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HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.apz.19880816 ~ RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS PLANNING AND ZONING AUGUST 16. 1988 Chairman Welton Anderson called meeting to order at 4:30pm. Answering roll call were David white, Roger Hunt, Mari Peyton, Michael Henon and Welton Anderson. Jim Colombo, Jasmine Tygre and Ramona Markalunas arrived shortly after roll call. MINUTES MAY 3. 1988 JULY 19, 1988 Michael made a motion to approve minutes of May 3, 1988. Roger seconded the motion with all in favor. Mari made a motion to approve minutes of July 19, 1988. Michael seconded the motion with all in favor. COMMISSIONER'S COMMENTS Roger: I would like an update on what is happening with the Ritz with City Council. Alan brought Commissioner's up to date on this. Then I read in the newspaper today that the legal description concerning the Marolt property was erroneous on the ballot. I want to see a resolution to this thing and I don't think it should require a vote of the public. The public knew what it was getting. We are supposed to assist the City in these things. And the Council goes off in their own direction and throws mud in their own face in these things. STAFF COMMENTS There were none. ADMINISTRATIVE DELAY DISCUSSION (MORATORIUM) Alan: This is an item that is before the City Council. The Council is going to hold a public hearing Monday the 22nd to discuss whether or not they will adopt the administrative delay. It has only been adopted by resolution. The most important thing we are going to do at that hearing is we are going to try to identify what kinds of projects should be eligible for exemption from the delay. The delay when it was first written was intended to deal with demolition of multi-family structures and to try to PZM8 .16 .88 address the problem of new residential development being required to provide on-site housing--not just cash-in-lieu. Council added single family and duplexes to our recommendation on mUlti-family. That expanded the balance of the delay significantly and also expanded what we need to be exempted from the delay significantly. So I have been trying to figure what kinds of projects should be exempt from the delay. We are going to be discussing that with them Monday night and at that point I will have a better idea of the effect of the delay on projects such as the ones that you dealt with last week and other projects in the community. Right now I am very uncomfortable with reviewing this in a regular Planning Commission meeting and taking action on exemptions or recommendations on exemptions because the matter is scheduled for public hearing by the City Council. Roger: Then is it a direction of the City Council at this point if the house is on a 3,000 sqft lot that is demolished that they have to replace that housing on-site which means that a 3,000sqft lot becomes available as a duplex? Alan: The code amendments are extremely sketchy at this point. That is something that we are going to be spending weeks and weeks with this Commission hashing out. I haven't even begun the thought about all the nuances of what offshoots of the recommendation you might find. That is a real good example of something that would be extremely difficult to handle. It might be impossible to apply the displacement regulation to a lot like that. I was looking specifically at multi-family. We spoke in our memo to Council about single family and duplex and said they might want to consider adding this in if you are interested in some kind of an incentive mechanism. In other words an optional care-taker provision or if you are so interested in a care-taker provision, you are going to make it mandatory. Apparently they are very interested in that. They are interested in allowing an additional unit on properties zoned for single family house so that there could be a small additional or employee type unit in the development. The delay is simply a device to give us time to think of the options and think of the effects without facing the threat of additional demolitions or processing and vesting subdivision applications and thereby eliminating the opportunity to affect new development. 2 PZM8.16.88 Roger: That 6 months on certain projects--it may be legal but does not seem correct to drop them back another building season. Is it unfair to delay certain categories of projects at this stage when it appears obvious that that is not the direction that they should be going. Alan: I am trying to write the exemptions right now as broadly as I can in an effort at not limiting any of the kinds of development that there is no chance at all that we would be changing the rules to effect them. The fact that an application is in the process is not a basis for an exemption. The kind of development it proposes is the basis for an exemption. Wel ton: I don't know if any action is appropriate for us to undertake tonight. Alan: I will carry your recommendation to Council that the Hamwi project be exempt. Jim Adamski: We have looked at and haven't come up with anything as far as what Mr. Hamwi could go to the bank with. The one problem we ran into is your code in this particular instance seems counter productive to us in trying to produce housing. And it is in the area of density. Alan: The one thing that we will need to put back in is an opportunity for employee housing to be produced without being deducted from the applicable density requirements where people can build up to their free market density and really see that the employee housing is an add-on--something to be a benefit to them as well as a benefit to the community. The FAR one is going to be a lot tougher. I am not sure the people in the community are anxious to jump to the FAR but maybe they will. In that case maybe the RBO will come back to life sooner than we thought. Roger: This brings up the point of the school district. That is not our project right now but another article in the Daily News was about the elementary school property. I know no one wants employee housing in their back yard but is that not an ideal loca t ion for employee housing? And shouldn't we be looking at density bonuses for that type of facility? The facility is there. It is a shame to knock down a couple of good buildings to stick up duplexes when those buildings could possibly be converted and used. 3 PZM8 .16 .88 Jim: You can see that done in many other areas where they have taken old school buildings and make very attractive condominiums. You can see that in any major city. Paul Hamwi: The density question also can be addressed. Address the fee situation that the city is charging the developer on employee units. Not only tap fees but any other fees that they can reduce to a degree of cost basis or something like this to try and encourage the developer rather than trying to nail him. For instance the Water Department or the Sanitation Department make no distinction between a multi-million dollar 3-bedroom townhouse and a 3-bedroom uni t. It is areal burden f or the employee, for the developer and eventually for the City itself. Alan: The only one right now that we do have as a waivable is the park dedication fee. The City doesn't control the Sanitation District. But we obviously do have authority over the water system and that is one that we could certainly look at. Normally the recommendation would be that if you waive a fee for employee housing that you make it up in the general fund because that is an enterprise fund for the City. Otherwise the general populace would be subsidizing the housing cost. Jasmine: There is another possibility that in situations where it is technically not possible to waive the fee that the fee be paid out of the employee housing fund as generated by cash-in- lieu payments. Jim: We are subsidizing the general fund. We are doing the Hunter-Longhouse project right now. And I am on the Hunter- Longhouse Board. We have 5 units. 12% of our development fees are tap fees--$44 ,000. We are going to pay them. The rent is going to pay them--employees are going to pay them. It just seems that some of these things are very counterproductive for our employees. Now we can put the money in there. That's gone. That's like Section VIII Housing subsidy fees. What we want to do with this money that we have available is to use it--continue to use it. If it comes down to push come to shove, I am sure that that would be something that we would do. But to subsidize the general fund from the employee pool seems counterproductive. Snowmass cuts the employee fees in half. Welton: Do they make that up with higher tap fees for the free market? 4 PZM8.16.88 Jim: Yes. Michael: This meeting is being held for the purposes to consider whether to recommend an exemption for the CBS proj ect and any other project in a similar position. At the last meeting we recommended an exemption for the Hamwi project. Andy Hecht, representing the CBS proj ect: I don't know if it is appropriate for you to make a recommendation. But the argument that we are going to make to Council is that the planning process is benefited by loading the expenditure of fees as an applicant gains some measure of reliance and spends money for the City to see what the project is going to look like. In that regard we spend close to $200,000 and would have been through the process al ready had it not been so crowded. Even with the crowded process we would have been through at this next meeting. I think that it is unfair for the City to impose this criteria of vested rights on us. That is a criteria that is in the code, that is in statute that contemplates that everybody plays by certain rules. It does not contemplate that the City may attach a moratorium at any time. Forget equities at that point. All they want to look at is vested rights. When we started spending a lot of money on this project it was after your approval and was at a time when we knew that had the City followed its procedures for amending the code we wouldn't be stuck. We are stuck because of the administrative delay one week before we would have been through the process. It is not fair. I think in this case the subsequent issue of solving the employee housing project is not going to be on the shoulders of the CBS proj ect. The procedure is more important. The message you get out to people saying "We will be tough. We may amend the code at any time. But at some point we will follow certain rules". If you want to go through the litany of the procedural events and have us show you when we got our approvals, we can do that but suffices to say that it is approved for 6 units and there were more units there and they are replacement units. This code was developed over a year and a half. Nothing was ever raised. There was no issue ever raised. Suddenly it becomes urgent. For some reason now the lights have gone on and I think if that is legitimate planning process then let it be for future projects that do not have the reliance that this project has. When the code was being revised, the cry of the City was no more RBO, no more dens i ty increases--that has got to stop. We are going to impose some employee housing requirements on vacant land encouraging people who wanted to make investments to buy land that was already developed so they could tear down and replace 5 PZM8 .16 .88 because there would be no impact. And then the rules change. I think the rules can change. That is OK. But don't stick somebody just because it fits your criteria 100%. There is a presumption of validity of all the regulations the City adopts so at least make the process fair. MOTION Roger: I agree with Andy and that was the basis on our attitude concerning the Hamwi project. That in this case the fairness of the system was such that they should be allowed to continue and I would like to include this project in our resolution to City Council as a recommendation to exempt these projects from the Administrative Delay. I so move. Ramona seconded the motion. Jasmine: I think the difference in my mind between this project and the Hamwi project is that this is the project which really got public opinion rolling on this whole thing about the moratorium when they saw those little houses getting torn down. The whole question of replacement is something that people didn't consider sufficiently because when you think of replacement you think of replacement with a like substance. And what happens is that in demolition you are not replacing these with like substances. This was the first time that people saw in such dramatic form what was happening. For that reason I really would be very reluctant to exempt this project. Roger: I would tend to agree with you, Jasmine, except for where they are in this whole approval process. I don't think it is legal or right in this case because they have followed the procedures and again in both cases except for already administrative delays that they have encountered not of their making, they would have been through the process at this point. I think it is wrong from a fairness point of view, to stop them at this point. Jasmine: I just don't feel in this instance that the process should take priority over what I think is the more important community benefit. Wel ton: I ag ree with Jasmine. I have been trying to analyze this as to why this is all happening and to a large degree it comes down to the fact that it is our fault. If we had let Sunny let Mr. Wilson build that office building on East Hyman--if that office building had been built even with its surface parking with the building up on stilts, they wouldn't have built those 6 PZM8.16.88 townhouses and they wouldn't have sold those townhouses so fast that everybody else wants to jump in and do the same thing. But the fact is that there is thi s mad ru sh to tear down and replace. As Jasmine says you are replacing apples with a like weight of Godiva Chocolate. It is not replacing with the same thing and we are losing resources that we can ill afford to lose in this community that is not employee housing perse but is defacto employee housing. A place I looked at to rent 15 years ago which was affordable for me at the time--was a pile of rubble just last week. So I am going to vote against this motion. Not because the applicant is not right in that they have done everything they were supposed to do in the process but that the moratorium was called by City Council without my knowledge to keep from happening what has been going on that is terribly detrimental to the community. Michael: I just find it hard to understand how you can vote against a project that has come along this far in the process. I think when this project was here before I made an argument similar to this that we created the rules and they followed the rules. They have spent a considerable sum of money. They have spent much time effort to get to the point where they are now. And now for us to turn around and say we are going to change the rules because we don't like what is happening is just not right. Last week we excepted the Hamwi project who wasn't as far along as this project. This project 6 weeks ago got our approval. And they got our approval and have accomplished what they have accomplished not by bending rules or doing anything else but by following the rules which we created. And now we are saying to them "You followed our rules. You spent all this money. You have done what you have done but now we are going to pull the rug out from under you because we don't like what you did". That is wrong. So you are penalizing them for following our rules. That is more than unfair. David: I like what Welton said. I think we need to take responsibility. Even though we don't have control. City Council does. Last Fall we discussed the east end and we did not want to jump into it as soon as we should have. I think we made a mistake in doing that and I will take responsibility like Welton and Jasmine and vote against this. Andy: We tore down with a permit based upon approval, based upon plans that were submitted to the Building Department--tore down housing that generates $70 or $72,000 a year income. We are not asking you to abandon your effort to try and create employee 7 PZM8 .l6 .88 housing. But have some integrity in your procedure. Have some integrity in your decision making. Be as tough as you want on an applicant but have integrity. David: We do not have control of this. Council does. Since they have already made the decision to do what they want to do, we decided to have a meeting tonight to discuss it--to look at it ourselves. I don't like the fact that Council always does this. They did it with the hotel. We recommended beforehand that they didn't. I have been looking at what we did when we did the west end and we did all the things that was going on in the west end. We were screaming about that for 5 years before Council ever did anything about it. We had taken responsibility--we were the early leaders in taking responsibility in the west end. And we just didn't want to throw in the east end when everybody recommended that we do it to stop this. We didn't want to throw it in because we hadn't studied it like we had the west end. Well, we made a mistake. This is not an easy decision but it is one that I think I am taking responsibility in voting this way. Wel ton: It is not fair, Andy. But it is a cr isis that finally City Council has identified and has done something about it and the only function we have in this whole thing is to recommend that we think yes, it should go through or no, it shouldn't go through. The only thing we can do is express how we feel. Jim: I think as far as taking responsibility for this thing what we should be doing is taking responsibility for actions that are occurring now. I think it is the epitome of taking no responsibility at all or a shameful coverup of responsibility by penalizing someone after the fact for something that has been recognized either before or afterwards. I think that these people have gone through the process and it is a shameful display of responsibility to let these people get this far in the process abiding by the codes and given rules and then saying "No you can't do this". I think if we are to change the rules then you have to change the rules. So consequently I think to be fair in this case, allow these people to be exempted. Welton: We are not allowing them an exemption. We are recommending to Council that they be exempted. That is all we can do. There is a motion on the floor to add the CBS subdivision to the recommendation made last week that the Hamwi subdivision be exempted. This is a recommendation from us to Council. It is 8 PZM8 .16 .88 Council's decision whether or not to exempt it from this moratorium. Roll call vote: Jasmine, no, David, no, Roger, yes, Mari, no, Ramona, yes, Jim, yes, welton, no. David notified the Board at this time of his resignation from Board in order to attend graduate school. Meeting was adjourned. Time was 5:20. Ja~.~ity Clerk - 9