Thread by @shayshinecastle

Now we're moving to the concept plan review of the Liquor Mart development: 147 apartments, 11K sq ft of retail space.

If the ppl in the chamber could STFU, some of us still have to listen and work. Thank you.

Something I didn't know: Boulder's first modern supermarket was where the Liquor Mart is now.

The placed where Ragstock is now is also part of this development. It's about 1 acre, 50K sq ft.

Property has some bits in the 100-yr floodplain and high-hazard zone, but the building will stick to the 500-yr floodplain, Planner Sloane Walbert says.

Of the 147 units, there will be a mix of micro studio to four-bedroom units. 311 beds. Approx 39% would be efficiency units (less than 475 sq ft)

Developers are also asking for a 31% parking reduction (building 101 spaces, 147 would be required)

It's a four-story building, still less than 38 ft, bc some is below-grade.

They also want to put a pool/hot tub on the roof, which neighbors wrote in to protest.

I give you David Lundquist: “Pools and hot tubs on the roof? Really? So the sound of rooftop partying can travel all over the Goss/Grove neighborhood? …. Do I want to come home from work on a Friday to the sounds of a Collective happy hour up on the roof? No!”

Project is consistent with the BVCP, Walbert says, and adds housing units, which positively impacts the jobs/housing imbalance.

Some policies which may need consideration:
Development should remain sensitive to concerns of the neighborhood and work collaboratively with them to address their interests
Consideration does need to be given to interaction with 15th Street/16th Street pedestrian experience

Q from Young: Has staff considered how entrance/exit might flow at rush hour and back up at the light on Canyon or Arapahoe?
That is part of site review, Walbert and Charles Ferro say

Carlisle follows up: Have the students (Boulder HS is nearby) been considered? (THINK OF THE CHILDREN!)
Ferro: That will be part of site review, too.

Q from Weaver: Any thought given to the below-grade portions that abut the 100-yr floodplain.
Walbert: It was reviewed as if it was in the 500-yr floodplain
Ferro: The hope is that it will stay out of the 100-yr floodplain.

Weaver: The're putting those units right next to the 100-yr area. That's going to be a continuing concern.

Another Weaver q: How is it fitting into the Canyon/15th Street complete streets guidelines? (It's adding bike lanes/multi-use paths to encourage walk- and bikeability)
Ferro: It's being considered.

Morzel adds onto Weaver's concerns about flooding, RE: the underground parking. "I'd like to see that addressed."
And the complete streets: "I think it's really important that we embrace the street, that we embrace Canyon."

I think the issue is that Complete Streets is still in the works, so they may or may not have to comply with that. But they are aware of it, at least.

Morzel: "This is a city. Not only do I want retail (and interaction) on 15th but on Canyon" as well.
Jones jumps in: "Do you have a question?"

She did, about floor area ratio.
The project is "well below" the allowable FAR.

Young: One of the reasons I wanted to call this up is the little square in the corner was the whole genesis of the civic area planning. (I'm not entirely sure about the history of this, if anyone wants to help me out.)

Weaver: Don't we often ask that stores wrapping around the corner be beveled? (RE: Downtown design guidelines)
Walbert: That might be old; it's not as specific as that.

Morzel: One of the things I'm concerned about is rents. And wants to include a good neighbor plan. And wants the applicant to address "permeability" and the views. "Is there a way you can move rooftop accommodations so it doesn't impact the neighborhood" and views to the north?

Chad Matesi from Core Space is addressing these questions.

Core is from Chicago. Does a LOT of student housing, and infill development. About 6 developments a years.

Has said this is not a student housing property.

They do three "brands" of development: Hub, State and Oliv (used to be the Collective, which was the name used in the memo)
Oliv is the market-rate focused project.

Core will be contributing cash-in-lieu to affordable housing. Staff didn't say how much that might be (since design is in flux) but at $30/sq ft and 50K square feet (I think) it should be a lot of $$

Architect Adrian Sopher is answering council's qs.

"We're looking at essentially a 15% design plan and we don't actually know what is the council's pleasure." This is about complete streets, which isn't done yet. "We're happy to do what makes sense."

There will be retail access "all along Canyon."

And the building has pulled all the entries back from the 100-yr floodplain. About 25 ft away from 15th Street, specifically to stay out of it.

RE: Pedestrian environment along 15th Street: looking at some public-y space.

Team is currently in discussions with concerned neighbors. Have already (mostly) agreed to move the rooftop amenities.

I think we're talking permeability of the site, but my eyes glazed over for a minute. Sopher is making the case that access to the site is fine for the area.

Morzel: "You'll improve the ditch appearance?"
Sopher: Yes.

Hooray for pretty ditches.

This site did not flood in 2013; the ditch is uneven, Sopher said, higher on the north side and lower on the south.

Sopher is addressing the (former) Robb's Music site, which Young said sparked the whole civic area/canyon street discussion. It was a 52-foot building, and council approved it IF the top floor was removed. That killed the financials of the project.

This project will be only 38 feet, per the "temporary" moratorium on 55-ft buildings.

Carlisle asks about affordable housing. As I said, they are doing cash-in-lieu.
Carlisle is not pleased. The point is to have a "mix of socio-economic" groups. "Particularly with this type of housing, I hate to see it be cash-in-lieu."

Nagle asks about parking: Is it just for residents? What about shoppers? How many cars do you expect? Where does overflow go?

Sopher: We are in CAGID (close to many garages). No provision in that zone for parking for retail. Intent is to minimize traffic to those areas. "Ppl live downtown bc they work downtown and they don't need to drive anywhere." Parking will be rented separately.

Chad from CORE: Parking spots are leased per-tenant. You sign a one-year lease for your spot. Based on our experience across the nation in urban settings, we've been seeing a drastic almost exponential decline in parking demand, especially over the past couple years.

"The dependency on the automobile has lessened significantly."
Core's average parking ratio is "far, far below what we're proposing here." This is one of the more parking-intense projects of our 22-property portfolio bc of what your building code requires.

There's a transportation consultant, Chris something, talking now. They're going to do a parking study and transportation study; they will be part of site review.

Cody Gratny, with Boulder-based JVA, is answering Weaver's q about how they will protect the sub-grade parking during a flood.
"The goal on this project, even though we're not in the 100-year floodplain, is to protect against that."

Can be done by adding a flood gate or raising it up.

"Even though we aren't subject to that criteria," it's something the team is considering.

"All (residential) entries will be above the flood elevation on the south side," Sopher says.
"It's high on our list of design criteria," Chad from Core says (sorry, I forgot his last name and I'm too lazy to look it up).

Weaver: Given how long the building will be there, you will probably go through a flood.

Morzel: Your intent isn't to flip it as soon as it's entitled?
Chad: No. Our intent is a long-term hold. We've sold in the past when we were growing, but now we're more stabilized.

OK, public hearing.

Andrea Montoya, the head of the Goss Grove Neighbors Association (or something similar) is talking now.

(She actually said "My name is Andrea Montoya" and it reminded me of this:

She is talking about pollinators for some reason. And now parking. "When you come into Goss Grove neighborhood, you park there (Liquor Mart, I think). Let's face it. And this isn't going to make this any easier."

"All of a sudden you're going through our neighborhood and you hit this behemoth and, I'm gonna call it how we see it, out of character structure."

"This beautiful site, which now has Liquor Mart on it, that's nothing to brag about... We don't love Liquor Mart, we don't love how it looks."

The design "doesn't even take us into consideration as a neighborhood."

"We don't need another dorm in the middle of our downtown neighborhood. We love our students, but let me tell you what they bring: They bring noises, they bring parties, they bring cars. They use city resources constantly."

"Why can't we have in this location? This is a gorgeous building they've made. But it's gorgeous for Chicago. Is it gorgeous and is it smart for Boulder? Are retirees going to be welcome here? Are working ppl going to be welcome here?"

Loren Weinbarg: This city could really use some housing for long-term residents. It would be great to provide housing for downtown workers. I thought it would be great, and then I looked at the developer's proposal.

There were only three references in the proposal to who would live there: Young adults, those who want to live near campus, and those who want to live close to nightlife.

"That looked like code to me for college students. If you have a building of college students, it’s not going to meet any city housing goals."

I really like the names of the last two speakers: Mary Hey and Don Poe

Goss Grove is "something like the Hollywood Bowl. You can hear a pin drop. It's very mysterious." Saying she can hear activity from the 13th Street area, Dushanbe Teahouse, etc. "Balconies and a pool are frightening."

Don Poe is concerned about traffic. He owns a biz in the building to the west. Wants to move the parking entrance to 16th.
"That's a lot of cars going right where our high school students walk."

Poe is "estimating" that up to 1,000 ppl could live there. (There will be 311 bedrooms, so that's three ppl per bedroom. Methinks that's a *touch* hyperbolic.)

Weaver is suggesting making the project into two buildings, getting some funding and doing affordable housing on-site. "We can't just require that in this case bc we don't have rent control in Colorado, but we strongly desire it be on-site."

"Really think seriously about affordable housing. A development like this will go down more easily in this town" with on-site units.

This is such an interesting debate to me. Ppl hate cash-in-lieu, but the housing folks kind of love it. They freak out when they run out of $$, and they always tout how much they can do with it.

For instance, the last 5 yrs, $66.5M was collected from CIL. That yielded 440 units.

OK, back to discussion on this. A gem from Carlisle: "I lived through the era of hot tubs on roofs. The rub-a-dub hot tub ppl." It was a problem, she said.

Correx to previous tweet: $66.7M collected from cash-in-lieu over the past five years.

Weaver loves the design, he says. Morzel does not. "It's out of character with the neighborhood."

"I personally don't like it at all. It just looks kind of like a boat with a Christmas tree and a lot of things hanging off of it. It's too busy. I think you could calm it down and make it more welcoming and not such a statement."

Also concerned about the noise that will come from a swimming pool/hot tub. "Idk what you can do... put glass walls around it or something, so that noise doesn't spill over into the neighborhood."

Repeats Weaver's suggestion to break the building in two and do on-site affordable housing. "I think there is a real desire for affordable housing there." (Neighbors in the audience nod vigorously.)

Mary "Mass and Scale" Young asks for a breaking up of.... the mass and scale and a "tapering" toward the south. And wants the balconies to be removed. (She really hates these things; at the last meeting she said she was glad there were no balconies on the BHP bldg at 30th/Pearl)

Nagle concerned about "green space" and how it's going to "benefit the community."
Also, "the mass is unprecedented for the area. It's a big wall."

She wants pitched roofs. Something "more homey"

Yates corrects something Nagle said (that there were only 2 projects with affordable housing on-site). There's been a lot more than two
(She mumbled something back to him, and he said: "There's been more than two.")

Yates is also defending cash-in-lieu: We get far more affordable housing with cash. "While there is certainly a social benefit, if it can be done here, that's great, but we're actually going to get more units that are more deeply affordable on another site."

Weaver challenges that.

Yates: It's economy of scale. BHP builds only affordable units, they can build a lot more units at a less expensive cost per-door.

"Let's not look at cash-in-lieu as a negative."

Yates also "not delighted" by the design. "I feel a little weird as a lawyer telling a bunch of architects I don't like it," but it's "yucky."
Wants it to be "less edgy, a little softer."

This feels like a good time to share something an affordable housing developer once told me about having council/planning board weigh in on design: "It's like making it to the Super Bowl with your pro team and then letting the fans play."

Brockett likes the design. OK with the parking reduction: "If there's a place you can live without a car, it would be this spot" 1 block away from the downtown bus stop, you can walk everywhere, you can bike everywhere.

If you work out some details, "I think you've got a project that will really add to the downtown scene."

Morzel adds: I'm thrilled to see housing.
Jones: Yes to housing. One thing I liked about this building is it didn't look like every other box we see.

Weaver has one final point: One of the things about the structure that doesn't work for me is how internal-facing it is. If there's any way for ppl to see through the site, even if they can't go through, or maybe put the bike path through...

Sopher is back up to address some questions: Can't do pitched roofs bc they are at a hard 38 ft height limit bc of the moratorium (downtown is exempt but not south of Canyon)
And they have to do balconies bc of open space requirements.

Chad from Core says they are looking into on-site affordable housing. There are challenges, but we will continue looking into it.

And with a final plea for 'tasteful balconies' from Morzel, we're done with this topic.

Please unroll @threadreaderapp. Thank you.