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HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.apz.19890530 fJ.rtJ RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS PLANNING & ZONING COMMISSION MAY 30. 1989 Chairman Welton Anderson called meeting to order at 4:30pm. Answering roll call Herron, Roger Hunt, Peyton was excused. were Graeme Means, Bruce Kerr, Michael Jasmine Tygre and Welton Anderson. Mari Jim colombo was absent. COMMISSIONER'S COMMENTS Roger Hunt: I received complaints from 2 people within the Cemetery Lane area concerning a piece of property on Castle Creek Drive. It is 790 Castle Creek Drive. Apparently whoever owns that property has done some modifications after authorized building permits. It is a single family dwelling. The complaint I hear is that at least 2 families are living in it. Jasmine: Has there been any discussion about a possible city purchase of the Billings property? Alan: There have been no formal discussions at any Council meeting regarding the purchase of the Billings property. There is--an administrative delay the Council imposed during the meeting on May 8th that will be coming up for public hearing at the meeting of June 12. That property is subject to the delay although it appears that there are only 2 legal units over there. It is not a multi-family property. Duplexes are included in the administrative delay as well. Welton: I have talked with Chuck Roth regarding the earth that seems to be moving from the Rio Grande parking structure site to other open space properties around the City which is rapidly filling up. The Koch Lumber Co. property is filling up. The impound lot and it is filling up around the snowmelter. I will report next meeting with the results of Chuck's investigative report on why the City can do things with dirt that other people can't do with dirt. STAFF COMMENTS Alan brought commission up to date as to his position with the City and County. VOLK LOT SPLIT CONCEPTUAL PUD. GMOS EXEMPTION AND STREAM MARGIN REVIEW PUBLIC HEARING Michael stepped down from this hearing because of possible conflict of interest. Affidavit of mailing was presented. (Attached in record) PZM5.30.89 Leslie made presentation as per Planning Office memo dated May 12, 1989. (Attached in record) Roger: I am wondering why the so-called reserve easement as opposed to dedicating easement now. sunny Vann: First of "all Bay street is little more than a driveway and serves several residences. If you notice we have provided access for both our lots off Spring street to the rear of the property. If we are required to seriously upgrade Bay Street at this time. There is no easement smaller than the 60 foot r-o-w. The likelihood of going in and building Bay Street in the future to a typical street cross section with curbs, gutter, on-street parking and sidewalk is highly unlikely. What we are proposing to do is to put the reservation on the plat. There is precedent for this. It has been done up in the base of Aspen Mountain area and ute Avenue. It says should the City ever decide to improve the street that dedication can be called. And we have agreed to design the building envelopes and the lots so that it works with that dedication. But to require us to give it at this time when there is no other easements or dedication anywhere else in the neighborhood, no improvement district and no plans to improve the street, seems to be unreasonable. It does preserve the City's interest. It is legally enforceable and it meets the requirements of the City. Bruce: It looks like the building envelope actually extends over beyond that west side. Sunny: Originally we did not think we would be required to give 30 foot of r-o-w so the City could build 60 foot street down there so we drew the building envelope as the yellow shows. What we are proposing to do is to mark the envelope to reflect the dedication line. The setbacks will are still fine. The house will be constrained as if there were a street there but there won't be a street any time in the immediate future. Graeme: On Bay street how many units on Bay Street access and also it seems as if that dedication to the city were exercised that there would be this street going and dead ending right at somebody's house now which doesn't seem to make much sense. Sunny: crosses point. This is the trail which comes down from Gibson and the river. This basically turns into a driveway at this In fact that 60ft r-o-w is really meaningless because you 2 PZM5.30.89 basically have to condemn this single family house to put a full size street in there. Graeme: I agree. It seems like something is not working there. From the city's point of view why even have the potential to take that if we can't use it without condemning. Sunny: That is why we said we will agree to give it to you but don't take it unless you actually need it. I think it is the same theory that has occurred all along. If you have a piece of property and you have the ability to tie it up, who knows what your future plans might be. You go ahead and take the r-o-w and if you use if--fine. If you don't use it that is OK too. Leslie: We really didn't feel that we would be in a position to not recommend knowing that the code asks for the 60ft r-o-w. Jim Gibbard, Engineering Dept.: lot of difficulty in snowplowing the street. And because it is a maintain it. Another issue here is we have a there with the current width of dedicated street, we do have to Sunny: There is some questions as to whether Bay street is within it's r-o-w. It clearly encroaches onto Lot #1 and I suspect that it also encroaches down by the lower portion as well. This will be the only reservations for r-o-w expansion in the area. Graeme: Is there 20ft r-o-w all along that property? Jim: I don't think so. I think the rest is 12ft. Sunny: We don't have it on a survey but the existing r-o-w between--on both sides of Spring Street at the moment is only about 20ft. So to do any improvements to Spring Street would require condemnation or obtaining the easement on the other side of the street as well. We don't have a problem giving it at such time as the City decides to use it. STREAM MARGIN REVIEW Jim: The one issue that I have is the foundation and we are going to require that the foundation be constructed with openings to allow unimpeded movement of water. We did require this on the gross Stream Margin Review which is in that area. And we are requiring it again. We basically are requiring this because the City Ordinance requires 0 raise in the base flood elevation and this will insure that 0 raise as much as we can possibly insure that. 3 PZM5.30.89 Sunny: Basically you have one block that is within the 100 year flood plain. That is the problem. The code simply says that we must demonstrate no rise in the historic base flood elevation. We were required to undergo extensive analysis to prove that the Engineering Department has asserted that we have demonstrated that to meet the criteria. There is absolutely requirement in the code that we must have a foundation that permits the unimpeded flow of water. We have done that. To impose further criteria that now we must have a foundation that is on pilings or something or have holes in it, is redundant. It is not required by code and is onerous in this particular case. There is precedent for it but the other applicants simply didn't care and didn't raise an opposition to it. I have asked Jay Hammond, from Schmueser, Gordon and Myer to step in tonight to answer any questions you might have about that. The reason that I do not want to include that in here is the possibility of a future basement on behalf of the applicant. At the moment the adopted flood plain regulations preclude a basement simply because the City did not adopt all of FEMA provisions. We don't know at the moment whether that was intentional or accidental. Jim: In 1985 that option. unintentional time. when we adopted this ordinance FEMA did not have In 1986 they had that option and so it was not or intentional. It just was not available at that Sunny: The fact being that it is now available, our particular regulation does not reflect it. To my knowledge, and I think Engineering would agree, no decision has been made at this point whether it is a good idea or a bad idea. But what it says is that you can either have no basement and meet FEMA's requirement or if you build a basement it must meet certain engineering criteria. It must be flood proof. My concern is that we don't unduly restrict this lot for the inclusion of a basement. I want to explore with the city amending and updating its FEMA regulations to reflect ttie latest criteria. If the Engineering Department insists allowing unimpeded flow of water, there build a basement. And I think I can make is not required. that is no a very this foundation way we can ever good case why it Jim: We will consider taking another look at that ordinance as it requires whether or not people can build a basement and this will require a lot of input from the Building Department. We will have to talk with everybody concerned. There is a possibility that we can revise this ordinance. But at this time because we do have the ordinance we have to assume that there is 4 PZM5.30.89 a possibility that we will not and we will not be able to change it and so I think we have a right to require that this foundation have openings at this time. Jay Hammond: I think a lot of what Jim said is correct. If anything the city's failure to adopt the flood proof regulations allowed by FEMA was a matter of neglect if anything else subject to the changes in those regs by FEMA. My comment with respect to the allowing of a flood proof basement when we looked at the FEMA regs in 1985 we considered how can we look at these and how can we create perhaps even a greater stringency for flood prone areas in Aspen. The way we approached that when we adopted FEMA's regs was to say that any given development in the flood hazard areas must demonstrate no change to the base flood elevations. That is no demonstrable impact on adjacent properties due to the presence of that structure. We have looked at this structure and have indicated that with even a solid foundation it will not affect the base flood elevation. My comment with respect to allowing flood proofing is that first of all a flood proof design is not a simple matter. The structure must resist the hydrostatic forces associated with water surrounding a building. It must restrict the buoyancy of any structure if it were surrounded by flooding so that the structural requirements are significant but are a possible. My other comment would be that by restricting the base flood elevation change to 0 we have protected adj acent properties by allowing or not allowing the flood proof basement. You really can't do any more than that. I guess my comment simply is that by not allowing a flood proof basement you don't create any additional benefit for adjacent properties if you have already demonstrated that the base flood elevation would not be affected. Once having demonstrated that the base flood elevation is not affected that is closing that area even in a 100 year flood event are very shallow. Velocities are very low. The presence of the structure will not create any change in the flood configuration around the property. Having demonstrated that the presence or absence of openings through the foundation don't create any additional benefits that will not cause the flood to lower. It simply won't have any other affect. So I think the comment at this point is that the presence of a flood proof basement will not create any additional impact on adjacent properties. Sunny: I would like to delete lB. dedications of the right of way. Amend 2A to require the 5 PZM5.30.89 Roger: I think in the place we should have in it something to the effect that the foundation or basement or whatever is put there shall be demonstrated to the Engineering Department for their approval that it will have no affect on flood waters. Welton asked for public comment. the public hearing. There was none and he closed Sunny: The second one was 2A and that was the r-o-w reser- vations. Band C is fine. D is clarified somewhat that in the event we pursue removal of that which is Cottonwoods over 6 inches, we will pull a permit and we will submit a landscape plan for the site to the Planning Department for review and approval. Leslie: On 2C the wording is such that we say either/or. Either double the side yard setback or submit a study. Sunny: We don't have a design at this point. The family intends to retain this particular site. We don't know when it is going to be built on so we will simply double it and record that. Leslie: Which would be 20 feet. Welton asked for public comment. There was none and he closed the public portion of the meeting. MOTION Roger: I move to approve the stream margin review of the Volk lot split with condition A being same as Planning Office memo dated May 12, 1989. (attached in record) Condition B being modified to read "Prior to issuance of building permit the development on Lot 1 shall be required to have a foundation or basement constructed to comply with the current FEMA regulations and to the approval of the Engineering Department". Jasmine seconded the motion with all in favor. MOTION: Roger: I move to approve the conceptual PUD _ review with condition A on Planning Office memo dated May 12, 1989 (attached in record) modified to read "Prior to submittal of the final plat the reserved dedication 24 feet along Bay Street and 20 feet along Spring Street shall be shown". Condition B being identical to the Planning Office memo. Condition C being modified to read "The side yard setback on the west side of Lot 2 shall be doubled". All after stricken. 6 PZM5.30.89 Conditions D through G being same as on Planning Office memo dated May 12, 1989. Jasmine seconded the motion with all in favor. Welton: Does anybody have any objection to the consolidation of this from a 4 step PUD to a 2 step PUD? There were none. COTTONWOOD PARK (700 EAST MAIN STREET) GMOS/PUD AMENDMENT 'PUBLIC HEARING Welton opened the public hearing. Cindy Houben: Affidavit of mailing was presented. record) (Attached in Cindy made presentation as attached in record. The applicant has to show that the application is substantially the same as the initial application and represents the same area and bulk requirement. We feel that it represents the same area and bulk requirements. It is still mUlti-family in nature--a residential use and has the basic components that it had initially. The changes that occur are obviously the site plan has changed with regard to the configuration of the units. The total number of units has changed. Originally there were 18 units on the site, 17 of which were free market. One was a 1 bedroom on-site employee unit and the applicants paid I think it was $685,000 cash-in-lieu for the employee housing commitment. The new application is responding to a community need which is employee housing by placing 2 additional employee units on the site for a total of 3 employee units on site. I believe it is 1 2-bedroom unit and 2 l-bedroom units. The application also includes 5 accessory dwelling units which are not deed restricted with regard to income level but have to be resident occupied. Originally the application had a pool up front. It is now located in the middle and below grade. The applicants pulled units over toward the river and placed 5 accessory dwelling units, all between 350sqft and 450sqft into specific units. Unit #11 will have an accessory unit. Unit #10 will have an accessory unit. #9, #7 and #6. My understanding is that they will all 7 PZM5.30.89 have their own entrance ways but will be under the control of the ownership of those specific units. At the response to the City Council--I hope we will look at this at the final review stage and also I guess it was actually at the stage when the applicants came in and ownership changed and the applicants requested that the modifications to the site plan be allowed--the applicants at that time said that they would include additional employee units on site. This was in response to the community need. At that time I believe the applicants said that they replaced 3 additional units on-site. What we have got here are 3 total units on-site with 4 additional bedrooms. That is the way it worked out with regard to the number of bedrooms that would be allowed on the site given the area and bulk requirement or the code. So what we see is a major change in this area along the river. My earlier review we stressed staying away from the river as much as possible due to the slope and the view from the park which is right across the river at this point. The applicants have noted that they will maintain all of the commitments that were committed to in the original approval and really the major change that I see as far as the site design is concerned is the area along the river. I discussed this with the applicant at length and initially we saw a proposal that had a 20ft gap on Main street to try to give some view in off of Main street and open space. I didn't feel that that had a lot of value given the size and mass of the buildings to have a 20ft wide strip going back to the court yard and opening up a very brief entrance way as you went by. We closed this gap in and pulled the units further back from the river. I think this preserves the integrity of that slope and gives less of a harsh mass effect from the park. The applicants have expanded in response to another issue I had in the original site plan the corner park on Spring and Main. They have expanded that to some degree allowing more of a park corner there rather than just the 2 benches that were allowed before. That is another ,public improvement to the site plan. The corner pocket park is still part of the courtyard area for their open space. increased its number of parking spaces to Before it had 43 underground and 4 above. they are all underground. plan as well as their The application has 50 underground spaces. Now there are 50 and 8 PZM5.30.89 The HPC has had a chance to review the application which was a recommendation I made because I think the HPC has a lot more architectural expertise than I do or the Planning staff does. I have asked Roxanne to come tonight and give you a review on her architectural aspect of the proposal. Roxanne: The HPC reviewed and found the elevations to be more compatible with what we originally planned. They found it to be a good way to enter Main street into the district. We discovered alternating blocks have significant red brick and sandstone structures. This is a way to provide continuity of that feeling right along Main. There were no negative comments that were mentioned by HPC. The architect made changes to the wrought iron fixtures on the front. Cindy: The applicants are requesting, because more housing on the site, to reduce their $515,000 rather than the $685,000. they are putting cash-in-lieu to Roger: Is the width of Spring street the same as on the original proposal and is the number of parking spaces on Main street the same as the original proposal? Sunny: A couple of the on-street parking spaces are near the entrance-way parking spaces that the original proposal that had to be above grade have now been placed below grade. So there is 1 parking space for every bedroom in this proposal and all of them are met below grade. stan Mathis: The Main street profile remains the same as the original application. Cindy: We will make sure the original commitments will be upheld. Andy Hecht: There is no litigation affecting the property. There 1S some litigation still pending against the previous owners that claims monetary damages but has nothing to do with the property development. stan: When we started anew on this we took a couple premises that that entry into Main Street is sort of weak in terms of the overall part of Main Street. In our landscaping and site plan we tried to pick up the rhythm of the brick and stone buildings down the block--the Sardy House, Jerome, Courthouse and then our project with that large stand of conifers that come off the site removed over to the end of Main Street. So we have this real nice visual thing come down into Main. Then the more neighborhood kind of feeling of expanding the width of the units so that we, could get away from the townhouse-like 9 PZM5.30.89 feeling that we do have going on in town. By making the units wider we can do much more with the architecture along the front side from the public streets. Since they are wider we are able to get more individual windows, more interest and more detail. As part of the response to HPC we cleaned up some of the detail in the windows. We went from wrought iron railing to white wood railings on the buildings themselves. Our application has about 5% more open space than the original proposal. We have some negotiations under way with the owners. We are trying to work out so that we can take our entrance off of Spring Street for our ramp for our parking lot. Then we will landscape across that private drive. This would really benefit that whole end of things. I know that there were complaints along the line about balconies on Main Street and hot tubs protruding beyond the face of the building out into the r-o-w. We have pulled all our buildings back so that we don't need to answer any encroachment licenses. We do not have any balconies that protrude from the building into the Main Street corridor. Our FAR is about the same or slightly smaller than the last application. That is countable FAR. Our gross FAR is just about the same. That is counting the parking garage and the 3 floors of structure. Sunny: If there is a slight change in the FAR it is due to the inclusion of employee housing on site. Stan: Our accessory units are 350 to almost 500sqft depending on which unit they would be located within. The employee housing units will meet the guidelines. We are kind of leaving that up to the Housing Authority. We have committed to sprinkle all the units on site for fire protection. Wayne Vandemark expressed concerns on 5,6,7,8 & 9 not having access and wished those to besprinkled. We are going to sprinkle all of them. The landscaping that we are proposing is the same. In size and types we are doing more Spruce trees on Main Street than the other application. So it is a better job of screening. All of the off street improvements that were previously committed to are committed to by my client. We are going to put our fence behind the line of the old Cottonwood trees so that that property becomes more a part of the public property. That is where the bench sitting area for the bus would be located. 10 PZM5.30.89 We looked at the split between the units on Main street pulling things back from the river and that puts us in about the same position as the former application as to where they are terraced and patio and pool area was. We are less mass on Main street than the former application. We did that by dropping the number of units from 17 to 12. Welton asked for public comment. Bill Dunaway asked for average size of the units. stan: Units 1 through 4 are approximately 3,300sqft each. Units 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 are about 3,400sqft. 10, 11 and 12 are 3,800sqft. Employee housing units--the 2 bedroom will be 845sqft and the 2 I-bedroom units are 5l5sqft. The accessory units are from 350 to 500sqft. Bruce: Who will control the accessory units? Housing Authority or the owner of that unit? Sunny: The accessory dwelling unit is a new regulation that you passed a while back. It has a deed restriction on it which is recorded. It is restricted to non sale. It can't be condominiumized and is restricted to occupancy by a resident of pitkin County as defined in the Housing Authority Guidelines. The owner of the unit may rent it to anyone who qualifies under the Housing Guidelines and he may rent it for any price. will it be the Bruce: Can he let it sit vacant? Sunny: That is a good question. to enforce it. I don't know how they propose Welton: The way we left it was if it wasn't rented in a certain period of time the Housing Authority could fill it. Sunny: There is a criteria that says if you fail to rent it they have the ability to do so. Bruce: It does appear to me that there is a change in architectural style when you come to the employee units. It looks like some of the fancier treatment that you have on the units 10, 11 and 12 for example then you come to the employee units and that same treatment drops off. Stan: The detail right here--the only difference is that there is no bay here but the detail all the trim detail, all the window 11 PZM5.30.89 detail is the same. The employee does not have the balcony on the back. They also have direct access to the courtyard. Bruce: Did the rec center just go away? stan: It is at the parking lot level. We doubt that somebody who is going to buy one of these units is going to hold a party at the rec center. We see that more as an auxiliary room for somebody who wants to have a meeting. There is not a separate building for that. There are 2 separate pool changing rooms. Sunny: We have no problem with any of the conditions. I would suggest that #5 be deleted in that we have already gone to HPC and we have the benefit of HPC's comments and they have that incorporated in the design that you are scoring. As far as the rest of them, they are technical in nature that we demonstrate compliance with the original conditions of approval. MOTION Roger: I would move to adopt the Planning Office recommendation for the scoring of the Cottonwood Park. Jasmine seconded the motion with all in favor. MOTION Roger: I will make a note for the record that the applicant has confirmed that there is indeed no change in configuration of the Main Street parking and indeed no change in the Spring Street from the original proposal. I move to recommend approval of the proposed GMQS/PUD and Stream Margin Review amendments to the Cottonwood Park project with conditions 1 through 4 being the same as Planning Office memo dated May 16, 1989. (attached in record) #5 recognizing that if the applicant comes in with a Creek Tree Driveway access to the parking structure we find that to be even better than this approval. Jasmine seconded the motion with all in favor. Welton closed the public hearing. Meeting was adjourned. 12