential. Today the Base 2 building came in. A commercial building is proposed there. The Mesa building came in. O2 is located there at 500 West Main including some redo of the commercial space as well as new free market residential. The Volk building where Paradise is located also came in and is more minor in scope. Ms. Garrow reviewed the Ordinance. On the first page, bottom whereas fourth bullet, “facilitate the sustainability or essential businesses” of should be or. The moratorium is limited to specific zones and does not impact anything that has a land use application deemed complete as of 5pm today. The four applications Ms. Garrow mentioned as well as anything previously in the pipeline is not impacted. In Section 1 they clarified language to include anything in and complete as of 5pm would not be covered by the moratorium. Within Section 3 Staff made some clarifications and addition to 3A3 adding a clause stating “Land use applications for single family or duplex development where that use was legally established as of the effective date of this ordinance could come forward”. This helps to emphasize the limited scope of the moratorium. Section B has additional clarification language. Part C addresses immediate life safety issues. Those things should not be covered under a moratorium. Ms. Garrow received three emails today to enter into the record from Karen Mitchell, Patrick Sagal and Alex Biel. Mayor Skadron asked about Section C and the degree of subjectivity in this section. Mr. True, city attorney, said he would emphasize the last sentence. It does have subjectivity but we recognize that sentence that someone can’t take advantage of the argument. It is an important caveat of that sentence. Councilman Daily said it is narrow enough. Mayor Skadron opened the public comment. 1. Peter Fornell said this does not really affect him since his next project is in the multi family zone. Council is exceeding their power to announce a first reading on a Monday and second reading on Special Meeting Aspen City Council March 15, 2016 2 a Tuesday. The private sector can wait months between readings. There are a lot of affected people in the community by this ordinance. It is not proper to not notice the community. These zones have had amendments made to them over the past short period of time taking out the third floor and floor area. I don’t see the emergency. There are other consequences of the moratorium. This will effect staffing needs in other departments. 2. Neil Siegel stated he supports the overall goal of the moratorium but he cannot support the emergency ordinance. The proposed action does not fit within the confines of the charter and the preservation of public property, health, peace and safety. It does not meet those definitions. The rational last night was to prevent a rush of applications under the existing code. It does not provide a basis to act on and emergency basis. Applications will be filed. The issue is whether a rush of applications defines an emergency under the charter. Council is legislating on the fly. Ordinance 1 acts as a leveler on aggressive development. He said he does not see where a fear of developers on steroids is a basis of emergency action under the charter. Rewriting the land use code has been a top priority since the last election. If there is no pressing need for action since October what has changed now. The goals of the proposed ordinance are in the right direction. Our charter should not be twisted for a purpose that it was never intended for. That would be bad governance. 3. Jim Smith said council has passed emergency ordinances in the past. He supports the intent here but believes the current language will halt even minor changes. In 2012 council passed Ordinance 25 that unintentionally deprived free market properties in the CC and C-1 zone of their long held property rights. In August of this year council passed an amendment to that ordinance to restore those rights. He is concerned that having had those property rights returned those rights will be taken away again. A modest change to the language of this ordinance would preclude that from happening. He asked council to exempt minor projects on existing properties even if there was a minor change in the floor area. 4. Howie Mallory applauded council for aligning the land use code to the AACP. How this will turn out is uncertain but you hit the pause button. He noticed Galena Plaza is not included. He questioned why the 50,000 square foot plus city project is being exempt. It says there are two sets of rules and is this the message the city wants to send to the public. 5. Neil Karbank said he lives and works in the mixed use zone. He does not see what the emergency is or why this is needed in the west end of Main Street. If there is an emergency in that part of the mixed use zone he is not aware of it. He does not think the mixed use zone as it goes down Main should be part of this. He understands the commercial core. 6. Lindsay Smith said she echoes the comments of what is the emergency. The Concept 600 building is mixed use and houses residential and commercial. We welcome commercial and use all their services. She agrees with Howie about the government projects. She would like council to give it a few more days to think about. 7. Phyllis Bronson stated she has long wanted to see the AACP integrated as our city conscious. If it could be integrated into the land use code it would be a step in the right direction. When there is community angst over a few bad buildings that have had no variances yet they did not fit with the AACP and yet good projects come along that ask for small variances and variances become a four letter word, how does that work. She said she would like to see these projects move along even though they have small variances. Where do they fit. Slowing things down is a good idea. Good projects already in the pipeline should be allowed. The feeling of needing to put a halt on things is causing things to swing in the other direction. Mayor Skadron closed the public comment. Mayor Skadron asked who is impacted and are we affecting our workforce. There is so much still in the pipeline and residential, lodge and public are not affected there will be no impact on the workforce. On the question from Neil and the narrow definition of emergency ordinance. Mr. True said he is correct that the language in the charter is narrow and discusses the preservation of public property, health, peace and Special Meeting Aspen City Council March 15, 2016 3 safety to justify an emergency ordinance. It was discussed on numerous occasions in a moratorium context in the past. The feeling of Staff is related to the determination in the whereas clauses that looks for the purpose of the moratorium itself which is to stop while the community takes a breath and looks at what the proper code language should be. If not done in an emergency context it defeats the purpose of a moratorium. To accomplish what a moratorium is and to maintain health, peace and safety it has to be done by emergency action. To take pause we risk the purpose of the moratorium itself. Mayor Skadron asked about exempting minor projects. Ms. Garrow said the ordinance specifically says interior remodels are exempt from the ordinance. The example of converting a wood burning fireplace to a gas one should not affect the net livable space. A kitchen remodel would not be impacted. An exterior remodel may if changing windows and doors. Mayor Skadron asked about favoritism to city projects. Ms. Garrow replied Council has focused on commercial zone districts. Staff tried to craft this as narrow as possible to downtown and use mix. We want to encourage vitality in the zone districts. There is also additional language changes for applications in the pipeline. Mr. Edwards proposed some additional changes to Section 3B4 to say “Building permit applications for any project that has received a development order prior to the effective date of this ordinance or has a land use development application pending or may become eligible to receive a development order at a later date”. Mr. True said this change clarifies the pending application. Mr. Edwards also suggested a small change to Paragraph C following community development director – instead of as change to be necessary so it would be “health or safety” instead of “health and safety”. Mr. True said he agrees with the change. Mr. True said the words used in the charter are subject to interpretation and opinion and he recognizes that. We are trying to establish for the record that we believe to protect the health and safety and peace it is best to enact this as an emergency. Otherwise there is the rush of applications that definitely impact the heath, peace and safety of the citizens. Councilwoman Mullins said Neil asked why now. Ms. Garrow replied last October this was not as much of an issue. Since then we have seen projects that are finishing out only the free market portions of the development. Staff also started getting questions about projects in the mixed use adding free market development. Councilman Frisch said in addition to keeping it narrow should city hall go under one roof, should it be one building. We don’t need a moratorium to have that conversation. We don’t need a moratorium to have a pause to have that conversation. If something wants to be discussed about city hall that can happen at any time. Why it is in the best interest of the long term heath of the community. It goes back to last October when Council started to link the land use code to the AACP. It was a good and much needed conversation going back to the spring of 2015 when he suggested during the campaign that the number one issue facing Aspen was the land use code did not match up sufficiently with the AACP. The highlights from that meeting are any land use code changes are already five years behind October 2015 because that is how many approved applications are in the pipeline. Eight of the ten applications that came rushing in during the failed ordinance of 2012 are unbuilt but approved. At the start of 2016 land use changes need to be based on the built environment of 2021. If we do not act tonight through the use of emergency ordinance we will be yet another five years behind the pipeline. The lesser of two evils is the moratorium. During the Thanksgiving break I reached out to the Mayor and a small group of Staff to discuss my worries; there are a lot of places in town where 28 feet might not be appropriate and losing some of the nooks and Special Meeting Aspen City Council March 15, 2016 4 crannies. Staff understood but thought it might be wise to hold off. I want to remain focused on the future. In regards to the use of an emergency ordinance to bring about changes to the land use code, when we did it in 2012 a lot of my pointed comments were based on we were literally given only a few hours’ notice to digest and Staff was given even less time to draft legislation. My initial comment was Aspen does not have an emergency unless the gondola falls over or I see tanks rolling up Highway 82. Regarding the residential issues, at the time I was a big believer like a lot of people, that part of having a lively downtown included having a mixture of free market and affordable residential units in the downtown core. I appreciated that some of the units would not be full time, but I never would have thought someone would move in to town, let alone on a lively street and try to shut down the place at sunset. When some recent people moved in to said block and tried to do the exact such thing, I thought for sure my friend Mick Ireland had hired some people out of central casting to prove me and a bunch of other people wrong. I wish I knew how to say you go to be kidding in Ukrainian. I hope this action can bring swift but thoughtful and long term solutions to our community. One of the key economic drivers to our community is our pedestrian friendly built environment. He hopes the NC, MU and SCI zones can be dealt with in a timely manner. It is imperative to start tackling this right away. Councilwoman Mullins thanked the public for their comments. Looking at the history of Aspen development it was pretty even until around the 2000s then the swings started. The swings from the infill ordinances didn’t do anybody any good. We have determined a goal is to align the land use code to the AACP. We have identified seven areas to look closely at. By putting the moratorium in place it allows us to discuss each area openly without the fear of one area triggering an application worried about restrictions in that area. We are attempting to fix a broken code. We have buildings that are compliant but don’t work. We have other buildings that we really want but can’t get because they have variations. The important thing is to end up with something coordinated and cohesive. Why now is the problems from the commercial zone are moving into the mixed use zone. In terms of the charter, the physical environment has a significant effect on the health and safety on the population. The environmental environment also has an effect on this. We need to tackle it as a whole that does align the AACP without distractions of applications coming in. We need to do this as quickly as possible and this should be our focus in the next few months. Councilman Daily said our role is to legislate in a manner that protects and preserves our community goals as set forth in the AACP. One of those goals is a healthy and vital commercial core area of the city. People from around the world are excited to visit when they come here. We have seen an increasing encroachment of the residential uses into our commercial area. We are seeing a sterilization incrementally of commercial development in these zones. When I was campaigning for this role, one of the things I spoke about was we have got to be careful with the level and location of residential development we allow. Even at that time we were beginning to see the third floor unique units that were gradually causing a negative impact on the commercial development down below. The real money was up above. We are seeing that increasing in the community. I’m not an anti-development guy. I don’t think our community can risk a repeat of what took place in 2012 when there was an attempt of downzoning to improve some regulations. We can’t afford to have any more sterilization of downtown commercial spaces. We have to do it the right way this time. We have to look at this community in the long term and care about how the community will look in 30 years. He will support the ordinance and the emergency. Special Meeting Aspen City Council March 15, 2016 5 Councilman Myrin stated pushing pause and working on the future of Aspen pushes it out another five to ten years if we don’t push pause. It is beyond that. When the buildings are built it is 50 to 100 year cycles. It is the future of Aspen we have the chance to work on without the pressure of a changing landscape while we are working on it. We owe it to the community and future generations to do what we are doing tonight. Mayor Skadron asked Howie if we answered the question about the city building, was it sufficient. Howie said he is asking you to put yourself through the same rigor of everyone but you want to avoid the perception that the city is operating under a different set of criteria than everyone else. Councilman Frisch said he appreciates where you are coming from but the direction we got from the community is Galena Plaza is where it should go. Councilman Frisch said he didn’t know the mixed use zone was having this pressure until February. The CC and C1 conversation, nooks and crannies, view planes, heights will take time to do. There has to be some type of surprise factor and that sucks. SCI is in there because we are thinking of not having residential be part of that zone. That could be one meeting. I want to put as many fish back in the Aspen sea as possible. Some of this can be taken care of right away. I challenge all of us to lay out some timelines and if we are not talking about this when the five of us meet we have to have a really good reason. I can’t think of anything more important for a second Tuesday meeting. The community is caught in a bad situation. Councilwoman Mullins said everyone is in agreement the land use code is not aligned with the AACP. The longer we allow applications to come in the worse shape we will be in. We can’t make a coordinated effort unless we push the pause button. She would like to see this done in six months. She supports this. It is a drastic effort but we heard from the community that they are not happy development wise. Mayor Skadron said he concurs with the comments by his fellow Council members. Whatever the AACP is it needs to reflect the will of the people and the land use code needs to deliver what the AACP promises. We need a code that is just a code. Today it is an amalgam of complexity from lodge preservation to CC to SCI to things we can’t even understand. We need to make it simpler, decide how much mitigation we want, need to allow uses where they belong, and prevent development in inappropriate areas. The development that divides this community is and was allowed by the code in place at the time. We need development that doesn’t divide the community. This Council hopes to deliver a land use code that works so Aspen has a look and feel. Preserving that look and feel is Councils top priority and that is how we are protecting the health and safety and peace of this community and its citizens. He said he will support this moratorium and is ready to work on it. Councilman Frisch moved to adopt Ordinance #7, Series of 2016 as amended including the fifth whereas clause, Section 3B4 and 3C as outlined; seconded by Councilman Daily. Roll call vote. Councilmembers Frisch, yes; Daily, yes; Myrin, yes; Mullins, yes; Mayor Skadron, yes. Motion carried. Councilman Frisch moved to adjourn at 6:55 pm; seconded by Councilman Daily. All in favor, motion carried. Linda Manning, City Clerk