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HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.apz.19930413 v ~!( ~, . , RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS ,-' PLANNING , ZONING COMMISSION APRIL 13. 1993 Chairlady Jasmine Tygre called meeting to order at 4:30 PM. Answering roll call were Tim Mooney, David Brown, Sara Garton, Richard Compton, Bruce Kerr, Roger Hunt and Jasmine Tygre. COMMISSIONER COMMENTS There were none. STAFF COMMENTS Diane informed Commission on work session with local planning & Zoning members on May 2nd from 9:00 to 3:00 in Glenwood. Memo is forthcoming on this. PUBLIC COMMENTS There were none. ASPEN ARTS AND RECREATION CENTER (RED BRICK) REZONING , TEXT AMENDMENT -' Jasmine opened the public hearing. Kim made presentation as attached in record. Alice Davis, Representative for applicant: What the committee has recommended and Council has not accepted is to use everything but the 1941 portion of the building which is effectively 22,000 to 35,000sqft. council is trying to decide whether they want ,to mothball it, tear it down or re-use it. Right now they are looking at 3 bids to look at all three options. They really haven't decided what they want to do with the older section of the building. Kim: The Engineering Dept comments that he feels the rezoning will have improved impacts on traffic generation and road safety based on the previous use of the school and the necessity to block off streets and manipulate the traffic pattern because of the small children involved during the daytime. He also feels that the 35 parking spaces should exceed the minimum requirements for similar office uses. /.^"~.'^""- I Tom Baker from the Housing Office commented that the information that we got from the school district indicated that 24 to 30 full time equivalent employees have been stationed at the school building when it was a school and that the application information depending on the different types of generation calculation process '" - PZM4.13.93 indicates that 21 to 48 employees full time equivalent could be at the school. He believes the employee generation will not exceed that of the former school use. Jasmine: One of the things I am having trouble coming to grips with in this application is what exactly requires the rezoning to Public as opposed to the text amendment for the arts, cultural and recreational activities? Why do we need to zone this to Public and then why do we need the text amendment and why do those have to be 2 separate things. Kim: The AACP set a goal to rezone the building to Public. Public funds purchased the building for public use. The contemplated uses being arts, recreational and cultural are typically public oriented uses that a lot of other communities already have listed under their Public Zone District. The Aspen Public Zone District specifies recreational facilities and performing art center--neither of which we felt on their own or in combination really encompassed the proposed non-profit users and art support. Aside from performing arts Aspen wanted to provide something slightly different when it was put to the vote. Planning staff looked at those uses that are currently in the Public zone district and said "Could we realistically and honestly be able to make interpretation that non-profit arts related office uses accessory to the recreation uses which are fairly straight forward--we would be able to make an interpretation that those uses fall under the categories already listed in the Public zone?" We feel that that was not possible and that we would apply a new permitted use which is a little more broad--arts, cultural and recreational activities. Jasmine: The parcel should be zoned Public because it is a public use and was acquired by public funds. But the Public zoning itself would not allow some of the specific uses that are contemplated for this building. So you need the text amendment. Kim: Right. Jasmine: That would affect other public zones too. Kim: True. There are 12 other Public zone parcels including City Hall, Fire Station, Courthouse Building, Ice Garden. Potentially someone could propose to put a roller rink in the basement of city Hall. Diane: I think what we are proposing is appropriate and certainly fits within the purpose of that Public Zone District. We just wanted to make it a cleaner fit. 2 PZM4.13.93 Jasmine: I am just questioning what effect it might have on other Public Zone Districts if you make this a permitted use. Diane: I don 't see it being radically different from what is already on that list. I don't see it as a potential problem. Bruce: The answer to Jasmine's concern is that it is something that is reviewed and it is not as of right. Kim: structural changes to an existing facility have to be reviewed by PUD plan criteria. Davis: Nationally arts related and recreation related uses are extremely common in the Public Zone. Roger: I look at arts, cultural and recreational activities as being more generic than performing arts center recreation center. Should we not remove performing arts center and recreation center because they are covered by arts, cultural and recreational activities. I am looking at simplifying this thing. Bruce: If you look at that section of our code the dimensional requirements--it says the dimensional requirements which shall apply to all permitted conditional uses etc etc--those are both terms of art and they should be mutually exclusive but yet they are used together there. So I don't know whether that is talking about permitted uses or conditional uses. Kim: I think it is a typo that there is the word "and" was not in there. Bruce: If the word "and" is in there then I understand it. Davis: It is not in the code. It was codified without the "and". Diane: The "and" should be there. Bruce: We should do this as part of this process. Kim: So we will be deleting #6 and #10. lease discussions include how individual or qualified to be on here. We have talked about the arts are being reviewed Cindy Wilson: It is vague at this point because what will happen is the City is working on management agreement with the arts council. And the arts council will then with the city set the specific criteria. There will be general criteria that will be in the lease between the city and the Arts Council that would have to be met. There will be criteria set as to who the building will be leased to. 3 PZM4.13.93 REZONING FROM R-6 TO PUBLIC Bruce: What would your response be as to the down side of doing some of the things that are proposed by the neighbors ie leaving it R-6 but creating the use that we want the building as a conditional use in that zone. Kim: staff considers that an interesting alternative. But one thing that is of concern to us is the scheduling of the process. We have gotten underway with the process of proposing to rezone it to Public in accordance with the Aspen Area Community Plan recommendation. We were discussing the option with Jed and he says that it is not uncommon to have the Public Zone encompass these types of uses. ' Diane: I think that this location and it's use and where it is situated is appropriate for Public. Bruce: The reason the school has always been there is that schools are conditional uses in the R-6 zone. Davis: The whole community plan said "Buy it with public money and use it for public uses and rezone it to Public". One of the complaints from opponents to the rezoning in the neighborhood is that they are worried that it is going to change to affordable housing. Public Zone is definitely much more of a safeguard against that than leaving it residential because that is a much more likely scenario to go from R-6 to affordable housing than from Public to affordable housing. We have absolutely no intention of using it for affordable housing. Bruce: This property is encumbered by things other than the zoning that we put on it--whatever that zoning is. It is encumbered by the conditions of the vote that the public took and the conditions that that placed in this property. So I don't think we need to worry unnecessarily about some potential uses that are out there just by virtue of the fact that there is Public Zone because the property is encumbered legally by the conditions of that vote. MOTION Roger: I move to recommend to City Council the map amendment to rezone the former school site known as the red brick school site from R-6 to Public. I further move to amend the text to include arts, cultural, recreational activities buildings and uses as a permitted use in the Public Zone District and deleting Performing Arts Center and Community Recreation Facilities from that same 4 PZM4.13.93 list. Bruce seconded the motion with all in favor. PARKING AND GMOS EXEMPTION AN ESSENTIAL PUBLIC FACILITY Kim: In regard to not using that paved area behind the school for parking--recently the city adopted a code amendment to allow unused parking spaces in the LTR Zone for public parking uses on conditional use review by the Commission. I think that consistent with that concept is if you have space available for parking to alleviate overflow parking or parking pressures in the surrounding neighborhood that staff feels that using that area for parking is not contrary to the city's recently adopted code amendment for a different zone district to try and utilize those spaces that are available. Roger: This area is included in the area for residential parking permits. I think it is essential to have parking for this facility that is outside of that permit zone because of the nature of what will be going on in this building. It is not that the people will not be able to use the on street parking but it is going to be considerably restricted for them. So I think this parking plan is really essential for the success of the Arts Center concept here. And I think it probably should be signed for people using the arts center building. It could well become a free parking lot if it wasn't indicated that it was restricted for users of that building. Julie?: Regarding drop off parking--because of the residential permit Hallam Street near the gym could be a 20 minute dropoff parking for people taking their kids to the center because I think if you don't provide that they are going to double park or do whatever it takes to drop their kids. All Commissioners were in favor of this suggestion for dropoff parking. Roger: I would recommend it to the Transportation Director. David: When we make a motion I would like to encourage required landscaping around the parking lot. It is almost a green belt back there and I think it would go a long way to soften the impact of parking. As far as GMQS goes I tend to disagree with the application saying that there is no need for housing mitigation on this site. The schools both when they were here and then located out to the school 5 PZM4.13.93 campus did not mitigate their housing requirement for educational employment stating that those were jobs that were already in the community. That probably is so. The schools had employees in the community. This, in essence, is creation in use and for them to say they are not creating new jobs and then to say "Well now the space is here and we are not creating new jObs"-- Jasmine: Sort of like double dipping. David: Something like that. But I don't buy it. I agree with what Julie has said. I think the arts are a huge part of this community. The arts are probably as much a reason this community exists as sports and recreation. But I think people who are in the arts whether it is for profit or non profit are as much in need of finding a place to live as anyone else. And I think that this will be creating new opportunities if only indirectly. So I can see a real need to, if not go through the whole GMQS process, at least provide some housing mitigation. Davis: This GMQS exemption is actually not required. The only time you need a GMQS allotment is if you are expanding new area, making new space, which would create the impact for employee or parking. The reason that the school didn't provide the housing when they expanded the new space is because they'were exempt from local review. This is technically and legally by the code. We don't have to provide anything because it is not an expansion. There is no new square footage. Jasmine: But it is new usage. Davis: But they usually don't have to go through GMP and get an allotment for change ~n use. Technically there could be an argument that we should have to go through the change in use process to deal with the impacts. And that is why we figured the best avenue to accomplish it is this GMQS exemption. Another way to look at it is the employee impact moved from the school to the school. The existing uses that are around the community now are also existing. It is not like new arts people. David: I know when we did the day care center in the yellow brick school that came up. with the change in use, how are you going to mitigate your employee housing because there are new jobs and indirectly if somebody is coming from another office space of some kind, some other tenant will occupy that office space. There won't be any mitigation for that. 6 PZM4.13.93 Davis: Also--change in use--this has been a public use for 100 years. So it is not technically a change in use either. I don't think that we need to address employee mitigation technically through the code. We want to do what we need to do but we also think that we have proven that there are no new employee impacts. Jasmine: I think what David is saying is that there are new employee impacts and that it ill-behooves the City to try to worm out of mitigating for that. Davis: Except that the code--even Tom Baker in his memo says there is really not an avenue to ask for it. David: What would be the down side if we did not approve GMQS exemption? Kim: We would have to compete for square footage under Growth Management. That is what GMQS exemption means is that you do not have to compete. Richard: There is no square footage to compete for-- MPT Kim: That Growth Management Exemption for essential public facilities criteria provides for Council to determine that no mitigation may be required--a part or all mitigation. So exempting from the competition is one thing which I agree I think that without creating new square footage competition doesn't serve any use or purpose. Mitigation factor is another issue and whether you want to forward a recommendation to Council one way or the other about mitigation--what we tried to establish in the memo is that it is a neutral impact as far as employees from the school use to the proposed use. Tim: I think you could quantify it because 5% of the building is going to be for profit. I think it behooves the management of the Center to rent for a limited period of time so that there always is a turnover of young artists and there always is a new generational-type artist movement that has opportunity to have space in town. I think that generates new activity--new growth. I think that there is going to be impacts especially with housing. We are creating a new venue for people to become prominent artists and we want to turn over these prominent artists as they get better and better seeded in the community and they are selling more works. They should move out and someone else who is young and new should move in. 7 PZM4.13.93 Richard: I consider arts activities as essential as our 3-R public education in this community so that it is as essential to the community as anything else. And that there wouldn't be the demand for the space if it were new expansion space for the arts groups. It is essentially replacement space that the old community center served as a major center for arts and recreation. They had a room for lectures, meetings, aerobics, the big meeting room over there so that I see this facility as being replacement for that. Groups used to have their office in the Wheeler before it was remodeled which included Grass Roots and I don't know who all else. At one time at the end of the 70's when there were fewer kids in the school system, the Writer's Foundation actually had it's office right in the red brick building. So I don't see this as anything but consolidating groups that have been scattered and are being driven out of existence by the market prices. I favor GMQS exemption. Jasmine: I think David's concern which I share to a great extent does not really affect whether or not the exemption is granted. I think what you might want to do is if you feel as I do that somewhere along the line there are more people that have been accounted for in terms of mitigation of impact. That might be a separate motion as a recommendation to Council that you might want to make but it doesn't really affect the exemption. We might want to recommend that despite the fact that this is an exemption that in some people's opinion on the Commission that there are in fact employee generations that are not taken into account and that we would like to see the Council mitigate. Sara: If GMQS exemption is passed here tonight-- Jasmine: They don't have to compete. Sara: But the only reason they are asking for it is so that they don't have to mitigate. Jasmine: They don't have to compete. Sara: No. They don't have to compete because they are not asking for any additional footage. They are asking for exemptions so they don't have to mitigate. Right? Davis: If we are denied the GMQS exemption we still don't have to compete because we are not expanding FAR. David: I heard Kim say something different than what Alice was saying. 8 PZM4.13.93 Kim: Alice hit it on the head in that if we were creating new space it wouldn't be a doubt whether or not this is a required action. But staff wanted to cover the issues of whether or not this was "new space". I think Richard equated that it is not really new space especially for this set of users. But I think the City would be hard-pressed if they were required to be paying mitigation requirements if P&Z and Council agrees that there are X number of new employees generated above and beyond previous use encompassing the other users as they are about the community now. So it is going to have to be an issue that Council is going to have to make it a financial issue. Davis: You do not have a legal avenue in the code to require these mitigations. The only way you get the GMQS is if you expand. And we are not expanding. If we were a private user going in and we were using existing space we do not have to go through Growth Management. The second is a change in use. This is technically not a change in use. So I think the bottom line that you need to think about is that given the fact that you don't have a legal avenue to request this do you believe that the impacts are neutral? We are going to have around 30 employees and they had around 30 employees in the past. So we think it is impact neutral. And it certainly is less impacting from other perspectives too--trip generation from when it was a school. David: If we deny GMQS Exemption what is the down side? Kim: If you found that there were additional employee impact and you wish to deny this, this project would be required to-- Davis: Mitigate employee housing which probably means they would take West Hopkins or some project and say "OK these 3 units are for this project". I don't know what they would do. Sara: Staff recommended that GMQS be part of this application simply because they knew mitigation might come up. Kim: We wanted to be able to provide an avenue to look at the mitigation because we knew that someone was going to bring up all the employees that will be occupying that structure. We wanted this discussion to forward on to Council. Jasmine: What I am uncomfortable with is we don't know exactly which uses are going to be in this building. We don't know whether this is going to be use neutral. I don't feel comfortable signing off on it. with the Ritz and other hotels we have provisionary period where 9 PZM4.13.93 we review them after a year or two of actual uses. It is well and good to have all of these statistics from other parts of the country but if they don't really apply to this particular building and the way it is being used I don't think we are fulfilling our responsibility to the community. Davis: I don't think you have the avenue to require it even if you did find that it was an impact. MOTION Roger: I move to recommend to Council GMQS Exemption for the facility as an essential public facility. However the Commission has identified an area of affordable housing which it believes should be identified for mitigation. It is the Commission's recommendation to Council that this be satisfied by providing housing created to mitigate as if this were a new project and meets affordable housing guidelines. David: I would add provide landscape screening of the parking area. Roger: Would you recommend to City Council that they take this out of existing housing stock? David: I recommend that they not take it out of existing housing stock but that they create new housing stock. Roger: Then this is a motion that I can't support. I withdraw my motion. MOTION Bruce: I move to recommend to City Council GMQS exemption for the facility known as the Red Brick School Building as essential public facility subject to the conditions of the Planning Office memo dated April 13, 1993. Roger seconded the motion. Roll call vote: Tim, no, David, no, Sara, yes, Richard, yes, Bruce, yes, Roger, yes, Jasmine, no. Motion carried 4 to 3. MOTION Roger: I move to approve the special review of parking for the Red 10 PZM4.13.93 ~- Brick School site in the Public Zone District with the conditions on the Planning Office memo dated April 13, 1993 and with an additional condition that the parking shall be screened along the north face and recommend to the Transportation/Parking Director to consider a drop-off zone along the front of the gymnasium area. And that at the entrance of the striped parking area that it be signed for users of the facility. Bruce seconded the motion with all in favor. MOTION David: I would like to make an additional to recommend to Council to consider providing housing opportunities created directly or indirectly by changing the use of this facility from educational facility to an arts and recreational center. Richard asked for clarification. Is that specifically for the use of the tenants or just in general? ,,--- David: In general. To consider creating housing opportunities to help mitigate housing required or made necessary directly or indirectly by the change in use from educational to arts and recreational even though both are within the public use. Tim seconded the motion. Jasmine: You would like to have them do this regardless of any body count? David: Regardless. It is a philosophical thing. Technically there may be no need for it. However I think that film fests, even though it is a short term thing, every year it creates activity. And I think a lot of people come to town that don't necessarily stay in hotels. KAJX may only have a couple of employees. I think a lot of these other entities--this is the roster this week. Next week it may be something completely different. I can envision where there might be more people working per thousand in this building full time--potentially 100 people working full time in this building at some point in time. And I think that directly or indirectly there is housing needs created by the change in use that we have done today. And I would like to encourage the public sector to put the money where their actions are. Roger: I don't see any great creation of bodies because of the change in use of this building. I do see an indirect community wide deficit created by possibly the school justifying not creating sufficient housing for it's new facility on the basis that it provided here. And I think if you could identify that in your motion that there is nothing new here but there was a deficit 11 PZM4.13.93 created by the move of the school and it's-- David: That's what I said--"by the change in use of this facility from educational to arts and recreation". Roger: But I would like to get a more specific that the school district didn't provide sufficient housing for it's new facilities. David: What he said. - Davis: Even though I don't agree with the motion I think that legitimizes it because change in use by definition in the code. Jasmine: I think that one of the things that concerns us is the lack of accounting of these things. Because it has been exempted- -because you don't have to specifically mitigate this particular project somehow the question of the need for certain amounts of units seems to disappear. And I think this is part of the reason we seem to have much more of a housing question than anyone wants to admit. And it is a combination of things. It is partly the fact that the school did not in fact mitigate for their movement. I think David's point as well is true. These people may not be for profit employees but they are competitors for housing and for commercial space. That has to be taken into account. This is why I think it is important for us to have some kind of account of bodies. We really have to know how many people we have to provide for at certain times of the year. And what should we be doing about it. Davis: This would not be treating the City as you would a private applicant. And maybe that is justified too. But one example is what if a private school came in and bought the school, converted it to a private school, created 100 employees. They wouldn't have to mitigate because if they didn't expand and it is not a change in use. So a private user would not have to mitigate so why put it on the city? Jasmine: That is another loophole that we have to be considering. I think more than anything else what David is trying to accomplish with this is to say to the City "These are things that we really have to consider that we don't have mechanisms for considering now but we know that they are affecting some of the problems that we are having and we want you to take a look at them". David: Another thing that comes to mind is one of the reasons I was hoping it would be a condition of all of our approvals is the proposals for the Kraut property included artists studio, loft, housing opportunities above a work space. Having gone through this and seeing the amounts of asbestos that this building has and the state of the structural facility being as decrepit as it is that ';~~ 12 PZM4.13.93 to do that sort of a use of this site, would that make this a better project? Would it make it more appropriate for non- profits? Would it make it better for the artists and the non- profits that are there to have some sort of housing incorporated in the project? I think it would. So I am just encouraging Council to move in that direction either on this site or elsewhere. Tim: Is this 5% or 1,700sqft going to be new commercial space or isn't it? Davis: No. Tim: Why not? Davis: It is using existing space. Existing square footage. And it wasn't commercial space before. Tim: Right. It has never been rented out for studio space. Davis: I still see it as an arts and recreation center. And any use that goes in there is public related arts and recreational related. By definition of the code new space is new square footage. "",w'..... Kim: It is more of a change in use than new commercial square footage. Tim: But it was never on the market before. Davis: Maybe that component of the project is a change in use. But still we are not technically a change in use by the code. So we would be doing it because the city is the applicant and they are being good guys, not because it is anywhere found in the code. David: We are all good guys and we are all the city. We all have a philosophy that says there should be mitigation. Davis: The Council is not only the reviewing body but is deciding as the owners. Jasmine: That is what the motion is all about. David wants them to consider that mitigation. Tim: I think it is wise because there is a catch 22 to this. Richard: I consider it superfluous. I think we need to find some bigger tools to deal with this. David: One--we don't need new source of funds because there is a million one in transfer tax that is not being spent every year now. 13 PZM4.13.93 ,-- The city hasn't created more than 11 units in the last year. with any luck they will create about 6 units this year. It is just not living up to production plan, the Community Plan or any previous housing production plan--the Housing Authority or the city. So I am just encouraging them to act in a direction that is consistent with previous intent programs that are required of private sector developers and entities. And because of a loophole in definitions they are not required to do it but I think in good faith it would be a nice thing for them to do. Jasmine then called the question. Motion passed with a vote of 4 to 2. Jasmine then adjourned the meeting. Time was 7:05 PM. 14