Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.apz.19870203 RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS PLANNING & ZONING FEBRUARY 3. 1987 Meeting was called to order by Chairman Welton Anderson at 5:00 p.m. with all members in attendance except Jasmine Tygre, absent and Jim Colombo, excused. COMMISSIONERS COMMENTS None. PLANNING STAFF COMMENTS Allen Richman told the Board there was a request from Cantrup to move the public hearing from February 10, 1987 to the meeting of February 17, 1987. The 10th will be a work session and the public hearing on the 17th. MOSES REZONING AND SUBDIVISION EXCEPTION Glen Horn said the applicant, Gaard Moses, who owns a piece of land above Little Nell's slope to the east and above the Alps 700 building and he is requesting a rezoning from a (C) conservation to R-15. His goal in this rezoning is to make the existing stgructure conforming. Right now there are two building on tis site, both of which are duplexes. The City records have found that legally there are two single family sutgrucures up there and not duplexes. One of the considerations in the rezoning request and in the request to create subdivision exception for the creatrion of two lots is what is going to conforming when we are all through with this process. That has something to to with the zone distgrict we apply and the size of the lots in question. We looked at the alternative of deed restricting half of each one of these structures to employee units and zoning R-15 PUD. However that would not satisfy the applicant's goal of coming out of this process with conforming structures. When yo9u do thtis low density reduction up there you would find out that after slope density reduction there would not be enough adjusted net area to make those duplexes conforming so we ruled out the alternative of going to an R-15 (a) PUD or that sort of thing with employee deed restricted units. We looked at the site topography carefully in evaluating the rezoning and its very important you uncerstand the topography on the site. For the record we are able to differentiate this property from other property in the area. By comparison, there is a 70' drop betgween the Little NeI's slope and the Moses structures. The old spur of the Midland goes right along the level of the houses and the Nordic Trail is well above that. What I want to do is make a distinction between this building site and the buildig sites below it. When we went through the Little Nel SPA, there was a concern about having intensive type buildings go up the slope of Little Nel. You made a decision to try and keep the major intense development at the base of the slope rather than up the sides. It might be inconsistant with that point of view to recommend a rezoning up the hill above Little Nel slope and above the Little Nel Hotel. The topography makes the site unique because the only building site on the parcel is so far below the Little Nel Slope and it really wouldn't intrude upon the site line of Little Nel and the goal of keeping development down at the base of the mountain. We think that in this area east of Little Nel it is propably a more logical precident for land use than the spur of the Midland right-of-way being the dividing line between the conservation zone district and the R-15 zone district. That is because of the way the topography drops off. This is why understanding the topography is important for your consideration here. Al Blomquist asked if access is going to be by the Midland or by the Alps. And if they were releasing any access rights that they have to the Midland. Glen said it is going to be from the Alps. Gideon said in part of this application going to be granting a year round pedestrian bycicle and nordic ski trail with a 50 ft wide traversing the property. Al asked if a tgruck could be driven in on Midland from Aspen Grove. Would they still have that right. Gideon said one of the things they are going to do is toask to restrict that trail to non-motorized vehicles. We would like it to be a pedestrian and cross country ski trail. We don't want motorbikes going up there or any kind of motor vehicles. Gaard Moses said there is the road that the Midland spurs and the Nordic Trail. Al asked if they were restricting the Midland spur in any way. If you have access from the A;lps Road, do you also need access on the Midland Spur? Moses said that site has historically had access and he would like to maintain access at the back. It is certainly not the primary access. In the past it has been handy to come and go through there once or twice a year probably is all. Glen said before we looked at the alternative about deed restricting these duplexes to one half of the deed for employee housing. That did not work. Therefore our recommendation is that the parcel be done on R-15 PUD and that the applicatnt go ahead and remove the kitchens from each of the structures. One kitchen per structure to make them single family houses. That is one of the conditions because we want everythig to be conforming. Likewise there is a condition that a shed be removed so that the setbacks are in conformity with the zoning. Based upon the criteria for rezoning in section 24-12.5 that we cite in the memo, we think that thise proposal for R-15 zoning is substantially consistant with the criteria and we recommend a rezoning R-15 PUD and we also recommend that you recommend the subdivision exception that is requested to create two lots on the parcel subject to the conditions sited in the memorandum. Gideon and I have discussed several changes in this language which I would want to mention to you. I concur with all these changes. If you look at condition 1 on page 5 and 6 of my memo, we would want to change that first condition a little bit. The reason is because there is a lease right now on one of the duplexes. There is a person living in one of the units in the duplex on the west side of the property and the lease is going to extend beyond the time limit which the applicant would have to record the platt. We would not want to see this tennant displaced and therefore we wanted to change the language so that the applicatn would be required to remove that kitchen within a year of the recordation of final platt or prior to the pulling of a building permit for reconstruction of that unit, whichever comes first. Glen said another minor language change is wanted to preclude motor vehicles from using easement wich is being dedicated to the city. condition 2. We the Nordic Trail Glen said that under condition 3 regarding the removing on the shed. winter lasts a long time on that site so we wanted to change the time period on this condition until when building permit is pulled for reconstruction of either unit or a period of one year whichever comes first. Glen said the final condition that is going to require some more discussion is condition 6. The problem here is if the applicant is going to hook onto City water and it is still winter time up there. Gideon has suggested that the applicant discuss this issue with the City Engineer and resolve it prior to the hearing of the application by city Council. PUBLIC HEARING MOSES REZONING SUBDIVISION EXCEPTION Jerry Hughie, manager of the Aspenault and Associates. One of the owners who is here is Margaret Shushen. We don't stand to agree with the lot split and its a good idea to make the place legal. We are very pleased with the applicant's says they are now in their people up there--all that sort of stuff. The only-what we have-our concerns are the magnitute of the buildings that will potentially be constructed and the allocation of those same buildings. Welton Anderson said the applicant has agreed to hold the size of the structures substantially below the allowable FAR ratio and to limit the square footage of the single-family residences to 3,800 sq. ft. where 5,100 sq. ft. would be allowed. Jerry Hughie asked if there were any assurances we could have that the buildings would be more or less staying the same. Gideon said we are subject to the 8040 Greenline review. Welton said any new construction on those properties will have to come back for 8040 Greenline review approval at which time visual impact and soil and trail and all the other criteria will be addressed. Jerry Hughie asked if adjacent property owners were notified when the 8040 review took place or if they could request notification. Glen said it is primarily a review of how the buildings are going to look against the hillside and its concern with preserving the viewplains of the hillside and that sort of thing. Craig Ward of the Nordic Council said the applicant had been very helpful in allowing the Council to construct the Trail above his house on their property. He said he agrees with the maintenance of the Trail with the City on a year round basis. He said he had a question about the access up the Midland Spur to this property. I was wondering if you are going to impose on the trail a driveway up to lot 3 in the Hoag Subdivision. And is there legal access across the 101 Aspen Chance because of the Trail location. Glen said the old Midland Spur actually goes right up to the houses on this site. The Nordic Council constructed a new trail up above the site that is separate from the Midland Spur. When you go further east they join into one. So the concern here is the possibility of this site being accessed along the Midland Spur in the future--maybe not be this property owner but by someone else--and whether or not they have the right to do that and make that their primary access because it would really mess up the Nordic Trail if they were allowed to use that access. Al Blomquist said the desireable to remove the access from the old Midland and let it serve as a privacy buffer with no Trail rights either. In other words, we have the Trail above, so if that could be a part of the buffer to your property and to the Aspen Chance etc., you could all be happier. Gaard Moses said here we are dealing with only the portion that crosses my property. Al said you have a call on that right from a historic precident. In other words you could bring in a cement truck on Thursday if you want to. The question is would you be will in gto give up that right at this time? Gideon said their main access is subject to the easement. And some day the main access easement may be taken from us. We would be willing to say as long as we have other access to the property, that that would be our main access but some day that other access gets taken away from us, then you would be asking us to give up all access to the property. Roger Hunt asked approximately what contour does the Nordic Trail go on that? Gideon said the very top part. Gaard added essentially the same line as the Gondola. The Nordic Trail cuts in under the Gondola. Welton then read a letter to P&Z from Tom and Cathy Crum in support of this application. There being no further public comments Welton closed the hearing. Roger Hunt made a motion to recommend to Council the rezoning of the Moses property from Conservation (C) to R-15 PUD, and the granting of a subdivison exception, subject to conditions 1 through 6 as ammended of the Planning Office memo dated 1/28/87 Al Blomquist seconded the motion with all in favor INDIVIDUAL DESIGNATION OF HISTORIC STRUCTURES Welton said for information for the people who were in attendance for this discussion that this is a public hearing that is continued from December 13, 1986 and we are going to be recommending that Elli's, 101 South Mill Street, Aspen Times Building, 310 East Main Street, Chitwood Building, 100 S. Mill Street, 333 West Main Street, and 420 West Francis Street are the only stgructures that are going to be discussed as far as individual historic designation this evening. He said we are also going to entertain a motion eliminate some structures from the list as it had been determined these structures did not have enought value to be considered for designation. This will leave 120 structures to be considered. He said another motion to be made is to close the public hearing until the Planning Office can develope a series of incentives to make it really worthwhile to want to be designated historic rather than for it to be a burden. The only structures to be discussed for designation this evening are the ones already read off. There is also going to be a motion to continue the public hearing while the revisions to the code--the procedure the Historic Preservation commission goes through--are being developed. steve Burstein said the two parts to tonight I s discussion are the individual designations and the revision to section 24-9. The latter item we hope to begin to discuss but because it is a lengthy item we wont be able to finish it and will have to continue that aspect of this public hearing to a later date. At the joint work session with the city Council, the P&Z and the HPC, which was held on January 13th, it was clear that Council and the appointed bodys preferred individual designations in conjunction with incentives programs and that the district concept that was considered was terminated at that point. Following this meeting HPC held a series of meetings and there were 4 neighborhood meetings. The HPC went through a process of technically evaluating all of the structures in those neighborhoods with the input of the neighbors and the property owners with regard to the historic significance of the structures. The scoring system the HPC devised with staff input was a 0 to 5 system. The way it worked was 0 means the structure was incorrectly places on the inventory. 1 means it is a historic structure but was drastically altered and has lost its historic significance because of that. 2 means it is altered in such a way that affects it, however it retains some important historic architectural features or has continued to contribute to the neighborhood. 3 means the structure was alteredin a way that negatively affects its historic architectural integrity but it still retains some historic significance and in some cases has been associated with an historic person or family. 4 is that it is altered in a way that is basically compatable--that the structure continues to have a fairly high degree of historic significance. 5 appears to be unaltered. We also considered the geographic instincts and neighborhood fabric and character and whether the condition of the structure was so poor that it actually affected its architectural integrity or its neighborhood influence. If the structure was moved to the site, it typically considered to have less geographic influence. HPC did the job of trying to balance those various vactors and come up with an evaluation system. A lot of the properties were concerned about designation and what it means. Also whether the city would designate structures against the owner's wills, whether changes in the neighborhood have affected the desireabilty if living there or the desireability of retaining a structure in these places. Many of these issues were raised at these meetings. The HPC tried to explain our policies as of this time and tried to restrict basically what they were doig to a technical evealuation of just the structures themselves and formulate the policy--not make any final decisions on the designation. The next question is waht should be done at this time. The incentives program is clearly important to everyone in conjuction with historic desination. What we propose is that until the incentives program is ready for public consideration, the manditory designations not be carried forward. Our recommendation is that the public hearing be closed and that when we have an entire program togeter with incentives and other aspects that we renotify everyone, hold another public hearing and then go forwsard. There are alos the code conditions that we think are necessary if we are going to create a larger historic preservation system. We are going to discuss those tonight. The guidelines are being revised and within a month they should go forward to the HPC. We have alot of work to do before resuming the designation program. We do want to move forward on five structures that were rated high--either 4s or 5s in HPC I S evaluation system. The owners have indicated a willingness to be designated. We would like to remove from consideration and delete from the moratorium 46 structures that were givena 0 in the rating. We feel those sturctures do not have historic significance, they should not continue to be considered. The other 130 structures would still be subject tot he moritorium and basically they would be part of any proje ct with the incentives program. Some of those sturcutres will also be removed. But we are not ready at this step for them to be delieted. PUBLIC HEARING INDIVIDUAL HISTORIC DESIGNATIONS Ellie's, 101 S. Mill Street; Aspen Times Building, 310 E. Main Street; Chitwood Building, 100 South Mill Street; 333 West Main Stgyreet; and 420 West Francis Street at the request of the owners. Welton asked for comment on any of these structures. There was none. Ramona Markalunas made a motion that these structures be historic designations. The motion was seconded by Roger Hunt with all in favor. Welton then asked for a motion to recommend Council to delete the structures listed on attachmet A from Ordinance 41 (Series of 1986). Welton then asked for public comment. Sally Roach said she wondered if the homeowners involved in the first neighborhood meeting--first of all I could say many things about this process so far, basically the bottom line of all of it would be its a bad idea, we should all just withdraw from it. But as to this process that has been going on--the first night there were no numbers given to the homes. And for instance I left that meeting feeling that I had basically a 1. Yesterday I found I had a 2. Essentially I would like to be included on what you are about to vote on. There were many other people that evening who left feeling that they were no longer involved in HPC review. I feel that the process is flawed and that there are a lot of people who, when they read the news article tomorrow, are going to feel that they were voted on and are included and are not longer included on the moratorium because there was no notification to the homeowners. And if we were not in attendance when we were givedn numbers which were the 2nd, 3rd and 4th meeting, then we have no idea which numbers we were given. Furthermore I am not sure who gave us the numbers. I would like some clarification as to how the people who appeared the first night did ultimately get a number. Steve Burstein said Sally is correct. At the first meeting we had not devised this numerical system. We attempted to say; recommend designation, recommend not to be designated and further study. Then at the January 27th meeting HPC went through the yellow board again and assigned numbers and evaluated according to that criteria. That was the meeting which was determined to be the clear-up meeting to clear up a variety of further study questions on the board. She is correct in that some houses that the committee had recommended at the first meeting to be "not to designate" ended up being in the 2 category. This is not saying they should or should not be designated but they are not to be deleted at this time. Welton said his understanding is it does not mean that are going to have a designation forced on you. This is the first cut. Sally Roach said the point is that many of those people left, perhaps even to go get their demolition permits. Maybe they are hiring their archetect to go ahead because they feel that they are no longer in the demolition moritorium. So they may be proceding ahead and unless they are somehow notified, they could be spending money thinking that they could be demoliting their structures. .._~ Alan Richman said there is nothing we are doing tonight that will remove that moritorium. It was imposed by ordinance of Council and until an ordinance is put into place replacing that ordinance or until that ordinance expires at the end of March, all 170 structures are still on that list. What we are attempting to do tonight is to get the Planning commission to recommend to council to remove certain structures from that list as a first step. Whether the remaining structures will stay on a list or not will be a decision left to Council. sally Roach said even though this goes to Council many of these people, unless they are somehow advised, are going to not realize that they are still being considered for further review. Alan said we will work on a public information campaign to make sure that work gets out. Suzanne Swails said she was a new owner of a property in this area and that the4re should be some notification to property owners--that they had heard nothing about this from anybody. They had purchased what they considered to be a teardown and are proceding with plans to tear down and felt it onluy fair that the property owners be told what their properties have been designated. Alan said the demolition ordinance was impsed by City Council about 4 months ago. There is no requirement that City council notify each one of the individual owners that were on that list. The owners were not notified that they were on that list. The ordinance was imposed at the direction of city council. Steve said the owners were notified of the neighborhood meetings. We did the best we could to assemble a list of all the owners of the structures. Roger Hunt said the Swails house was not a historic structure and therefore not on any list of historic structures so he did not feel this even applies to her. Spencer Shiffer representing Aspen Institute said as he understood recommendation from the HPC with respect to the Institute and all the buildings at the Meadows, it was to put those buildings in a special category and they would not be rated. Given that recommedndation I would think they should be included in this category of buildings that are being elimated since they are not going to be rated. Welton said he did not think it would be appropriate to throw them out of any consideration of a list at a future time without any discussio at all. Maggie DeWulf said she would like to see published in the Aspen Times a list of the criteria for the ratings. ."-,,.,.~ Alan said he would be happy to provide anyone with copies of the ratings. They are available in the Planning Office. Welton asked if there was any more public comment on this motion to delete these structures. There was none. Welton closed the public hearing. (There was already a motion and a second. with all in favor.?) The motion carried Welton said the next item of discussion is to consider closing the public hearing on the remaining structures until we can develop some positive and worthwhile incentives that make it a real benefit to be designated historic. PUBLIC HEARING CLOSING HEARING OF INDIVIDUAL HISTORIC DESIGNATION Gideon said he was in favor of this. He said the moritorium is going to go through March 22, 1987. will the moritorium continue on until the incentives program. How long do you anticipate this process to take. Alan Richman said we would hope to go to Council later in February with an ordinance based upon the recommendation the HPC has made to designate the 5 or 6 structures people wanted desinated. At the same time we would inform council of P&Z I s recommendation to delete the 46 structures that are on the list now in hope they would take legislative action at that time to remove those from the list. We will be talking to Council about whether they want to extend to moratorium on demolition on the remaining 125 structures that are still under consideration, whether they want to remove everyone from the moratorium or take some other alternative. Gideon then asked for clarification as to when you adopt these rules and regulations, they affect people next door so just because someone has been removed from this list right now does not mean that they are not at some future date subject to come in. Alan this is very unlikely. It is not he direction that the regulations are taking now. It is not the project our office is taking on and not the direction we heard at the joint meeting of 4 days ago. It is our expectation that the ones that were Os and 1s are out of this project. Not only are they out but many of the other structures will be out. Roger Hunt said concerning the next door structure is lowering the bulk and possibly allowing people to go over that lower threshold under special review. Some of the special review criteria will be if we allow extra bulk on that particular property, does it effect a nearby historic property. Alan said a second project the office has been asked to look at by the City Council and P&Z and some residents in the west end is the overall FAR regulations in the City and whether we are creating excessively large structures in our residential zones and if so what we can do to regulate that. Debbie Seguin said we are hearing conflicting things. You have dropped the overlay district. Have you officially dropped the 300 ft. radius thing? Alan said it is not in any regulation that we are looking at right now. Debbie than asked that after the vote tonight that we are 100% certain that the Council will remove the moratorium. Paul Taddune said the moratorium is in effect unless the City Council by resolution exempts either one or a category of The second thing is that any structure that is currently on the list can be presented to the city Council for an exemption based on the exemptionn pleading. If a propert is impacted and there is some urgency with regard to the moritorium, that there is a proceedure in the moritorium ordinance where the owner of that property can petition the City Council for an exclusion. Sally Roach said as to the incentives prohgram. One thing that anyone on HPC can probably tell you now is that most of the homeowners are frightened and concerned and aprehensive as to what all this means. There are two things in all these reports that keep coming out that are diametrically opposed. Tjhese are incentives on the one hand and mandatory designatioon on the other. Somehow it is hard for anyone to sit back and let this process, no matter what it is even if it is just you guys having things delayed. We are all hanging by threads. I don I t know what the other folks here tonight feel about these things but they may have comments that now we wait and see what kind of carrot can be dangled in front of us. But in the meantime there are all these other concerns. And if the carrots are not good enough, we could still be slapped with something mandatory. Some sort of enlightenment might help all of us. Welton said the only people who can make a mandatory designtion is the City Council. Sally asked if the P&Z could express these fears and pass them on to City Council. Alan Richman said that is one of the reasons that we are terminating the process right now so we can start again first with the incentives instead of with the notices that can be considered the designation. Once we have the incentive program in place our next step is to ask city Council if they want to go in the mandatory direction at all or would you rather put the incentive program on the table and find who in the community is interested in joining. I think we are taking the basic philosophical shift here. When we first moved into this process, it was following many months of debate on the historic preservation element and absolutely no controversy about the plan. The implementation has been very controversial. We have leaned a lot from it and I don't think we are anxious to get involved in another process of beating our heads up against the public. We would rather join together. It is really not our intention to get involveed unless the Council makes a decision that it wants to go forward with a mandatory process on those 125 structures which would very much surprise me. I think we have all learned a lot that it is more important to get people to want to volunteer. Eloise Ilgen asked if we had ideas for incentives, would you like us to write to you? The answer was a positive "yes". Eloise said the prime ones--the prime architectural #5 should be on a five year review process. If they pass two review processes then maybe we can turn them over to the National Park Association and they would be taken care of inside and out. The other thing is what are we doing for old persons homes here? But the Illisha House is for sale. Maybe we could buy something like that, put an elevator in it and use it for an old person's home. Welton said one of the things that is presently allowed for as an incentive for historic structures on Main street only is allowing uses of those structures that a newer building would not be allowed to have. Some of those things are allowing Little Cliff's Bakery in one of the old structures and the Charlemain Restaurant. That is part of an incentive that has been inplace along with increased FAR ratio for quite some time. Recently for more incentives to make people want to hold onto their victorian rather than tear down and build something that is going to stick out like a sore thumb. Welton then asked if there was any more public comment. There was none. Welton then closed the public hearing. Roger Hunt then made a motion to close the public hearing on cosideration of individual historic designation of structures identified on the 2980 Inventory of Historic sites and strucures as amended in 1986. And I assume as will be further amended by this attached list ultimately. The motion was seconded by Al Blomquist with all in favor. Welton said the last item on the agenda is the reworking Chapter 27? of the Aspen Municiple Code. This is mostly proceedural and is simplifying some aspects of the code as it is. It is boring enough for people who are interested in this sort of thing. It is part of the public hearing so the public is welcome to listen and take part in the discussion. Alan said this is the rules that right now apply to any structure that happens to be individually designated or is within either the existing district or downtown core historic district. Right now we have historic regulations that govern the way HPC reviews structures. What we are going to talk about right now is the proposal to revise those regulations to make them clearer and cleaner. They don't apply to any structures that are not now designated or not in the district. steve Burstein said regarding section 24-9 there are a lot of aspects to this draft. Al Blomquist suggested that the qualification of a member of HPC or P&Z is not a part of the code. Land use is a part of the organization of the City. By pulling that out you shorten the code. Alan said he had no problem with carrying out that suggestion. One concept that will come out of this code is one chapter in our code printing group can actually print that chapter separate from the rest of the code, sell it separate and someone can walk into our office and buy a zoning code of land use regulations for a reasonable price without having to buy the whole city code. I don't know if there is value in having all this quorum stuff in there or not. If there isn't, I'm happy to put it in the charter or the reorganization. Right now it is shown as a chapter of the land use regulations. It is not going to be in the historic section. It will be its own chapter. ''''~'