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HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.apz.19940308 ~I /' L RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS PLANNING , ZONING COMMISSION MARCH 8. 1994 Chairman Bruce Kerr called meeting to order at 4:30 P.M. Answering roll call were Tim Mooney, David Brown, Sara Garton, Roger Hunt, Jasmine Tygre and Bruce Kerr. Robert Blaich was absent. COMMISSIONER COMMENTS Jasmine: Asked regarding the Hunter Street Pub in relationship to the Silver city Grille. In our approval this was not supposed to be a separate establishment. And this sounds as though there is no connection to the Silver city Grille. Wasn't it supposed to be operated by the same people? Leslie: Yes. We put a condition in there that if it ever changes ownership or they want to add on or changes in any way then they have to come back in. Roger: I was a little shocked with Diane's resignation which was in the newspaper today. Is a resolution from us in order? I would support such a thing. ~ Bruce: We will do that next meeting. \. STAFF COMMENTS Amy Margerum, city Manager: As you are aware city Council has been working with Board of county commissioners and Snowmass Town council on the Snowmass to Aspen Transportation Project. They have put together a group of 17 elected officials that meets approximately once a month to discuss the progress of that project. Basically the entrance to Aspen, the Environmental Impact Statement. The 4-lane is all approved up to the Tiehack, Buttermilk area. At the last meeting they requested that the city Planning commission and county Planning commission be appointed to their decision-makers group so that we broaden that group a little more and bring in the Planning commission to that group. So I am here asking you to appoint a representative to the group. Bruce: Any volunteers, Roger? After brief discussion Roger "volunteered" for this task. PUBLIC COMMENTS There were none. MINUTES I' Roger: I move to adopt minutes of December 7, 1993. Sara seconded the motion with all in favor. ~ ",",,- /;---. PZM3.8.94 -...............- INDEPENDENCE PLACE SPA DESIGNATION AND CONCEPTUAL SPA DEVELOPMENT PLAN Notioe of publishing publio notioe and affidavit of posting were presented by applioant. (attaohed in reoord) Bruoe: For the reoord just prior to this meeting I was handed a memo from Mayor John Bennett direoted to city Counoi1 and Planning , zoning commission. I have not yet read it myself. Leslie Lamont, Planning: Made presentation as attaohed in reoord. Alan RiChman, Planner for applicant: As the Mayor mentioned in his memo it was last year that City Council invited the owners of Bell Mountain Lodge, the Buckhorn Lodge and city Market to join the City in investigating the possibility of developing this project. We are here with a positive response to that City request. As we are proposing today, the project has 4 buildings. 3 of the buildings replace existing buildings. One is a new building. We are showing a building in the Bell Mountain location--one in the location of the Buckhorn and 2 buildings in the area where the City Market parking lot is. -..",.... In terms of uses the Bell Mountain building is posed as commercial lodge with commercial uses on the lower level and employee housing also on the lower level. Employee housing and hotel units on the second floor and hotel suites on the 3rd. floor. The Buckhorn building is a commercial office type building. commercial uses we think like the present kinds of uses--the deli, the pizza place on the 1st floor. Offices on the 3rd floor and employee housing on the second floor. What we have called the city Market building--City Market is intended to be about 2/3rds of the first floor and then there will be another set of commercial uses on the first floor. This building is commercial building. Shops on the first floor. Second and third stories are both employee housing. The main City Market is one story below grade and then 100 parking spaces shown also on the floor below grade. Then we have got the building on the southwest corner--commercial building. commercial uses first floor and office and commercial on the second floor, employee housing on the top. We have created an opportunity for parking below grade. There are 3 levels of parking as proposed which includes 546 spaces below grade. There are also 11 spaces on the surface for total of 557. 2 PZM3.8.94 "'~-'" Also the owners are committed to paying for 320 which include 195 spaces that are mitigation spaces either in new development or for replacement of existing spaces. And 125 spaces which the owners are taking an economic risk on and proposing as leased spaces. The garage ramp location is across from where Hwy 82 turns on original. A visiter might be coming in from Hwy 82 and we wanted to minimize the possibility of their getting lost. That has been an impediment to the success of the Rio Grande structure. We wanted to make it as obvious and easy a place for cars to be intercepted before they reach the downtown. Trash and delivery has always been an issue on larger projects. We gave service delivery a lot of attention to city Market. There is room for 2 trucks to go into a fully covered area. There is room as well for trash compactor in that area. We have also got some spaces identified behind the Buckhorn building primarily for delivery vehicles. We are committed to providing bus shelter wherever everybody thinks they make the most sense. "......,~ In terms of mass and design a few things that we have done to try and deal with the overall project. City Market is placed below grade which takes a considerable amount of mass off of the above grade. The second thing is because of the importance of employee housing we have gone 70% on-site affordable housing in 51 units. We have met our 25% open space requirement within the property lines. Bruce: We are talking about service and delivery. If you go over to city Market especially in the morning between 6 and 8:00 there are not just the city Market delivery vehicles. There is the bread man and on and on. They use the surface parking lot that currently exists before there are actually customers in city Market. And I question whether just that little area that you are showing there in the alley is enough to deal with all of those vehicles. There are sometimes 6 or 8 panel type trucks there at any point in the morning between 6 and 8:00 just for city Market. That will need to be dealt with in some fashion. I don't know what kind of opening you are going to have into the garage whether some of those vehicles can actually go into the garage and service that way. Richman: I am not going to make that kind of commitment because I don't know, given the headroom the difficulties, many of them will have that opportunity. We have got some difficult grade issues to deal with in getting the proper headroom in that ramp. Bruce: What you have got on original street may handle the city Market semi type trucks. But all those other vehicles-- 3 PZM3.8.94 "",...-- Richman: We were certainly thinking of an additional space there. But recognizing what you are saying on 6 to 8 vehicles, no, there are not spaces shown for 6 to S right now. That is something that we can certainly explore--the delivery needs. Sara: I know that you are going no higher than any neighboring building. But by building structures that are neighboring buildings we are going to have a lot of blocking of views and sun and it is going to create a whole wall. And it faces the mountain. A plaza is nice. But if a plaza is in shade and the snow never melts it is never going to be a community place. So I am very concerned about a lot of breaking of rooflines, so that it is much more amenable to people and to sun getting in to not blocking all of the base of Aspen Mountain. Please clarify that are we getting any surplus affordable housing? Or is the affordable housing that is being built only for the mitigation of the re-development of the project? Richman: space, The employee housing is proposed to mitigate the new Sara: So we might get extra parking but no extra housing. Richman: Right. Tim: I want to know how much commercial development we have proposed will be happening in the downtown commercial core and then basically how much this is. When I look at these walls of buildings it just--and then my second question is how much is free market space and how much is commercial? Richman: In terms of new space there is 37,200 square feet of commercial proposed and our proposal is (he stuttered a lot here) You have also got a re-built space on Bell corner as well as the rebuilt City Market. And that is another 18,300 of existing space that gets rebuilt. So if you look at the entire project at build- out it is 2/3rds. 1/3 CC. If you look at it in terms of incremental new it is 50/50. Tim: What is the total buildout of commercial? Richman: In terms of net leasable? I think it is 63. Leslie: For the commercial it is 55,500 net leasable. Tim: Then according to the Aspen Area Community Plan is there any figuring as to what the total buildout in commercial space is going to be if the goals are fulfilled. 4 PZM3.8.94 Leslie: The plan assumed that based upon underlying zoning we would have a full buildout of 700,000 square feet--gross. Bruce: What happens to the units that are part of Buckhorn? Do they just go away? Leslie: Yes. Those go away. And the units that were part of the Bell Mountain growth management--those will go away. Richman: The 29 lodge units that are on the 2 properties right now and we are proposing a total of 18 so there is a net decrease of 11 ___mumble___ Then using drawings explained layout of units. Bruce then opened the public hearing. Hans Gramiger: Who remembers when the highway went right next to this? On Galena? That was a foresight decision to move the highway 82 2 blocks east. That is foresight. They moved it out of the business district. "- I believe that we are here because of a scam. Somebody knows what zoning means. with a stroke of the pen you are making somebody rich--by upzoning or downzoning. So what happens in the scam is that somebody says "We are going to give you local oriented neigh- borhood shops. We are going to give you employee housing. Oh, and besides we have a mandate from the Aspen Area Community Plan and we want to give you plenty of parking which you need. But of course taxes will increase". All I know is transportation. And that is the wrong place for a parking garage when every car that is going to be parked there has to drive on city streets to get there. We have an opportunity for local oriented subsidized shops in the Kraut property. Other people including some that was the planning commission pointed out that we could have a local shopping experience on the Kraut property. And why it would work best there is because we own the property. When you own the property you can either lease it do a developer who builds a building or you can build the building yourself and have a deed restriction on it. Let's say that their goods that they are selling would have to match Grand Junction prices. What I am saying is the priorities are important. city council had an enclave. They came up with goals with every city Council agenda having on the back thereof their goals. One of the items was to reduce the number of cars on castle Creek Bridge by 25% by June 1991. We haven't done a thing about it. Now we are in a transportation mood and we are not biting the 5 PZM3.8.94 bullet. If there is no market for luxury apartment on top of a super market or shopping market then there is always the way for a developer to recoup some of the construction costs by saying "I will build employee housing". I this case it probably was cheaper for him to say he would build the employee housing instead of cash-in-lieu. In the Kraut application there is a question whether they should have municipal parking under the Kraut. They came out with a statement (reading from page 2, para.4 from Jan. 4, 1994 memo) "Public municipal parking is felt to negatively impact the liveability of the units because of the increased level of traffic into and out of the garage, the increased traffic in the block, and the control, security and operational aspect of the garage." Kraut was viewed as residential parking and private yearly leases. The Superblock was viewed as a public municipal parking similar to your garage. It was also discussed that public municipal parking would negatively impact the livability of the units. - The biggest crooks of the whole thing is the Aspen Area community Plan. This page is a roster of the people who contributed their valuable time and effort. And I applaud them. However, that doesn't mean that there are some basic errors in the plan. I have never seen an application in front of City Councilor County Commission where somebody has recited that their plan is in conformance or fills the mandate of the plan. Once is enough for me to hear it if it is true. And if it isn't true then I am getting suspicious. .....- Now as to Motherhood and apple pie a lot of goodies are in it. And I know how it came about. Everybody got something that participated. Everybody got something. But it doesn't make sense in many respects. Now the Superblock and super garage is at the extreme east end of the town. It is against all common sense. And our well founded philosophy to entice them out of the car into other modes of transportation is not adhered to. The additional growth potential west of Castle Creek including now the threat from the down valley is what actually would compel us to change our philosophy that we thought in '73--namely a supermarket should be on the highway 82- -not a K-Mart, not a Wall-Mart--a supermarket in conjunction possibly with a post office branch office so nobody that only goes to town for the post office or nobody that only comes into town over Castle Creek Bridge for shopping doesn't have to come in. How many people and how many cars would we eliminate out of town if we had the experience outside plus the post office annex? That 6 PZM3.8.94 doesn't mean the 2 markets that we have should cease to exist. They will be able to serve the community and the east end and what we have here for many, many years very good. Nobody is going to get hurt. In planning language a grocery market is one of the greatest traffic generators. Now if you have eliminated these cars that come into town and they can shop out of town there are other errands these people from all the subdivisions west of town, all the other errands that they would have to come into town for can be achieved by mass transit. When this gentleman (Alan Richman) was the head of the Planning Dept other developers came up with the land masses together. This gentleman said "It was not intended--it is a loophole in the law that somebody found the mass property and ___?___ the year of SPA. It was not intended". Now the city wants to become part of it. """'..- Now I will reverse my position and be for the Superblock parking if the city comes to an open meeting, reverses it's position and says "We have tried everything. It doesn't work. We have got to make ___?___" If that is what they want to do at a public session I will reverse my position. But as long as we have a--we have right now $375,000 out. The add just appeared in the Wall Street Journal yesterday for consultants to come in and for vendors to bring in __?__. We can't have it both ways. Either we go full speed ahead and bite the bullet with the intercept lot out of town and the parking garage. They don't mesh. Jim curtiss: First of all I am speaking as a private citizen. I do wish to say for the record I did some prior work on this project under a contract to the City. But tonight I am speaking as a private citizen. I really have nothing pro or con to say about the application. What I do wish to say is I am very confused as a private citizen about the discussion on public municipal parking which has always been one of the cornerstones of this project. My confusion simply is who is the applicant for the public municipal parking? Per the application that was submitted the private property owners have said they are not the applicant for the public municipal parking. Also per submitted documents the City has not said it is the applicant for public municipal parking. So as a private citizen I really don't have a way to evaluate this proposal which represents public municipal parking but it doesn't tell me who the applicant is or how that public municipal gets paid for. Therefore, to me, this is a very threshold issue on how I, as a citizen, would view and hopefully you would review this proposal. I would encourage you to try to deal with that issue up 7 PZM3.8.94 front before a lot of people commit a lot of time to look at this project. And simply if the City is the applicant, my next question would be how does the city propose to pay for all of this? Bruce: I don't know that there is an answer to your question except that it falls under number 4 up here. The economic analysis is an issue that we are all aware of and has to be dealt with. But your are right, there is no applicant for the municipal portion of the parking at this point. John Ginn: I am head of the ___?___ association. I kind of feel a little bit orphaned all of a sudden. We have been in the NC zone for a great number of years and we are hearing special talk about what is going to happen with this SPA NC all of a sudden. And I am kind of wondering whether there should be some consideration to tie those uses into the whole NC zone. In other words the south half of the block _ So this is going to get some special treatment under SPA uses. I also note that based on the square footage as we have here that is about 6 times the commercial right now. ......- Steve wicks: I am the owner of Aspen Drug. And I thank Hans for his comments. I am still confused by the irony of putting huge traffic magnate at the east end of town. One that is an obstacle of mass transit. secondly I would encourage the developers to consider the irony of the name of Independence Place. Perhaps they would like to consider a name change to Independent's cemetery. And we could put in the plaza there in stone that says "Rest in Peace. Independent pharmacies, independent grocery stores, independent flower shops, butcher shops, video stores". Because in my mind Independent Place spells further doom for the independent merchants in this town. I have watched sadly from my corner of Aspen Drug, Tom's Market close, the Hardware Store close. And I am saddened at how quiet and dark downtown is since Tom's isn't in town. For a parking place for visitors we are very concerned about just sort of closing up downtown independent business. Bruce: Would you buy into Hans's suggestion that these kind of uses be outside of town? wicks: Yes. Tom Clark, Clark's Market: Just a couple of things for you to think about as you go through this process of determining whether or not this is in the best interest of our community. It is almost 8 PZM3.8.94 unbelievable to me that we would see our community showcase a chain store--City Market--as being the most significant and largest shop in our community. And I want you to keep in mind one thing about malls. I would probably rename it. I would name it "Mega-Mall" rather than Superblock. And what Steve says I think you should really think about. Go to the malls around the country and see how many independent stores you find in them. And I think that if you have been to very many malls you would have to realize that there just aren't any. Malls are not fertile ground for independent stores. Malls are the breeding ground of chain. The reason for that is that based on the size that stores are in malls and so forth they compete with each and to such a degree that they can sell for less and less because they have efficiencies that frankly independents in the community won't have. Secondly on the other side of it this commercial space that is going to become available, who is going to take that space? And the existing independents that you see around town and in the community Area Plan I think one of the first statements in it is the preservation of the local business community is important to this community and has been important to this community. "'- And one of the things that you will see is all of a sudden if the City Market store which really isn't 26,000 feet. It is over 30,000 square feet in this plan. If they have room to put a pharmacy then all of a sudden you will see Carl's Pharmacy take a 50% reduction and Steve takes a 50% reduction or more. city Market is one of the biggest chains in the country. They can do what they need to do to get the business that they want to get. And they won't build this big center and all of those parking spaces unless there is an economic reason for them to do that. So as you are trading Steve wick's business to this project to build parking spaces or employee housing or whatever you need to think is it important enough to trade Steve's business for. Because that is what you are doing. Make no mistake about it. That is what you are doing. A couple of other things that I am really concerned about is of course the traffic congestion. I do not believe we should have the core businesses outside the community. The foundation of my feeling about that I use is the fact that--now understand I hate chain stores--all chain stores. I just have a thing about them. I hate them. One of the main reasons I hate them is because Wall- Mart has done more to destroy America than any other chain store in America. In community after community that has allowed Wall- Mart to build outside of town and what happens is they have 9 PZM3.8.94 destroyed Main street America. So if you are like me when you wake up in the morning you are going to look in the phone book to see what town you are in. Because what is left are the chain stores. And so all communities look just alike. Again I would like to voice my concern about this parking garage being in the wrong place. I wouldn't put it out of town. I do think that the community is getting tremendous mixed signals. I think that our government is setting itself up for either this project to fail or for the transportation project to fail. One of them has got to fail because they diametrically oppose each other. You can't build the largest auto incentive ever proposed for our community here--you can't do that at the same time that you try to decrease the dependency of Aspenites on their automobiles or down valley folks like me by having us park in an intercept lot. They are just diametrically opposed. So as you look at this project I ask you to think in terms of how many businesses in town are you going to trade for this project and if it is worth that. Where are your priorities? Are they in transportation areas, pollution issues, congestion issues? Is this really in the best interest of our community? I know that is what your job is and that is what you are going to be doing. Bob Gruder: I was involved in the Mill Street Station project. If you will remember that was the original setup to cover what is now the Rio Grande property. It started out as a huge project and was cut way back. It now occupies 58,000 square feet which is half the size of this project. The existing P&Z and council at the time thought how to position it but they picked that spot because it was not going to be intrusive. It was built into the hill. There was no mass that was going to be seen anyplace and they still just kept whacking and whacking away. I think the original market was supposed to go in there at about 60 or 70 thousand square feet. That got cut way back to less than 20. And that was because they felt that was commensurate with a town Aspen size to have a super market that big. Safeway at that time was going to put in a proj ect out at the Airport Business Center. They decided it wouldn't work. You talked about Tom's Market. We lost Tom's Market because it couldn't compete with city Market and Clark's Market. You are going to see the same thing with a huge City Market type project. Bruce asked if there were any further comments from the public. There were none. 10 PZM3.8.94 . ~-.-.' Sara: Because the municipal parking is such a threshold issue and you asked not to consider it and to consider tonight the SPA conceptual. Why would we zone SPA unless we wanted parking as part of it. And since that is unresolved why are we doing it first? Leslie: The reason why I asked you not to consider parking tonight is that I think it is a full meeting discussion. I am not asking you to put it off, I am just saying that we schedule another meeting which I assumed we would with this project that you would focus on parking at that point in time--not putting it off. SPA designation gives us a variety of tools to look at this project. It doesn't directly relate to the parking at all. It allows more flexible planning. Sara: But what if we didn't get the kind of parking that the area Community Plan suggested was needed at this end of town for skier and independent travel during the summer and people living on the east side of town? We may not want to fool around with setbacks. We may still ask for affordable housing. For instance the Durant Street Mall has some housing. Did they go through an SPA process? I don't think we need to do that if we are not going to gain the developer's co-operation in municipal parking. Maybe we don't want to fool around with zones and setbacks. Leslie: If you don't do that then I think what you are looking at 3 separate individual developments. You already have an approval for the Bell Mountain Lodge. That is to expand the lodge to 40 lodge rooms. As part of their proposal and their approval they had a separate underground parking garage of 28 parking spaces with a ramp off of the alley. That was their separate garage. Buckhorn Lodge probably would not change at this point in time. city Market would go to be the Steak pit. parking requirement. in and expand down into the area which used They do not have to mitigate for employee That doesn't mean that you have to use SPA for each one of these properties to completely develop. Each one of them can come in on their own for re-development process. Sara: I am saying I am not ready to reconsider it as a whole unless there is a whole thing presented. Jasmine: I couldn't agree with you more. This has been bothering me tremendously. I just think this whole thing is being done backwards. I think that when you talk about an sPA--although it has been a specially planned area I think that there has to be some 11 PZM3.8.94 , ".'~'/ kind of public purpose involved in the SPA. The reason it is a specially planned area--I agree with Sara--there are a lot of people over in the east side of town and people who live in places like Centennial who do take their cars into work. I think the east side lot is an excellent idea. But the reason P&Z is interested in this proj ect is the parking. Everything else is really secondary. And to me if you can't resolve that parking right up front--that to me is THE threshold issue. And until that is resolved I don't really want to consider SPA. David: I share some of your concerns and concerns of the public. There is public concern. An SPA will allow us the potential-- although the applicant may withdraw before it comes to fruition. It would at least allow us to address an increase in the NC zone under the guise of this application right now that would only include the Buckhorn. But as we go to negotiation of the SPA zone or the overlay and it goes through the process it could conceivably include the first level of Bell Mountain Lodge. And it could include some of the underground space. ,- The 3 major goals from the community interest would be the NC, the parking and to gain mitigation of employee housing that is not there now. If this is rebuilt city Market doesn't have employee housing above it now. If this is rebuilt they will mitigate the replacement of their square footage and I see that as a significant benefit to the community. I see that as a significant benefit to our transportation problems. I see this as not just parking. And I think the SPA as an overlay concept is something that I would favor. -",,-- Tim: I agree with a lot of the points that are made. I am basically in favor of the parking and the neighborhood commercial. But this is strictly a developer's project. And it hasn't brought anything to the table for the community. There is no net gain to the community in parking. There is no net gain in affordable housing. I think that you guys if you wanted to do this project to benefit the community you should be jumping on the fact that you can build parking--that you can invest your money in affordable housing and create some kind of net gain to the community instead of just building a developer's dream. I am semi in favor of affordable housing. I think that pretty soon we are going to get to the point where it is an entirely artificial category that is really going to affect the housing market and the quality of life here. So I am kind of on the fence with that. I am not in favor of any kind of a mall. I am absolutely in favor of the integrity of the small town shop owner and maintaining individual attractions instead of a food mall where there are kiosks for people to congregate. 12 PZM3.8.94 The commercial space that is being developed is the engine that is driving the resort past the community. And I think we have to refocus on the community and not the resort. I think that the important aspect is the quality of life to the community and this adds absolutely nothing to the quality of life in my estimation. I think it detracts from it. I think it is growth for growth's sake. I think that the SPA is a good idea if this were a viable project, if this was a community project, if we were going to gain in parking, if we were going to gain in affordable housing. But you guys don't want to be in that business and I think that is too bad. Jack Ryan: I have not looked into this until I walked in the door tonight. And I have mixed emotions about different things. One is that as a small business we wouldn't be there if we didn't have the traffic of a grocery store there. No matter what goes on here, traffic brings business. So as an individual I have concerns on both ends of this. The traffic certainly can't hurt anything. But on the other hand ? I am a lessee of the building with 2 stories with 3-story building on one side. And you guys are going to put 3-story buildings all around us and zone it neighborhood commercial. I am not the owner of the building. But that would be a big concern on the owner's part. Should that get rezoned and we go up 3 stories on our building whether I lose business to an incoming bigger market or get the owner of the building to go up 3 stories and sell the building, I would be out of there anyway. I am really in a no-win situation anyway. Bruce: We are kind of in the same situation ourselves. No-win, win-win. I might just say,Leslie, for your benefit I don't have a problem with the use of the SPA process for this project or other big projects. I don't have any philosophical problems with the use of the SPA and I think this is probably the kind of project where that works the best. And if we have fears about what we might allow to happen on this project because of the SPA I think we need to make sure that we understand that just by the use of the SPA we haven't approved anything. We haven't approved 40 feet. We haven't approved 18,600 square feet of CC. We are not approving any of those things. All we are saying is that the SPA process is the right process to use with a project of this size. So I don't have a problem with the use of the SPA process. I share the concerns that Jasmine and Sara expressed about 13 PZM3.8.94 proceeding through the process until we know specifically what City council is going to do about the parking. Because if we are not going to get municipal parking there, I don't really see any point in proceeding at this point. And I don't see any point in the applicant spending their money drawing plans and all that sort of thing. So we have got to get over that point, in my mind, before we proceed much further down the road. I have some of the same concerns the neighbors and my fellow commission members expressed about the size of the project. I stated at the work session on February 9th we all know that there are certain projects that come along in this town that are watershed kind of projects which turn this community one way or another. And depending on how long we have been in town we can point to any project that changed the fate of this town forever and made it worse or made it better. ~,~ My feeling is that this project, simply because of it's size, may be that kind of watershed project for a lot of us in this town. And before we make decisions about that kind of project I would like for us to know where we are going. And I think Council has to decide basically what they are going to do about the parking and whether they are going to be a player or not a player. If they are definitely not going to be a player in terms of spending the money for the municipal portion of the parking garage that probably tells the developer then "We have got to do something else". Roger: I basically agree with David and Bruce. They summed up my positions very well. -- Leslie: We have not had a consensus any of these issues including the municipal parking. Tonight John Bennett submitted a letter to you suggesting that we step back from this formal review process at this point in time and have another all-day work session. David: I still see that we could continue the process. Tim: I think that the SPA is really going to work for a project like this. But the intent of this project isn't even something close to what I would vote favorably for on a special SPA. Sara: The reason that I don't want the motion tonight is another side of what Tim is saying. I know we were given the direction to start the process and get it going and that the SPA is not specific. But it sends a message that we are going along with this. And somehow you get on the train but all of a sudden the train is a runaway train. And I am not ready to buy a ticket yet. David: I hear from several of you that you are not at all comfortable with some of the details. 14 PZM3.8.94 Jasmine: No. The concept. Sara: I don't even want to give it a conceptual. Leslie: If you feel comfortable continuing this meeting to April 19th, we will have some more information for your next meeting. Bruce: I would recommend that if we end up having this session as the Mayor has proposed that we include the PPR and the HPC at that session. That session will be open to the public. _. David: Are there any large issues other than the parking that other Commission members feel unacceptable as presented now. Sara: I have a lot of trouble with the whole NC concept. Jasmine: I share Sara's concern about the NC zone. In all the years I have been on P&Z I can't tell you how many times I have seen NC uses turn into CC uses which I think we have to be able to manage. I am not sure there is that much demand on the part of prospective business owners for empty space. I know that there is not a lot of desire on the part of locals to have empty type stores. But as a lot of businesses in the audience have pointed out you have got to be crazy or really very fortunate in some ways to be able to compete with stores that are selling either very expensive things or stores that have access to major price differentials that you can sell things really cheaply. '.....~ The average person would not be able to make little figurines and sell them anywhere in town unless they have really cheap and have to be subsidized and controlled. There is a lot of problems with the NC. The other thing that disturbs me which Tim brought out is that we are not getting any net gain in employee housing. All we are doing is mitigating for a very large amount of additional commercial space. I really feel that if we don't have an underground parking that is overall and controlled I would rather see this developed as 3 separate little projects to keep everything more manageable. Gramiger: What you have to consider is that commercial core big enough or do we need more? the growth? More lodging or more commercial? Bruce: I wouldn't have a problem tonight designating the SPA overlay. I don't think that does anything more than say the overlay is there. And if the project ends up not flying because council didn't buy into the parking we can take the SPA overlay off. I think our best procedure tonight is to continue the public is the present And what drives 15 PZM3.8.94 "-><",.,,,....-' hearing to the April 18 date and to table the application to that date. MOTION David: I move to continue the public hearing and table the application to date certain of April 19, 1994. Jasmine seconded the motion with all in favor. Meeting was adjourned. Time was 16