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HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.apz.19900918 ~x.C/ RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS PLANNING & ZONING COMMISSION SEPTEMBER 18. 1990 Chairman Welton Anderson called meeting to order at 4:30pm. Answering roll call were Graeme Means, Bruce Kerr, Sara Garton, Jasmine Tygre, Roger Hunt and Welton Anderson. Mari Peyton and Richard Compton arrived shortly after roll call. COMMISSIONER'S COMMENTS Jasmine: I just wanted to comment that despite the fact that there are people who have been talking about irregularities in some of the applications for employee housing that what Jim Adamski said initially about being able to provide places for people to move into after they improve their position and they are no longer in the very lowest of the low income housing has come about. Of the people who apply to the Twin Ridge I know 3 of the people who applied. And in 2 of the 3 cases they were people who were either renting employee housing or had purchased employee housing units at a much lower price and so those 2 parties are going to be moving up into the more expensive employee housing and that is going to free 2 more units. So one of the things that Jim said he was kind of concerned about which was to allow people to move up but still be within the deed restricted housing system does seem to be working. Welton: Any other Commissioner comments, Roger? It is to be noted here that Roger had no comment. Welton: Over the weekend of Ruggerfest somebody put up an orange tape barricade on city property with signs saying "Private Property--Keep Out", This was facing Wagner Park behind the Prospector. It was 6ft out into the alley ROWand they were basically cordoning off all of their back yard plus 6 or 8 feet of City property calling it their own to keep people from spectating from publicly owned land. Can you send them a letter? Or have Bill Drueding send them a letter. with my signature would be fine. Kim: We will say that it appeared as though there was some city property encompassed in there. Welton: They had the fence right up against the edge of the brick pavers that form that walkway/alley and if you slide along the back of the Wheeler Square Building that is right on the property line. I designed that building and their fence was in - PZM9.18.90 line not with the back of the Wheeler square Building but 6 feet closer to the Park. Bruce: In defense of the Prospector I don't blame them if they went out 100 feet from their property to keep the animals away. Warren spoke in defense of the animals. Welton: I agree. It was the sloppiest, most litter-prone crowd I have ever seen at any event in Aspen. But still you can I t cordon off public property with "No Trespassing, Private Property" signs. Bruce: I know that I am going to ID my guests next year. Age, looks, national creed, origin, I don't care--whatever. If they are over 50 they might get a room. Welton: The old saying that Rugby players eat their young was proven true. Bruce: It was the kids from Boulder more than the Rugby guys. Jasmine: They were not well liked in restaurants either. STAFF COMMENTS Leslie had a Resolution #89-23 regarding Explore Booksellers for review and signature. Leslie also presented a letter to the Leatherbury regarding the city of Aspen plan and stating her objections to same. Commissioners from Joan proposal for a Bike Path (attached in record) PUBLIC COMMENT There was none, MINUTES AUGUST 7 & 21. 1990 Roger moved to adopt minutes of August 7, 1990 with corrections. Bruce seconded the motion with all in favor. Jasmine moved to adopt minutes of August 21, 1990 with corrections. Mari seconded the motion with all in favor. ADOPTION OF PEDESTRIAN WALKWAY & BIKEWAY PLAN Welton opened the public hearing and continued hearing to date certain of October 9, 1990. 2 PZM9.18.90 ADOPTION OF MEADOWS MASTER PLAN Welton opened the public hearing and continued hearing to date certain of September 25, 1990. ALLEN CONDITIONAL USE REVIEW Welton opened the public hearing and continued hearing to date certain of October 2, 1990. HOTEL JEROME POD AMENDMENT Welton opened the public hearing. Kim made presentation as attached in record. This request is a 3 part request to amend the PUD. First of all with the off and on again deck construction of the Jerome one part of this application is to get final approval for the changed landscape plan regarding the small service deck which is against the wall of the Hotel near the J-Bar. The second aspect of this request is to increase the outdoor seating from 44 seats which is currently contained in the 1986 PUD approval up to 125 seats to serve outdoor meals on a seasonal basis. Thirdly the applicants would like to establish a list of special events that have ongoing approval from the P&Z to allow for more extensive use of the outdoor area and not require the applicant to continually request new amendments or additions to the PUD. Welton: Do you have a dollar figure on #7? And dates for #5. Kim: For #5--in my calculation in the memo I used May 15 through Sept 15. McGrath, Attorney for Jerome: Those dates are OK. Kim: The restaurant employees as typically calculated by the Housing Authority is $35,000 for a full employee. Welton: It would $35,000 times .96. Kim: Right. .96 is the established mitigation figure. Mari: How does this new decking affect the FAR from the original PUD agreement? -.,,"' 3 PZM9.18.90 Welton: This wouldn't have any effect on FAR, Kim: No. It does not. For a deck area to be considered part of an FAR it has to be above grade and also has to constitute more than 15% of the allowable FAR on that parcel. Mari: Does it affect the open space? Kim: No. The restaurant use as it is currently in affect is allowed in that open space and it was part of the original PUD negotiations. Sara: How many employee units were calculated for the tea room? 1 and 1/2? Kim: Well, that is where the PUD was not specific to applying certain uses within the Hotel Jerome PUD and allotting certain percentages of employees to those particular uses. Using current standards the tea room probably is on the low end of the restaurant scale and so it would probably be in the range of 3 and 1/2 to 4 and 1/2 employees for 1,000sqft. Assuming that the tea room may have 2 or 3 employees on at any certain shift that the current use of the antique store is probably similar to that or close enough to call it a wash. Given that that really wasn't addressed at the time of the conversion and that is kind of the way that the Plannin~ Office is looking at it unless the Commission feels very strongly abut it considering certain other calculations. Jasmine: What mechanism do you propose to use to enforce the special events usage? Kim: By trust, They know what the list is. If someone approaches them with some special deal they would need to come forth and request that as an addition as a one-time deal. Jasmine: I am wondering about this because this is one of those conditions that sounds really nice but don't seem to really mean anything. In terms of the fact that you have got this list but what do the applicants do if somebody comes to them with a special event that is not on the list. How do they handle it? We don't know. Suppose that the approving body says "No". What kind of mechanisms do they have to pursue something that they think is worthwhile if they get a "no" from somebody and who do they get a "yes" or "no" from? 4 PZM9.18.90 It just seems to me agreements like this just cause a lot of problems for the applicant and for the bodies who say yes or no. Mari: It seems to me the list pretty much just gives them carte blanch. It says "occasional private cocktail receptions--that just about covers anything. Wolfgang: The list that you have in front of you, we haven't really held all of these to date. I think they may come up. Obviously these things need to be based on better conditions outside so we can actually do something like that outside. Richard: On the deck area that in the memo you seem to be referring to this deck over here? Kim: That is the one that got temporary approval. Richard: What about this other larger deck here? Kim: This is what we received insubstantial PUD amendment through the Planning Director for approval this summer. Richard: So that is already approved? Kim: It is already there. What they are aSking for is to allow for additional seating. I think what they are doing now is they have approval for seating up here and some down here and they have moved some tables out here now using their existing season credit. Nick McGrath: The reason we wanted to put decking out here is in the summer when you have a party outside and you have foot traffic it ruins the lawn. It becomes a quagmire when you have rain. Then you end up not being able to use it and it doesn't look good, The only difference between us and the Planning Office is whether--given that we are talking about .93 employee, this is a stage at which you ought to impose an additional employee housing from it. We suggest not. We have a difference of opinion as to whether outside summer seating is completely a substitute or not. We think it is. Wolfgang does not plan to hire any additional staff to serve people when he has 125 seats as opposed to 44. All calculations so far as generation of the project envisioned. That included the antique store removes 1 to we can tell for the employee was based upon the uses then tea room. The tea room changed to 1 and 1/2 employees from that ,~-- 5 PZM9.18.90 generation. So the wash, to me, is a wash between our proposal to increase to 125 so that, in effect, covers it. When Tom Baker and I talked he acknowledged that restaurants are the higher employee generation. So for 1,000sqft it is 3 to 5 employees for the tea room and 810 would be what on 3 to 5--2 to 3 employees or something. Or 2 to 4 or 2 to 3.5, whatever. changing it to a commercial brings it down to the lower category of 1 to 3 employees per 1,000sqft. So there is a margin in there that .93 is a mathematical equation of an employee can clearly be absorbed. So that change in use already reflects the employee generation if there is one for this as far as I am concerned. So you need not impose anything additional. More importantly we don't use the Silver Queen Restaurant for lunches. The Silver Queen is the main dining room. That is 2,000sqft of restaurant use. The calculations are based on that being used but in fact it is not being used at lunch. Tom Baker: When Kim and I reviewed the code specifically the CC Zone has that spread of employees. And typically a restaurant is a higher generation than retail shops. In this specific instance though, I think that neither use generated a lot of employees and I would be inclined to consider it pretty much of a wash. Nick: So the Silver Queen isn't used and that more than takes care of the difference in the outside seating. I am not saying you should condition this application on the fact that we hereby pledge the Silver Queen forever to be closed. We don't want to do that. We don't know what with new management coming in what plans they may have. There is a way to trigger it though by saying that if the Jerome changes it's operation and that the Silver Queen is opened as well as the outdoor seating, then we could come back and discuss with you proper mitigation. The 3 rd point as to why you shouldn't impose the .93 employee housing requirement at this stage is that dining outside is fairly negligible. The real reason wolfgang wants the increase to 125 is for lunches. people who dine at the Jerome want to dine in the Silver Queen. That is the fancy nice room there with all the antiques and stuff. We would like the flexibility to have the 125 seats and see what happens. Maybe there will be a few times in the summer but by and large we can probably serve any legitimate demand for outdoor dining with our existing approval of 44. So again that is a reason for indicating there is no additional employee generation. 6 PZM9.18.90 Finally, the Hotel Jerome is doing a pretty good job on employee housing now. For example it owns the Cortina. The Cortina has 17 units. Legally of the 17, 9 are restricted to use by our employees. We happen to use 100% of it for our employees. And that is our intent. In addition to that we house our employees at the North star Lodge. At the time we bought the cortina we also bought the North star. That is not market restricted and we don't propose that it be. But voluntarily we are housing 100% and using all 17 units as opposed to 9 which is what we are legally bound to. And we are also using the North star. So if we were proposing some large development then I think we all ought to talk about restrictions. But all we are proposing is increasing the outside seating to 125 and you are talking about .93 of an employee then I would say that is that's negligible that we ought to forget about for now because we already have these other informal commitments that we are using. So in other words what I am suggesting is that this is not a large enough application for us to engage in a great debate as to how we satisfy .93 of an employee when we are already doing more than that voluntarily. We didn't really give a lot of thought to mechanism. But I think that is a good question. On the special events when the events are specific--Winterskol--that is easy enough. You just approve that list. And we have 6 or 7 on that list. But we would be amenable to any reasonable thing on that. I don't know whether you want to limit it by numbers like up to 12 or up to 10 so that we can find out whether there is any demand for it. We see your point. We don't want to say daily unless we see impacts daily. What we could do is have the approval where we notify the Planning Office of the events so that after a year of use--a summer of use--we can see where we are on this. Jasmine: Are we assuming that your outdoor seating is going to be confined to lunchtime only? Nick: No. I didn't want to propose it that way. That makes it easier and makes the restriction clearer. What we would like to do is have the approval for the 125 and that includes dining as well and then we would like to see what the operation turns out. Jasmine: The reason I asked that is because in many instances the outdoor dining--if you are just going to be serving lunch and 7 PZM9.18.90 then you are going to generate a certain number of employees and I would like to talk at some other time about employee generation based on table seating rather than square footage because that is the way restaurants work. But the second thing is that if you are having so many additional people to serve lunch outdoors that is quite a different thing from having additional people who are going to be serving lunch outdoors and possibly dinner and cocktails to all hours outdoors. I think that the amount of impact that you have depends a tremendous amount on the hours of operation-not just the season of the year and I would really like to see some of that come down a little bit more. These special events also require additional employees which may or may not be drastic from your staff but weddings or special catered affairs you are dragging in a lot more additional employees because of this particular kind of event. And I am really very leery of these employee generation figures. I don't think it is a matter of 1 employee that we are working with. Nick: We all are bound by your own code on how it is done. We can't change it. Jasmine: I agree. But I think certainly the number of hours of operation have a lot to do with it and I think we need some real clarification on that. Nick: The current proposal does not have a restriction. I am indicating as a practical matter why you shouldn't worry about .93 employees. If we were talking about 6, 10 or a dozen employees, that is different. But when we are talking about .93, I am not sure this is the appropriate occasion for it. We want to leave it at lunch and dinner because we want maximum flexibility to see what happens. Wolfgang: We do have occasional couples who would like to have a reception on the outside. We do it with staff. We do not hire outside help. It is very difficult for us to do a party inside and on the lawn at the same time because of the kitchen facilities. People may have a cocktail reception on the lawn and then they have the dinner in the banquet room. Or they have the ceremony on the lawn and the reception in the dinning room. Nick: The one other thing that plays Jerome is consciously trying to be community. It does it with a lot of meetings, non-profits meetings etc. a role here is a focal point free meetings, that the in the election 8 PZM9.18.90 There are a lot of people who would like to have weddings at the Jerome because it is wonderful and historic. When you tell them for an outdoor summer wedding they can have a maximum of 44 people sitting down then we are deprived of that opportunity and the business. Welton: I remember when the tea room was switched to an antique store. But I also remember vaguely about a guest or suite on the ground floor was switched to real estate office. Wolfgang: It was never done. The suite is still there. Welton: I employees for tea room into think there was some question about increased that would be offset because you switched it from a an antique store. Sara: The Cortina and the North Star--you indicated that you own them all. Are all the rooms deed restricted? Nick: At the Cortina all units are restricted by an agreement signed and recorded with the city to employee dormitory housing. 9 of those units are restricted by deed or otherwise to use by our employees to mitigate our employee generation. So that means 8 units at the Cortina that are not restricted. In fact the agreement with the city specifically recites we are free to sell those to another employer to meet his employee mitigation impacts. We have not done that. We are housing our own employees there. with the North Star there are no restrictions whatsoever. We bought it as a free market lodge. It is a free market lodge today. But in fact we use it for our employees and we are not proposing to restrict it in any way. That would be a major financial decision. We are in fact using it for our employees and have since we bought it about 3 years ago. That is 22 units. The total population is about 40. There approximately 16 at the Cortina. Roger: You add those numbers and it is interesting to see--it shows you in effect how deficient our formula are in coming up with enough space for employees. out of that 60 employees, you have 8 deed restricted units for the use of the Hotel Jerome. Welton: That was a negotiated formula that was based on PUD, based on being an historic landmark. It evolved over several different developers over a period of 10 years. Nick: And there were a lot of different tradeoffs. The Jerome paid for new water lines, new sewer lines that the public would otherwise have had to pay for--the grading of the road. 9 PZM9.18.90 Welton: Nick, do you have any problems with the conditions numbered 1 through 4? Kim: #2 There were a lot of people talking here. Nick: OK. The short answer then is no to #1 to 4 or 5. Welton: OK. And #5 we have already said that May 15 and September 15 works fine. Nick: That is correct. Welton: Let's have some discussion about this .96 employees. Bruce: Are All 125 seats planned to be put out there May 15th and let sit until September 15th? Or do you plan to have the capacity to go up to 125 if needed. But basically to stay at the 44 level or whatever that was. Is the 125 number to accommodate the special events or is that to accommodate your daily traffic? Wolfgang: To accommodate the daily traffic. Nick: 125. That is correct. Special events would be larger than the That is what the application is. Yes. Richard: You say that for special events you might have more than 125. Would you use the lawn space and the pool or-- Nick: Couldn't use the pool. We would use the lawn space. Richard: Would you put up tents for some of those events outside? Nick: We never thought of that. Richard: I am trying to think the Jerome every Saturday and they have got the whole yard filled with circus tents. That would be a major impact as I see it. I think we should take that into consideration. Mari: When you talk about seating for 125, are you being specific that only 125 would be seated or could you have a higher capacity than that if it were for like a stand-up cocktail party. Welton: Have you ever been there on a Friday afternoon? 10 PZM9.18.90 Nick: The seats that David has here are fairly generously placed and they seat 125. Now, for example, if someone had 175 guests we would put out more tables. But that would not be the normal operation. But we would do that. Wolfgang: The only time this year that we had a request for more seating than we already had was for the Food and Wine. Nick: And what we did on the Food and Wine when wolfgang and I looked into the details of the PUD and we talked with people in the city and said "Look I think this is going to be a technical violation if we put more than 44 people out there and they said "Well it probably is but why you don't go ahead and take your risks". We went ahead and did it because the event was already scheduled and it was an important event to the community. Mari: But that was only if you seat more than 44. You can have as many standing as you want. Wolfgang: Right. There is no restriction on that. Bruce: Except for the Fire Marshal coming along and saying-- One way I look at this--I understand, Nick, that you are saying that these other dining rooms are not going to be used and this is sort of a trade off. The fact is that those other dining rooms still exist and those other tables are still in there. Are you are not placing any restrictions on that use? The bottom line the way I look at it is we are increasing your potential seating by 80 people. And that is where I have a problem with the .96 employee generation. Ultimately we have got 80 more potential people in there eating. And I know that probably for Wolfgang it is hard to do 2 events simultaneously but I also know that if somebody is there writing the check, you will probably figure out a way to do it. So I think there is some potential impact here that is not reflected necessarily in the memo and a trade off of the tea room vs. antique and all of that sort of is immaterial to me. What I look at is we have got 80 plus seats going in there that we don't have now. And how do we account for the impact of that? Jasmine: I think one of the things which makes this a little bit different is this is a negotiated PUD and this is a PUD amendment. And therefore I think we do have the right to treat it a little bit differently in terms of trying to take a more realistic look at the impacts because of this change. I think that probably now if we went through and used the figures tha.t are in effect now for employee generation or anything closer to 11 PZM9.18.90 reality that the employee generation needs of the entire operation would be considerably more than were originally represented. This is not necessarily anybody's fault. It is just that we have gotten a lot more knowledgeable on this as have applicants. Therefore I think when a PUD comes up for renewal in the light of the information that we have now and better information I think we have a right to take a different look at employee generation. Welton: This is a public hearing. public with comments? Pat Ryerson, (This is only a guess at what she said her name was.) We live 2 doors down from the Jerome and we have lived there almost 20 years. And I implore you to consider the other impacts. Parking, noise, litter. We have them and the FAC this year. (This woman was very difficult to understand. ) garbage cans in the street. But one of the problems I have is the whole compliment of trade-offs. I came to all the meetings neighborhood. Is there anybody from the We were quaranteed there would be no impacts for the parking., We were told the employees would use their garage or the new parking garage which we wholeheartedly supported. I watch every day the employees from the Jerome come parking and at night. I can't find a place to park when I come home from work. I really have questions about the generation of the client parking and the employee parking. Where are those people going to go? At 4:30 on Friday afternoons people are just barreling up Monarch trying to find a place to park and they don't leave until 2 or 3:00 in the morning. And you have children on that street and it is like they run right through the Bleeker stop sign to get that parking space as close to the Jerome as possible. And the trade-offs we thought the green space hoping there would be that nice green area and a flower garden and little by little it is being lost. And since this was a negotiated PUD I would hope that you would scrutinize this very carefully. ?: Parry Harvey did come to our home and met with the neighborhood. He made several guarantees to us. One was regrading the hill at the Jerome's expense. It was not an option. It was their plan to re-grade that hill because we mentioned the incredible shadow that this new building cast icing the street. And they said yes, they would do that at their own expense. ____? neighbor and re-graded his own driveway at their own expense which was not an option as earlier discussed according to Parry Harvey. 12 PZM9.18.90 He is also the one who guaranteed the employees would not park in the neighborhood. Deliveries--trucks would not be stopping in the street which has never been paid attention to either. There has never been a follow through on any of these guarantees that were made. So we are concerned about this discussion now. Welton asked if there were any other public comments. There were . none and he closed the public portion of the hearing; Wel ton: I am surprised Roger didn't bring up that last point because every other time that I am coming up Mill Street and take a right on Bleeker Street, there is a big old truck parked right in the middle of the street making passage scary if not downright dangerous. And that was one item of a lot of discussion way back when that this was the state of the art service dock area and that all trucks would be able to back in, back out and not interfere with traffic or sight lines on Bleeker Street. It is the same old story as it is everywhere else in Aspen that the truck is double parked and there is a line of parking on the south side of Bleeker Street and then the truck parks outside of where those employees are parked blocking the service dock and it is down to one lane again. Nick: The Jerome is very interested in being a good neighbor and always has and it will continue to be. If anybody brings us a problem, we will be happy to look into it. It doesn't have anything to do with this application. If you have a problem with somebody parking illegally outside we deal with that every day and try and solve it every day. That doesn't relate to this. Welton: A PUD amendment is generally taken as a chance to look at all the conditions that were on the original PUD and see if those conditions of the original PUD have, in fact, been met. Nick: We, as far as I can say, rigidly adhere to our PUD agreements as a matter of record. We review it all the time with City Staff. If you believe we are in violation of it please call it to our attention. We will be happy to look at every aspect. Welton: I basically don't have any problem with increases of employees because of the 2 major reasons. One that the tea room was switched to an antique store and there was a reduction in employee generation there. Two because of the nature of your operation, and really the nature of most operations of most restaurants and that is that when you see an outdoor patio full of people it means that there is nobody inside because they want to be outside. 13 PZM9.18.90 Jasmine: That is not the case. Welton: And third, that the fact that the Jerome is housing 6 or 7 times the employees that were agreed to be housed in the PUD negotiations that is they are housing somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 and their obligation is only to house 9 and talking about adding .96 seems like putting makeup on the pig. It may look pretty but it doesn't accomplish a whole lot. I am inclined to, if the applicant doesn't have any problems with conditions #1 through #5, and I am inclined to delete #6 and #7. What does the rest of the Commission want to do? Roger: I would reinforce the neighbor's concern about the parking. I drive by that street fairly often. I guess I have become somewhat immune to the delivery problem--seeing it almost never working the way it should. But to give an example of the parking problem and this isn't the employee parking for the people living in the Cortina and I am not sure it is the parking of the people who live in the North star. But to name names-- Cliff Little's Jeep is in the same spot every day at all hours. I have nothing against Cliff Little but if he does it and has the same spot daily, I wonder how many other employees in the same complex do exactly the same thing. And I am sort of wondering what do we do? Put timed limit parking there? All that means is that the people will come out and rub their tires every 90 minutes as opposed to getting them over in the parking structure or some facility where they belong in the first place. Nick: I have an idea. We will do a survey so we can see. And we might try some sort of chit system for employees with the city Parking lot. We might be able to work that. We don't want them on the street either because it interferes with the people using the Jerome. We will work on that. Roger: I really appreciate that. Welton: Would you like to make that as an additional condition that a parking survey be done internally within the Jerome organization that will determine to their and our satisfaction about the predominance of parking in the neighborhood of the employees and that a chit system-- Nick: I am Nick McGrath, the lawyer and neither of us are bosses so what I would suggest if you want to put it as a condition we will do it in good faith and come back to you--send you a letter on it. But if you want to do it as a condition, say something like "The applicant make reasonable efforts to identify and address the possible problems of employees parking on the 14 PZM9.18.90 streets". And let us come back with the information. no sense making it a condition if we don't know what the the problem is. Welton: OK. Then the condition would read that "You would do this inventory, do the survey and come back to the Planning Office and if the Planning Office determines that there is a need for a solution to this problem then it would be handled on a Planning Office staff level if possible. If not then it can come back to P&Z. There is scope of Another condition which you suggested in your other comments and that is that the if the Silver Queen' Restaurant is open during the day then the conditions of operation will be considered to have changed and that the application must be re-reviewed. Nick: What I wanted to is make sure I wasn't restricting our use of the Silver Queen because it is not restricted now. What I think we can agree to is a condition that said "If the Jerome's regular operation changes significantly that we are obliged to notify you or the Planning Office may again raise whether .93 employees housing mitigation should in fact be required. Welton: We are talking about the new #6, new #7 or #8 and #9. Graeme: I think we ought to stick to requiring them to mitigate the employees as one of the arguments for and against. But I think the increased flexibility of what they can do is going to generate more activity. They should be required to do that. Then another thing which was touched on and I think is really important and that is the word "occasional". I do think that the Jerome should be allowed to have most of these special events because I do think it is a special part of the community. But I think weddings and private cocktail parties aren't so much a part of the community. I live near the Historical Society and they have a lot of special events--weddings, whatnot and they do impact the surrounding area very significantly. And I think if we start to see a lot of outdoor weddings and things like that going on here there are going to be a lot of impacts. And I think we should come up with a very definite and specific number on how many of these other events besides the specific ones listed there could be. A private wedding I think is different than a public sort of a World Cup celebration. Welton: People have been having weddings at the nicest hotel in town since this hotel was built in biblical times. A wedding at a hotel is not a new concept. 15 PZM9.18.90 Graeme: But there is the potential here to be having 3 in a row on a weekend and this becomes much mOre of an activity center than--and in some way restricts the public perception of the hotel. Welton: But as far as I know there is not restriction on the number of weddings right now, is there? It is only the number of seats. Nick: Right. Welton: They could have a regular Las Vegas wedding chapel operating. Mari: What we are talking about is restricting the number of larger than 125 seat events. Graeme: Exactly. They have got a list here of larger events-- special events that they would like to have. And they are saying that these special events could be extended to occasional weddings, occasional private cocktail parties so that they can go beyond their restrictions. Nick: We don't think we are going to have a lot. So I don't want us to take all of your time today to talk about what is an appropriate number. We don't think there is going to be a lot. We want to see what is out there and how the Jerome can effectively be used. If you put down 12 cocktail parties and 12 weddings--occasional but not more than 12 without further approval. Is that-- Welton: Does anybody have a problem with that? Graeme: That sounds like a lot. then with these. with the special events and Nick: 1 per week? Graeme: Plus they are going to be in the summer not in the winter and there is a big event there every night on the week ends in the summer and when there is a big event there it does jam up that area. Welton: But that area is the commercial core. And that area has historically been around the Jerome Hotel which is the center of town--the center of activity. Nick: And you want it there instead of the Historic Society 16 PZM9.18.90 because that is a residential area. That is why the Jerome is where it is. The town grew up around the Jerome. Roger: Why not just non-specific 20 other events? Welton: 20 weddings and--I would hate for the wedding police to come knocking at their door saying "No, you had your last wedding of the season last week". Nick: I think we can go with that. Bruce: I don't know if Nick and the applicant know it or not but generally I tend to vote in favor of the applicants more than any other member of this Commission. But I am really struggling with this application because the way I perceive it the Hotel Jerome was approve as a PUD and said "This approval is going to serve the needs of this community". since that time we now have the Little Nell Hotel and we will soon have the Ritz Carlton Hotel. Maybe. I understand that you are probably trying to gain some sort of competitive advantage and I am concerned about the historic nature of the Jerome and want to see it stay viable and active. But I am really concerned about whether adding 80 more outdoor seats to this courtyard at the Jerome is really necessary for this community. It may be necessary for the Jerome. Mari: As the Jerome goes--so goes-- Bruce: That is where I am coming from. Nick: We do want to remain competitive with the other luxury hotels. They are newer than the Jerome. We have the advantage because of the historic quality of the Jerome. Everything that we are proposing to do but for putting people on their fannies on chairs, we can already do. We can have parties there. We can have all sorts of people out there. In other words if you look at it in that way we are not changing the impacts a whole hell of a lot at all. All we are doing now is saying like most of the other restaurants in town--people in the summer like to sit down for lunch outside. And that is what we are basically proposing to do here. You can look at it as 80 more seats. That is a lot more seats. Do we want to approve it? Our view is that this isn't a demonstrably larger impact than what we are currently allowed to do now. The only difference is we can sit down the difference between 44 and 125. We can do all the other parties. We can have cocktail parties instead of sit 17 PZM9.18.90 down events with the same number of people. What the Jerome is guided by more is the question of the Jerome's ambiance and what it offers to people. Mari: I think that there are some non-tangible, non-palpable qualities in a PUD as represented that allow approval to go through. And even though they don't fall into any formula or any code requirements--and to me one of the representations that was important in this PUD was the fact that there was going to be some non-commercial green space and garden space. And what is happening now is that is being impinged upon a~d impinged upon incrementally. And I am just afraid that l.n another few years we will go by and then they will say "Well, you now already have all these cocktail parties where people stand around in the garden and it really isn't good for the lawn and it makes it a quagmire. It would really make more sense just to deck that over so that we can hold these events without ladies getting their high heels sunk into the mud. And it would all seem perfectly reasonable and in an incremental way to put 10 more feet of deck and pretty soon one of the jewels in the centerpieces of the whole PUD which was represented as having this ;ewel of a non-commercial green garden space instead of covering up every square inch of the entire lot has been totally compromised. This really bothers me. Nick: I understand your feeling. But this was never represented to be a park. This isn't like some of the pocket parks that you see around town. You say non-commercial green space. When this was approved, this was not approved with-- Mari: The landscaping plan was approved to be a garden. Nick: That is true. But you are saying non-commercial. Non- commercial means, to me, a park as opposed to some area of activity associated with the hotel. It does not say non- commercial park. It is not like any of the pocket parks around town. Mari: You see, there you go again. The PUD is a negotiated. The amount of open space is negotiated. The FAR is negotiated. It is all negotiated and everything is loose and free and then when you comedown to something Which is a matter of feeling you fall back on "Well, technical Iv nothing ever is sure". Welton: I think it was represented-- Mari: It was represented as a garden. Jasmine: It was represented as a garden. 18 PZM9.18.90 Welton: My recollections from as early as the Gilmore plans was that it was a garden that was to be used for wedding receptions and for hotel related-- Mari: But a decked over garden is no longer a garden as far as I am concerned. Nick: Well, we are not asking you to approve any decking. And the answer to any argument that all of us get--and it doesn't matter what public body you are on or before--everybody always says "Well, this is incremental. I am not sure I like this because they are going to do this later". The answer is they are not going to do this later as long as you are here, Richard is here, etc. Roger: Oh, don't count on it, Nick. Jasmine: It is what you are doing now. Welton: to fill doing a I want to get some closure on this because we are trying up a 2 and 1/2 hour meeting with one item. And we are good job of it. Richard: This deck here was approved as an insubstantial amendment by what process? Kim: In the PUD section there is 2 methods to amend an insubstantial development plan. One is the insubstantial process and the other is the full process requiring a hearing at P&Z and a hearing at Council. There are standards of review that you have to count off if you are trying to go under as an insubstantial. In the June memo we have included describing how we looked at that as an insubstantial addition realizing that and basing a lot of that on HPC's recommendation. I believe Amy talked to Welton about that to get a feel of what had happened in the '86 approval that might affect her decision. And she felt that she could take a certain portion of the existing green space and allow it to be decked over considering that it still fell in the category of open space. It was not reducing open space and it was not increasing floor area. She felt less comfortable with the service deck in the upper portion and so we decided to place a time limit on the existence of that deck. It was already there and we more or less talked it over with the hotel people and said "OK, we can leave it here during this one season and include that into a more comprehensive PUD package". That is how that came into being. Bruce: So is that deck coming out? 19 PZM9.18.90 Nick: No. We are asking for approval. this out if you don't give us approval will do if we don't get approval. We are obliged to take by October 31 which we Mari: When you say service deck. Does that mean there will be tables there or is that just a place for you to set up your waitress stations and so on? Wolfgang: Right. Mari: Right, what? Wolfgang: No tables. There are no tables indicated. Nick: Under the existing plan it is approved for tables now. But that is where the Jerome serves from for afternoon events. Mari: And if that service deck were removed, where would this service station be? Nick: They would stand in mud. Mari: They couldn't go from inside? Nick: It makes it impractical. MOTION Richard: I move to approve with the recommended conditions 1 through 7 the Planning Office memo (attached in record) with the addition to #5 of dates May 15 to September 15 and in #6 and #7 the mitigation of .96 employees. It seems to me that there are significant impacts in approving this additional seating. Welton: Would you consider also adding to condition #1 down the 7th line just prior to "occasional weddings and occasional private cocktail receptions" adding a maximum of 20 per year of occasional weddings and occasional cocktail receptions? That is 20 events--occasional weddings, occasional cocktail receptions. That is not including Winterskol or 4th of JUly. Only the weddings and cocktail receptions. And would you also consider adding on condition #8 that they will survey the employee parking patterns in the neighborhood and will take that information to the Planning Office for determination if further parking mitigation would be necessary. And also would you consider adding as condition #9 that if the restaurant operation internal to the hotel such as if the Silver 20 PZM9.18.90 Queen is opened during the day then the conditions of their operation have changed sufficiently that McGrath: Let me suggest now--this motion includes .96. The .96 is the full impact recommended. So what I am suggesting is as long as the motion is that we have to do the .96 then drop that condition because it doesn't apply any longer. Richard: So that condition #8 and not use the existing condition #9 because of this argument that Nick made. Welton: OK. There is a motion on the floor. One of the more complicated ones of the Summer Season. Is there a second to that motion. Graeme seconded the motion. Discussion Jasmine: I would like to know if there is any interest in having the Housing Authority do an audit after the period of about a year of this operation to see what the actual employee generation figure would be. Kim: Would you consider an audit today and then an audit one year out. That way you see the change. Bruce: Graeme says that will generate 2 new employees in the Housing Authority. Mari: As long as we are making them mitigate for what we can make them mitigate for I don't really see what--it is just for the purpose of information. Jasmine: Well, but it isn't. This is the way we approached the Ritz. They made a representation about the number of employees generated which we disputed and so it was agreed as part of the negotiations that an employee audit would be taken after a certain amount of time. Mari: But you are talking about requiring further mitigation-- Jasmine: If it is necessary. Welton: Or less mitigation if it is shown that in fact their assumption was correct. McGrath: We will have a hard time not showing .96 employee increase or decrease. 21 PZM9.18.90 Jasmine: I just think that since this is such an issue--I fervently believe--for every restaurant that I have worked in which is quite a few, that this number is not right. And I really think that it is important for us to get a track on it because we have gotten to a point in this community where we have critical employee housing problems. And I think that we need to get a grasp of the situation. Mari: Are you sayinq you don't believe the .96 is accurate or the entire PUD? We know the entire PUD is not accurate. Jasmine: The entire PUD is not adequate. But this in particular I think is really inadequate. Richard: Don't forget that that .96 is 2.88 seasonally adjusted. Kim: And then also in using an equation using the minimum threshold in growth management competition whereby an applicant who is vying for growth management square footage would exceed that most likely. Jasmine: them get going'to So in other words you just think that we should let away with a minimal increase when we know that it is not be a minimal increase? I don't understand that logic. Welton: But in defense of the applicant they are housing some 7 or 8 times the number of employees voluntarily that they were required to house. Jasmine: continue. But there is no guarantee that this situation will They could sell the North Star tomorrow. Nick: There are a lot of lodges in operation who don't provide any. Jasmine: I just feel that we are investigating this matter further. motion under these circumstances. being very negligent in not And I would not approve this Welton: There is a motion on the floor. Is there-- Roger: I certainly feel and agree with Bruce, Mari and Jasmine on this. I am going to be voting for the motion. My major concern in addition to what is already expressed is that they have got the addition of the decking through insubstantial change to the PUD but the "insubstantial change to the PUDlO all of a sudden gives them the opportunity to place 30 4-place tables plus service areas in that area. 22 PZM9.18.90 I am going to suffer the loss of the green space there. It may still be "open space" but what was originally in the landscape plan a green garden has now become at least half Redwood--over 50% now with the approval of both insubstantial decking and then the additional decking which gets it's final approval here. That is over 50% of the green space in the original landscaping plan which now has been covered up. I sure hope the Jerome does not come in with the final amount of lawn covered with decking or whatever while I am on P&Z because at that point they definitely won't have my vote. Mari: And the PUD represented grass. Richard: I agree. I am disappointed that the deck is there. I am trying to get something back for it now. Mari: Does this motion approve their service deck as well? Richard: Yes. Mari: I would be willing to support a motion which required their service deck to go away and be incorporated into this huge deck because if they really aren't going to have these people ever--they are only going to have 40 people most of the time-- Welton: It is right off the back of the J-Bar and that is where they get their service. And putting it over on the other side is making for an impractical situation. That is where they set up the bar for FAC. Mari: I remember when they used to have a parachute in that courtyard and they served it without a service deck there. They served it from-- Baker: HPC's charge is to look at it most differently than P&Z. And so I think that what HPC views as being appropriate that that isn't within the character of that structure. Mari: My criteria is the loss of green space. control over the insubstantial amendment that granted. I don't have any has already been Welton: If you are concerned about the loss of green space the green space that you see walking down the sidewalk is the green space that is in the foreground. The decking that is covering the back 40% of the green space is behind a row of planters. Maybe Richard would amend his motion to say that that decking is completely screened from the sidewalk by planters and trees and greenery so that what you see from the street is not any redwood 23 PZM9.18.90 decking at all. I could back something like that. It would really effectively put the decked area behind a green screen. Kim: One of HPC's or Roxanne's speaking towards in June was that substantial green screening be why my recommended conditions requires the L bench. HPC discussions placed which is shaped planter Richard: Addressing that issue, this is not an amendment at this point. Welton: Would you amend your motion to include a green screen? Richard: Yes. Welton: There is a motion on the floor and a second. Is there any further discussion. All in favor signify by say aye. All voted in favor of the motion except Jasmine and Bruce. Mari: Wait a minute. I never was clear--The original motion? Welton: The original motion with the amendment--did you amend it? The green screen? Richard: I would consider that but I don't consider the type of planter that they have now to be a green screen. It is a wood screen which increases the impact of wood that you are looking at. If you want to put a hedge in there with some openings in it and you plant the hedge right in the ground--some small evergreen shrubs or something like that, I would consider that. Welton to applicant: Would that be possible? Wolfgang: I think we should discuss with Roxanne and make sure she is in agreement. I think we could do that, Welton: Fine. That vote was null and void because it was confused and there was a discussion going on over here and I call it null and void. Would you amend your motion to include screening of green vegetable matter? Richard: Yes. Mari: Subject to HPC approval. Welton: Subject to HPC and Planning Office review and approval 24 PZM9.18.90 that effectively would screen nearly all of the service and the larger deck. Richard: I will so amend. Graeme agreed to amend his second to the motion. Everyone voted in favor of this motion except Jasmine and Bruce. Meeting was adjourned. Time was 6:25pm. Nick: On a straw vote, is there only one vote--yours, Welton that would have said we don't even need to apply in light of all the circumstances for the .96? Welton: For their curiosity who else was willing to go along with me and call the employee housing question a wash and not impose that .96? No one raised their hand on this question. 25