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HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.apz.19880920 ~ , '" RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS PLANNING & ZONING COMMISSION SEPTEMBER 20. 1988 Meeting called to order by Chairman Welton Anderson at 4:30pm. Answering roll call were Roger Hunt, Michael Herron, Jasmine Tygre and Welton Anderson. Mar i Peyton was excused. Ramona Markalunas and Jim Colombo were unexcused. COMMISSIONER'S COMMENTS Roger: I talked with Tom Baker and the resolution concerning restaurant use of the Mall is in process. He should have it down to us by the end of the meeting. So I would like to add it to the end of the agenda for approval of that resolution. And then for your information I read in the newspaper today under the headline "Aspen Future Planning Meeting" then in the text it is apparently a County meeting held at the Courthouse tonight. Alan: That is a class and is open to the public. Jasmine: I cannot attend the meeting on Thursday with the City Council and the HPC. I want to comment in regard to the article in the paper on the McDonalds about the problems that they had with HPC. I would like to state that Caroline McDonald did call me a home and told me some of the things that she was very upset with what had happened. I just told her I had no reason to disbelieve what she told me but since I wasn't present for any of the things that happened between the McDonalds and HPC that there was no way I could make any kind of comment or really do anything. But it isn't that I am not very concerned about it. STAFF COMMENTS Alan: You had asked if we could get packets out any ea rl ier. This comes us once a year or so. I would love to get the packet out earlier than I do. Those times when it is possible we will. We try to get the packet as accurate and as complete as we can. We will try to get these things out by mid day. Wel ton: I am in town in the middle of the day but I don't make it a practice to be in town between 4:30 and quitting time to scoop it up before they lock up City Hall for the weekend. On the Rio Grande conceptual SPA I just had a chance to barely skim that because of other work obligations on Monday and Tuesday except mid day on Monday. If I had the weekend I could have been much more thorough on it. It did not used to be a problem when City Hall was not locked up on weekends. Alan: We will look for a solution. PZM9 .20 .88 MINUTES OF AUGUST 16. 1988 Roger: Made a motion to approve the minutes of August 16, 1988. Jasmine seconded the motion with all in favor. DUDLEY'S!FRY BY NIGHT CONDITIONAL USE Welton opened the public hearing. Cindy Houben: Made presentation as attached in records. We were under the impression that there was 2,000 sqft but there is only 1,000 sqft so that changes the calculations for the number of parking spaces required to 1.5 per 1,000 sqft. This is intended as a local's restaurant. The restaurant definition now includes the requirement of the dumbwaiter for any restaurant that is subgrade or above grade--not on grade. That is one item that Paul doesn't have at this time. My suggestion was that it appears that there was a pullout area at the back of the building in the alley where a truck could pull off the alley. There is an entrance at that point down into the Fry By Night service area. The whole intention was to get trucks out of the alley and this would serve that purpose rather than having to have to put that dumbwaiter in. The other main point that the Planning Office was concerned about is the impact on the parking situation downtown. In the old code we did not require that restaurants or any type of use in the C-I zone district have a parking requirement. The new code does require that if you can't have on-site parking then you have to have a cash-in-lieu payment to supply money so that we can build the Rio Grande parking building. It is $15,000 per space. In Paul's case I think the real impacts come at dinner time rather than the breakfast period. According to our studies we do not have a congestion period until 9:00 am. Paul's request is to open up his breakfast business at 6:00 in the morning. Between 6:00 and 9:00 I don't think there would be a conflict with the parking spaces. Most of the lunch traffic would be pedestrian oriented with people working in town. However the dinner problem is one where people would drive to the restaurant and there would be a lot more of that. Our traffic studies are only to 6:00 pm so we can't really verify that the increase in the parking demand increases around dinner time. I do think the impact is around dinner time which would mean that for the standards of the code with this square footage you would be looking at 1.5 parking spaces per 1,000 sqft of space. Then a 2 PZM9 .20 .88 cash-in-lieu payment would be $22,500 rather than the $45,000 which is the amount that would have been for 3 spaces. It has been a concern all along because of the idea of branching out from the central core of town that restaurants are a conditional use in this zone district. The purpose of the zone distr ict is to allow businesses which aren't pr imarily or iented toward tourists. Paul's business will be run similar to his business out at the Airport Business Center. This is definitely a locally oriented type restaurant that would fit in with the zone district. The staff recommends approval with conditions. (Attached in records) Jasmine: impact. There is no mention of any kind of employee generation Cindy: The conditional use section of the code does not address employee generation. Jasmine: It comes under change in use and conditional use is somewhat of a change of use--a change in use which is obv iously more employee intensive. We would be very remiss not to consider the issue of employee housing. I suspect that there will be additional employees generated by this conditional use. Paul Dudley: We are not really moving into a new space. We are taking a space that we have now which is a retail shop and a bakery and want to do a restaurant. The amount of people working there now throughout the different times of day are around 4 to 5 at different times of the day and night. The small restaurant that we would be trying to do in there would not generate more than one more person. There would be 2 kitchen people and 2 on the floor. As we are now we have 4 people per day now working there. We and 98% of our employees at the ABC live down valley. probably not going to satisfy your employee housing but our situation. That is what we are used to now. That is that is Jasmine: It seems to me that for breakfast, lunch and dinner at 60 seats there has got to be some kind of increase in employees. I don't know exactly what it is going to be. What we might want to do is to put in a condition that we try to get more information about this. Then if you would agree that if we can work out the correct number of incremental employees that you would then be bound by doing something to provide for whatever increase in the amount of employees. 3 -.-.- - PZM9.20.88 Welton: I agree that there is probably going to be an increase in employees. But it is like they are caught between a rock and a hard place. In the commercial core which is more intensive, more high intensity tourist oriented activities, a restaurant is an allowed use. And if somebody wants to go from a fur boutique to a restaurant or from a t-shirt shop to a restaurant we don't have any say one way or another in that change in use. In C-I which is more locally oriented which this is, they are faced with different standards for providing employee housing. So I feel I ike not treating them equally with somebody that is across the street in the C-C zone. Michael: I agree with that. What also concerns me is what the Planning Office is doing. If Jasmine hadn't brought it up, they would have gotten through without it. Does that mean there are other applicants that are getting through without it and are we being arbitrary now in just putting it on them? We have got a situation where we are complaining that everything in town is turning into glitz and glitter and we turn around and make this particular operation which is intended to be locally oriented and make it so expensive that they can't operate. So the only other thing that can go in there is going to be another Gordon's or some fancy restaurant. That is self-defeating too. I understand the problem of employee housing. We can't use the problem of employee housing to defeat everything else we want or all we are going to end up with is million dollar townhouses and glitzy restaurants throughout Aspen. Welton: My other problem was the Planning Office's evaluation of the parking. When we instituted, because we finally had a parking plan, a requirement for on-site parking in the C-C and C-I, it was my understanding that parking was for new development. If you built a new building or if you incrementally increased the size of a building then you have to meet the new requirements. But there was never any discussion in the code that if you change from one use to another that means your building all of a sudden has to meet a parking requirement that they did not have to meet before. I don't think that it is legally defensible to require that an existing building as a condition of change in use--not change in size--which is all we are concerned with in the provision of parking. If you tear down a Texaco Station today and put in a building that has a Metzaluna in it, you are going to have to either provide the parking on-site or provide enough money to cover the 4 PZM9.20.88 parking of cars or the difference in square footage between the Texaco Station and your new building. Roger: One of the whole reasons for the conditional use of restaurants in the C-I zone is that we recognized at the time the substantial upgrade of use in that zone district and we should address the problems associated with that upgrade in use in that zone dist ri ct. Paul: I don't think we will have 60 seats. That was my overestimation of what's going on down there. Now we are talking more like 40 to 50. The dinner thing also isn't a real prize idea for us. I just put it in the application just to cover all the bases. We are breakfast and lunch type of place. That is what we want to do down there. Possibly if the Board did not want to allow us to do dinners or if we did do dinners then maybe we would have to pay this parking fee or go through this other thing. In the back there are 2 or 3 spaces that we use and sometimes we can even get 4 cars in there. To erase those spaces for a truck to be backing in there--which a truck wouldn't back in there anyway--would be quite a hardship not only for us as the applicants but for the other people in the building. It would be taking 3 good parking spaces and basically throwing them away. The parking situation in town is such that we should take a look at that. If we went to a ramp type of situation in the back, it is my feeling that it would actually be faster and easier unloading than a freight elevator. If we are going down 2, 3 or 4 floors or going up a floor it would make quite a difference. But a d rive r unloading 3, 4 or 5 hand trucks of goods to put onto a freight elevator which would only hold about half a truck load- -he has got to get that in there, he has got to send it down, somebody has got to be available to unload down there. It also takes up quite a bit of space in the restaur ant. It would take up the space of 4 tables. I would be losing not just the actual space for the elevator but the space of working around it and the delivery part. What happens now when we are working and a driver comes in with a whole bunch of stuff, it is just dumped in the kitchen and away he goes. A freight elevator has to be attended to either on the bottom or the top. There has to be a team. If we are working in there with X amount of employees, you can't afford to have somebody sitting there waiting for the dumbwaiter. 5 PZM9.20.88 I think the ramp would work very well. It would actually expedite unloading. There is quite a large concrete pad at the top of the stairs and it is always vacant. It is not a parking space. It is not a storage space. It can be used for where they would unload. Then in our free time we could get down the ramp into the restaurant. By keeping just a 3 ft isle for the deliver ies open at all times, it would be I ike a mini alley within our parking alley and would suffice very nicely to expedite the deliveries. Roger: If anyone would qualify as a locally oriented restaurant it would be the Dudleys. No doubt about that. I just wish you had a better space to work with here. My bigger problem is service access. There is no point in removing the parking for service access because you are not going to get a Noble/Sysco semi backing in off the alley there. There is not the space and they won't do it anyway. But it is important to expedite from the service viewpoint of the deliveries to this. If there is a good usable ramp type of situation going down, I don't have a problem with that in lieu of the dumbwaiter. My fear is the way it is serviced right now with service through the front. I think that is incredibly terrible. And to increase that as a restaurant would is not tolerable from a community point of view. One of my major problems with this doesn't have to do with the service aspect. It has to do with a restaurant operation now in a building space that was designed for retail. For restroom access, customers would have to go up and around the back after they ask the manager for the key. That is really not adequate for a restaurant serving breakfast and lunch. And with the possible conception of going to dinner is outrageous under those circumstances. And if you add a bar on top of that it is further outrageous. So I have a major problem with increasing the usage from a coffee shop to a sit down restaurant. Michael: Does the restaurant that is already in that building have its own restrooms? Cindy: They use the same restrooms that Loretta's uses. Michael: So you have a restaurant in there doing the same thing that they are looking to do. It seems to me not to allow them to do it is being inconsistent. And then how do we enforce the hours that they are open and the prices that they are going to have? 6 PZM9.20.88 Cindy: There would be representations that they would make to us to make us comfortable with the fact that it is a locally oriented restaurant. The types of conditions are that they would be open for a majority of the off season to serve the local public. They are subjective. They are hard to enforce. But yet they are conditions we have the ability to enforce. Michael: I just think that that creates another layer of paper work that somebody is out there checking on. It just doesn't make any sense. I don't think the location is appropriate that he is going to be able to turn around a sellout to Gordon's to begin with. By virtue of where it is, it is going to be what it is. I think it is something that we really need. I hate to see that we are putting conditions on applicants which are meaningless. If he turned around and charged $10.00 for a meal or $2.50 for a meal, we are not going to the Supreme Court to find if that is something a local can afford. I don't think we should have it there in the first place. It just creates paper work and we have too much paper work in the first place. Roger: In the case of Fry By Night, their original approval was not to have any cooking on site. Now there is cooking on site. Inch by inch we lose control of the situation even if it is a conditional use. The Yogurt Shop up on top--that has expanded from a yogurt shop to now sandwiches and who knows what else after they got the conditional approval. I am not sure they are in that much of a compliance upstairs either. There is a point at which this building cannot adequately, as it sits with its present facilities, service what they want to put in it. Paul: The Environmental Health Department addresses the bathrooms. They have charts, facts and figures on seating capacity and what you are supposed to have as far as lavatories, urinals. etc. The accessibility of them and as it is now it is in compliance with the Environmental Health. Actually we do have to increase the bathrooms up there. We do have to put in a ur inal in one of them. It has to be wi thin 200 feet of the restaurant. And between the 2 places which the other place has not gone through a conditional use but Environmental Health Department has OK'd everything that has gone on in there. Roger: Given the location of the restrooms, that may be adequate as far as I am concerned for Environmental Health. However I don't consider it as practically adequate for a conditional use for restaurant expansion at this point in that building given what we are looking at. 7 PZM9.20.88 Adequate service can probably be addressed by a ramp in this case. But this restroom situation with the progress from a coffee shop, where people probably won't use restrooms too much up to a restaurant where there is a little higher usage of restrooms, up to a full restaurant and then bar--there is a pOint where you have to say you cannot go further. Welton asked for public comment. Fuller: I think it would be restaurant. I use Loretta's and as it is. I think it is fine. have cheap meals, I don't care. nice to have another local's I don't mind using the restroom If you have an opportunity to So what? That is my opinion. Dick Reynold: We have a store in the same building called Kidding Around. I would like to speak in favor of the applicant's approval. As far as the ramp is concerned I think that we can all work together. We talked to the other owners in the building and made sure that Paul has the ability to move his supplies down the back stairs there. Whether it is a ramp or stairs it is a lot better than taking any more parking space or losing parking space for a dumbwaiter. I feel that that access in the back is more than sufficient to supply the needs of the supplies he needs to bring into the restaurant. As far as the locals question, I have known both of the applicants for years before they did their restaurant out at the ABC. It is a little breath of fresh air to see some locals stay in town and not leaving,quite frankly. And I would encourage you to do everything you can to discriminate in their favor. I am glad to see them there and hope it works for them. Wel ton: I occurs to me too that maybe hav ing the restrooms around in the alley keeps the tourist away and guarantee it as a local's restaurant. MOTION Michael: I think Roger's concerns are absolutely correct. Jasmine's concerns are absolutely cor rect. But I think we have got to balance the concerns that we would like to have in a perfect world with the constraints we have under reality. I think the reality is we need a local's restaurant. We can't have a local's restaurant if we are going to make them put restrooms in and make them pay for employee housing. It just is not going to work. I would like to make a motion that we approve the application 8 PZM9 .20 .88 with all of the conditions or suggested by the staff with the exception of #3 and #6. (Conditions attached in records) Welton: #3 is a standard condition for C-I restaurants. Michael: Leave #3 in. Roger: In any event, it should include paved access from the service entrance to the alley. Michael: That is in my motion. Roger: I am in a horrible dilemma because as much as I would appreciate a local's restaurant I would have problems with identifying the applicant's and particularly space and giving approval on the basis of the applicant's when--OK--that works great for the duration of this applicant's residence of the space. However, when that space is sold, you may have anyone take over that space and you still end up with problems and it is not addressed. In this case I think maybe employee housing could probably do something with but I just got a horrible problem with the human services aspect of it in this particular building. The building wasn't designed to have restaurants in it unfortunately. Michael: I agree with what you are saying but I don't think a good restaurant like Gordon's or something of that caliber could go there. But I think the natural constraints of the space are going to provide that we are always going to have a local's oriented restaurant in there. I certainly recognize your concern and I think it is legitimate but I am just trying to approach it on a more practical vein. I would certainly hate to see them turn around and sell their lease next month to Gordon's and have it be a Gordon's annex. That would be wrong. But I don't think Gordon's could do it. You can't charge $50.00 for a piece of fish and tell people to go into the alley to go to the restroom. Jasmine: About the whole evolution of Loretta's--I share a lot of Roger's concerns. I am really distressed that it falls upon this applicant who, because of the applicants themselves we can have a certain reliance of the local oriented good quality, inexpensive restaurant that they could provide. So I am really very torn in that sense because of who the applicants are but you are not always going to be the people in that space. So we have to consider what the possibilities are in the future. All of a sudden we have got Loretta's in there which is pretty much a full service restaurant. And I don't know how it happened. 9 PZM9.20.88 Cindy: I can explain a little bit about that. I did some research when Paul first came on the Loretta problem. It turns out that that was a mistake. They were given building permits and a permit to operate--that was a mistake. They did not come through the planning process. Jasmine: I don't remember seeing anything about Loretta's as a restaurant and suddenly there it is. Whether it should be there or shouldn't be there--the point is that it never came to get a judgement like this. And here are people who are actually following the rules and are getting screwed which really makes me uncomfortable. I share all of Roger's concerns plus my own concerns about a restaurant operation in that location. Roger: I could support it if it is legal. I don't know that it is legal that a condition that this approval runs with the ownership of this applicant. I would have no problems with that in that case but is that legal? Cindy: I would have to ask Fred. I think that it would not be legal. You could put a time limit on the permit, though, that you want to look at this application in a year to see if conditions are met and that it complies with the intention of the zone district. That would be another approach to that. Roger: I trust Paul. But I have to look at in a greater sense-- what happens after Paul? It seems unfair to come up with a review every two years but if that is a way of doing it then I could live with that. Michael: I don't know if it is legal or not, but I can live with it as long as we have the understanding that--if Paul turns around and decides to sell his operation, and it is still that basic kind of operation that we are not going to turn around and say no we want Paul in there. Welton: There is a motion on the floor with no second. Michael: that every is still a I amend 2 years local's my motion so we add one the Planning Office check oriented restaurant. additional condition to make sure that it Cindy: I would like to tighten it up enough so that we are saying the conditional use permit will expire within 2 years if the applicant does not submit an application to the Planning Office showing conformance. Michael: No. I want you to do it. I don't want them to do it. This is a representation that they are mak ing. If they don't 10 PZM9.20.88 live up to their representation then whatever the enforcement agency of the City of Aspen is, will come in. What happens if these people forget? Cindy: Maybe what we should do is just tighten up B then with some language that the restaurant shall be a locally oriented restaurant and this is a definite condition of approval and it shall not be tourist oriented. Condition B will be tightened to say that this shall be locally oriented. Michael: Compliance with condition #3 is a condition of conditional use. Roger: I would like to see that a little more tightened up though. As I mention in my scenar io--right now it is luncheon and breakfast. What happens with dinner? Then what happens with a bar? It may be locals oriented but I end up with more and more trouble with it. Paul: If we did go with a liquor license the Environmental Health is going to want us to put in another lavatory or a urinal. The ones upstairs--there is only room for a certain amount. In the future to do something like that they might ask us to put something in. They will. According to your seating and your liquor license puts you on a whole different chart of facilities. Roger: I would have much less problem with a beer and wine license--limited license--because I consider that a beverage with food as opposed, all of a sudden, a bar where you have beer busts and things like that. Michael: I could put in my motion a condition that it only be a beer and wine license. Roger: I would like to see a periodic review. I don't mean it a re-application but I would like to see a periodic review. Welton: Do you want to put into #3 "A zoning officer will review the representations made with this application on a biannual basis providing written reports to the Planning Office confirming that the representations with this application have been substantially met. Roger: I can live with that. Michael: That's it. My motion is amended to this affect. ?: I need a clarification on #7. 11 PZM9.20.88 Cindy: I would take out everything up to "service" "service" will become the beginning of the sentence. and then Roger seconded the motion. Welton then closed the public hearing. Everyone voted in favor of the motion except Jasmine. RIO GRANDE CONCEPTUAL SPA AMENDMENT. STREAM MARGIN REVIEW Cindy: Made presentation as attached in records. There was also a video presentation of the snowmelt machine. The concern with having a snowmelter facility at this location is that there are also additional competition for this land. The arts uses on the Rio Grande are desired in this lower part and to put the snowmelter facility out further into that property may create conflicts there when we are trying to design how that all works. That is why we had the idea to move it a little bit further to the east. We know that there are conflicts then with the neighborhood to the east. The first year is somewhat of a test year to see how all this works together. We don't know how large the snow storage area is going to have to be or the whole scheduling of when we are going to have to clean the street, pile the snow and how fast it will be melted with one machine. My proposal to you was that that snow storage be as a berm to berm along the east side of where the machine would be and then help deflect some of the noise concerns and some of the visual conce rns. The other suggestions that we have heard from the public are perhaps putting the snowmelter facility up higher toward the impound lot and berming it into the embankment there. Chuck's department had looked at putting the snowmelt facility into the berm towards the Rio Grande Trail. However it didn't seem to work in terms of the trail system and how it works today. Roger: I real ize this isn't portable by any means. How movable is it economically? Chuck: Economically we are talking about $40,000 worth of site improvements and most of that would be lost if we move it. The unit itself is $60,000. Roger: Is it just set on a concrete slab? 12 PZM9.20.88 Chuck: There is a big concrete pit which the snow gets dumped into and then where the hot water is kept that the snow gets dumped into and melted. You wouldn't lose all of your $40,000 improvements but you would lose a lot of it. But in the big scope of years ahead that isn't necessarily a big factor. We have asked Council to appropriate $125,000 in 1989 and 1990. This isn't what staff recommended to Council. They gave us a fixed budget. We have been to Council and we have suggested putting it at the impound lot because we would get good assistance from gravity because it is up higher on the hill. But that created problems with what to do with the impound lot and they didn't spend much time discussing it. They said to put it where it is shown there. One reason we favored that location over a little bit to the east but we were concerned about the Oklahoma Flats residents. It seems to me better for them if it were to the east because it would then be pointing the other way. It would be pointing at Mill street and I am not convinced that that isn't the better location either. Welton: Where it is shown there as proposed--are there any gravity problems there? Chuck: We don't have a good grav ity si tua tion there. We could have done better up at the impound lot. Yea, we have got a long pipe which you can't see there but goes all the way over to those ponds for draining the pit. That is a fairly expensive detail. We gotta put this long pipe in there to drain the pit. We are not going to pump up hill. At least that's not what we are planning to do . Roger: Part of the problem also is gravel and things like that-- particulates--how is that handled in this? Chuck: The machine is set in the conc rete pit. Now we use fairly large gravel so it should be mostly settling out in the pit and we will have a backhoe. We are designing the fencing so that the backhoe can set there and we may have to muck out as much as once a day. The Streets Department hauled away 113 loads of cinders and garbage last Spring. That equates to about a load a day during the Winter. Roger: Is that recyclable or do you take that to the dump? Chuck: We just took it to the dump. Of course, now we have new dump policies and the more complex these things get the more you have to look at recycling. Before it wasn't recyclable. Now that you have to spend $40.00 to take it to the dump, maybe it will. 13 ---~,-_..- PZM9 .20 .88 Roger: Obviously the mud is not reusable but the cinders or the road sand in reasonable size are. So that is an operation--they take a load of muck out a day approximately when this is in operation and that is just part of your operation. You don't pile up the sludge for a massive movement later. Chuck: Well, we have also alerted Council to the possibilities of problems especially dealing with. The grit could be our worst problem because if it is 10 below and you load up a truck full of wet muck and by the time you get to the dump it is frozen solid. So we are pretty much on to that this is an experimental thing and we have asked for more money for the coming years to refine it or maybe buy another snowmelter so that we don't have a proposed snow storage area and we can keep up with our removal which would save us having a front end loader down there working from the snow pile into the pit. Roger: But this handling of the muck in freezing conditions can be a problem because you end up with a problem if it is just dumped out into the storage area there and it sets until the Spring unless you go in there with jack hammers which I don't think you are anticipating doing. If it is coming right out of the pit, it is coming out relatively warm so you could run it down there before it freezes. I don't know whether that would require a condition that the handling of that muck should be such that they only pull as much out of the pit as they haul away in a day. Chuck: We haven't proposed anyon-site storage of muck so I guess that is not part of the approvals we are asking for. Roger: It is something we had better address. Michael: When the staff originally recommended the use of the impound lot was there consideration given to an alternate impound lot? I still like the idea of the impound lot. It seems to me that is a much lesser effect on everybody. Chuck: I kind of might agree with you. We talked about burying the thing so it was all below grade. The drainage ditch and settling ponds are going to get the stuff out of the water and we are going to be monitored by the State on water qual ity and we are going to be testing the water quality ourselves monthly beginning this month. Howard Hanson: Resident of Oklahoma Flats. I understand that the voters have approved a garage for the Rio Grande Property. And they are probably going to build it. Parking is needed. It 14 PZM9. 20.88 seems to me that your planning is very short-sighted. this snow melting deal could be put under the garage. might cost a little more money but that is not an object I think Now it here. Chuck: I don't know how feasible that would be. That is quite a long way from the settling ponds and I don't know if I could interpret that that would be the way to solve the problem. Howard: That would be all down hill. Chuck: That's true but you would have to trench that whole way with your drainage pipes. Welton: Just from a physical point of view, you are not going to want to bring in oversized dump trucks into the parking garage with a 7 ft clearance. Chuck: That may require phenomenal changes to the parking garage to be able to do that. We had talked about burying it on the impound lot si te and some budget restraints pr evented us from doing that. Howard: I don't think you should talk about money that the City has taken on at carrying cost of $100,000 a year for the Zoline property plus removing the property from the tax rolls. Now it seems to me when those things happen then we have to sit back a say "Gee, money really isn't an object." It seems to me you are making it an object here where it is going to affect quite a number of people and in some other instances the cost is no object. Nick Coates: I t seems to me first of all has somebody got a definition of what is committed under the zoning in this area. Welton: There is no zoning in this area. Mari: SPA. Special Planned Area. Nick: Wasn't this land originally purchased as open space? Roger: The land was purchased with a mixture of open space funds and transportation funds. This is definitely a transportation use. Nick: It seems to me there has got to be a better place for this. We have got what could be one of the most scenic areas in the whole area. The playing field is a beautiful park. And you a taking it and putting in a very industrial type of disruptive IS PZM9.20.88 use down there that is totally out of character with what the town is trying to do. The most valuable thing we have is our land and the use of our land and we take a valuable piece of land that could be a great benefit to the town and it could be beautifully done and a real show place and to put an industrial use like this--it even goes further because--come down and look at the impound lot. Most of the cars there have been there for months and months, maybe years. They started out with you have got to have a place to put them. It is convenient so people could come and reclaim them. But that isn't the problem. They had a place down there that held 5 or 6 cars that they towed off the streets at night. And if the people didn't come and pick them up in a day or so took them out to the dump or to the airport parking someplace clear out of sight. Instead those cars sit there for years at a time. It is the ugliest part of the whole town and it is within a few blocks of the mall. It just seems like the whole thing is out of character and you ought to deny it. Paula Mayer: We own property and lived there for 35 years. I have seen tremendous changes on this side of the river. As you all know, it has been filled in. For 7 years I have been coming here fighting amicably. They have been patient with me and I have been patient with them. But I want to tell you something. Every Winter you can go to the snow dump where the storage is is just about opposite where it is marked on the map "proposed snow storage". The last 7 years there was a snow pile higher than the house which is 2 stor ies that we look at. Now I was unde r the impression that the impound lot was temporary 7 years ago and it was going to be moved as soon as they found another place. The snow storage was temporary. And we have been patient and we have waited and we have waited. Last year we met with the Engineering Department. Both of these gentlemen, Jay Hammond, and we were assured that they were going to look into the feasibility of moving it into another area. I believe they did a plan or tried an experiment with dumping some snow over by the Koch Lumber Company--by the lodge--we don't count. For 7 years we have listened to tail gates clanging with the snow there. And it has been longer than that that the dump trucks have been going down there. All hours of the night we have been listening to it. The lodge issued one complaint to the Department and you quit dumping there because a lodge said something about it. They complained about it so where does it go? Back to us. Now all of the people who are sitting here--for 7 years we have been watching things that are temporary. The bank goes higher. The snow gets higher. The dump is higher. The tailgates are clanging and now you tell us that you are going to put in a 16 PZM9 .20 .88 snowmelting machine that sounds no louder than a vacuum cleaner at 10 feet away. If you let that snowmelting machine go in and if it is louder than a vacuum cleaner at 10 ft, will you pull it out? Do I have your word on it? Chuck: You have my word that it will meet environmental standards. I don't know what they are. Paula: Aw, come on, come on. We have been--Iook all along I believe this is what your intentions were. I don't think you looked very hard for another place at all. It is my impression that that was bought to be open land and that is what we were told. We were told that. Welton: There was dumping down by the music tent in the parking lot there last winter. There is also dumping on Koch Lumber Company property. The neighbors there got up in arms and screamed and yelled and stomped their feet. Nobody wants it in their back yard. Paula: That's right. Put it under the bridge where the Electric Company is. Welton: Then it is in somebody else's back yard. That is in my back yard as a matter of fact. Paula: Then put in your back yard for 7 years--temporarily. See how you like it. Howard: We should try to dump on nobody. And I don't understand what happened--wasn't one of the proposed sites the golf course? Chuck: The golf course parking lot was on the list. Michael: Or the Zoline property. Why couldn't we create ponds on that property? That property is sitting there doing nothing. It is not that long a drive. Chuck: It is .3 miles from the center of the commercial core to the existing snow dump. out to the Zoline property you are talking over a mile. We estimated that that would be $100,000 a year of additional men and equipment to be able to remove the snow at the same rate as we currently remove it. Michael: Somewhere along the line you have got to pay for what you do. And it just doesn't seem to me that you can pay for what you do and it is false economy to turn around and start dumping 17 PZM9.20.88 it in residential areas. Last unhappy and that didn't work. one group, I would rather make that everybody has got to take snow and melt it themselves. year they tried to make everybody As opposed to putting it just on everybody unhappy and have a rule home a certain amount of muck and If we want to be a community--we want to have town--there are certain things that don't go in town and there are expenses involved in those things. Somewhere along the way we have got to pay for what we want. It just makes no sense to be putting this, for sure, on this site. I don't think any of the other sites we mentioned make sense. If it is going to cost us $100,000 a year to deliver it to the golf course or the Zoline property and we have to pay higher taxes, then that is it. Paula: You are the first one in 7 years who has made any sense. Chuck: You would trash the golf course. We were looking at the parking lot there. Michael: Why not the zoline and create ponds? Chuck: Didn't they just sell that up the creek to another golf course? Michael: Well, they didn't do it yet. That could be part of his lease. Every golf course needs water and needs ponds. Howard: At the golf course parking lot there is property that goes right over to Maroon Creek. You could even have it out of sight there on the bank of Maroon Creek and pond it into Maroon Creek. There is a spot at the bottom where you could have ponds. Very simple to do. You mentioned that this was a transportation problem. If that is the case then how about the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority property where they park the busses? There is space there. I don't know who you would hurt there with the noise. I think that the people on the Commission here will have to give some thought to what they did in San Antonio. Many years ago, in 1935, a lady on her own stopped the City of San Antonio from concreting the river. And if you have been down there and looked at what they have got there, it is beautiful. And you could have the same thing here in Aspen. That river down there is beautiful. But I can tell you with a pile of dirty snow several feet high all year--they have killed trees down there along the river by piling the snow up. It just seems to me it is very short-sighted. You know and I know that once they put a melt machine on this property it is going to be tough to get it off. 18 PZM9 .20 .88 So the time to stop it and get the right spot is now--not after it has been on there temporarily. Charlotte Brown: I am the little box house that is going to be most affected by this. My bedroom window is right next to the new proposed site. I just plead with you to do anything you can --whether it be berming or another place. Remo Lavagnino: You have a resolution coming before City Council on September 26th. And as part of that resolution you have on page 5 "To relocate the snow dump to the Sanitation District Site". If you are going to relocate the snow dump there why can't you re-Iocate the snowmelter there? I't would have a lot less impact than the snow dump itself as far as volume is concerned. And it is your recommendation so I assume you have looked into it. Do you have a any comments on your recommendation? Tom Baker: That recommendation was made in your conceptual approval for the SPA plan. There is also a qualifying on there about the P&Z'S interest in the snowmelt system and if it could work effectively that this site could be appropriate for that. So it is not as black and white as Remo is saying. Remo: Well, I am reading from the resolution to the City. Tom: Doesn't it also say the snowmelting? Remo: No. Nothing at all. Howard: where it There is going to you just It also will have an impact on the Hotel Jerome located is at. I think it should go out to the Zoline property. a bumper zone well around it. In the long run you are need more snow melting machines anyway. So why don't make a long-range plan and do it right now? Welton: Well, we have lost a quorum. We can't take any action on this this evening. Jasmine: I think that the points a lot of you have made are very valid. And I think that long range planning is essential. I am not in favor of the location that is shown on the proposed plan. I am not sure what the other appropriate location is. I would say that if it has to be located on the Rio Grande for a lot of other reasons I would prefer to see it located in the impound lot location preferably buried. I don't see any reason why the impound lot can't be made smaller. I think Nick Coates's point is very well taken. There is no reason that you have to have 50 cars sitting there for years at a time. I think that the impound 19 PZM9 .20 .88 lot is a really messy use on the Rio Grande anyway. But if you are going to have an obnoxious use and you could combine 2 obnoxious uses into one smaller obnoxious use I think you could at least accomplish something there. And so if you cannot find another location, that would be my preferred. Roger: I basically agree with Jasmine. We have been pushing to get rid of the snowmelt along with the impound lot on this site probably as long as most of you have been residents in that area. One of the problems is the City Council says "Thou shalt have snowmelt on the Rio Grande property". So that is what we are having to deal with here. We don't really have too much of a choice. Unless you can go over and pound on the heads of City Council which I would encourage you to do. If it is dictated on the site I agree with Jasmine that we should try to get it closer built into the embankment of the impound lot area. That is, to me, a much better location for it. First of all we are forced with dealing with having the thing down there which I don't particularly favor but it is being forced down our throats by the City Council. That is my point. As far as I am concerned at this point to resolve we are going to have to deal with the snowmelt machine. Now there are some benef its to that. Hopefully it means a smaller mountain or hopefully no mountain at all as far as the storage area. So that is where I am starting from is all of our efforts have gone into removing the whole snowmelt thing from there but that has not been successful with Council. So let's face it folks, council says it is going to be there so we are going to have to deal with the thing. Now if you can go to Council elsewhere, fine. Please do it. we can in that direction. and encourage them to put it We have put as much pressure as The preferred location for me is within the embankment of the impound lot area. There are 2 reasons for that. Number I, it is close to the snow storage area which is what the snow storage has been all the time. Group: No, no. Paula: I will show you where the snow storage is. All of this over here is where it is where they drive down with the trucks and they dump right along this--in here, I won't say along the river. Then the dozer pushes it all along the edge of the bank so that it melts faster. That is what we look at and we do look 20 PZM9.20.88 at it. They push it 25 feet high and that is what we have been asking them to move. Roger: I understand. But all you are saying is that the proposed snow storage is exactly where the snow storage has been. Paula: Well, we don't want that there either. Roger: Well, I don't either. But we are forced by City council action to deal with the snow storage in this area. It is going to be a little less than before. I don't know how much less. Hopefully, there won't be any if this system works. But anyway, getting back to the reason for the snowmelter being in the vicinity of the impound lot within the embankment depending on the orientation, it should absolutely eliminate sound from the snowmelter from the residential area. It won't eliminate the sound of the dump trucks if they are dumping snow. We are still hav ing to deal with that. I still don't like it. I still want to get rid of it eventually. Wel ton: When this resolution goes to City Council for their action on the 26th, there will be public input. There will be lots of opportunity to scream and yell. Tom: City Council is going to start their review of the conceptual on the 26th. The Engineering Department was concerned that they weren't going to be able to get this done in time so we are trying to go directly to final development on this as an amendment ahead of that conceptual review. It is all confusing. And it seems like everyone is pushing on a string. But the 26th we are dealing with conceptual SPA for the entire parcel. I can guarantee you that we will be focusing on the south portion of the site for that meeting. That is the parking structure, the library and we will need probably a couple of meetings before we get to the snowmelt. Wel ton: How is the public going to know when the appropr iate time to come and express their concerns about this? Chuck: We have told Council that we have got a construction season problem in fulfilling their desires and Council wants this done. Tom: This is a 4 step process. Council is going to deal with conceptual on the 26th. If they had gotten this amendment done tonight we could have conceivably gone for final development as an amendment for the snowmelt on that parcel on the 26th. That is not going to happen. 21 PZM9.20.88 .....wi' Welton: We will continue meeting. The public hearing has been opened and we can continue that open public hearing until next Tuesday. Remo asked for our opinions. I concur with Jasmine and Roger. I have been thinking all along the most appropriate place would be the Sanitation District property because the distance is about the same. It has already got 7 ponds. It has a lot of things going for it. The thought there is to wait and see how the neighbors there would react to it. No matter where it goes it is going to create some considerable problems. I like the San District property. But what Jasmine said is appropriate as a second or third best solution. Take one bad use, combine it with another bad use and try to aim its impacts towards activities that are not effected at night time by noise. In other words aim the noise impacts up the hill rather than across the river. That's the best solution this compromise if we are not given any choice by city council. We have been looking at the big picture for half a dozen years now on this property. It was really heartening to finally see one small element of the parking structure get moving forward. This has been something that we have been trying to come to a resolution for a lot of years. ~. Roger: The City Council certainly knows that we have been trying to get rid of the snowmelt and the impound lot down there. "" Welton: The public hearing is continued to the next meeting a week from tonight. (September 27, 1988) The public is here who is interested in this. So it just doesn't slip through as sometimes these things do, it would be a good idea to go to the City council meeting September 26, 1988 to keep an eye on this. I would like the Planning Of f ice to wr i te a repr imand to the people who are unexcused--Ramona and Jim. Mari had an excuse. The meeting was adjourned. Time was 6:45pm. j.~~:~i~"" "- 22