Thread by @shayshinecastle

New thread for Alpine-Balsam. Again, no public hearing, no staff materials. Just council talking.

Chris Meschuk going over options to appease neighbors and council: The shopping centers could be taken out of Area Plan; a timeline could be set so that only the city site gets changed and everything else left alone for 5-10 years.

Or they could limit the area plan just to the city site. Or abandon the area plan all together.

Jean Gatza going over the purpose of the area plan: To consider the future BEFORE we see redevelopment, so there's a guide and we get what we want.

Clarifying around engagement. "We heard a lot about the quality of the engagement. Clearly many ppl feel they were not heard ... or that feedback they provided was not reflected in the plan."

Recommendations were based on direction from council, planning board, policies, Vision Plan and community feedback. "What you see before you has evolved along this last year."

"They were heard, we did listen. We had to balance a lot of ..."

Jones jumps in to thank staff. "You have done a very in-depth public process. It has spanned multiple years."

Jones: "We heard from ppl that it was rushed. That is not the case. We're hearing from ppl saying why is this taking too long. There's always a segment of pop. who becomes aware in the 11th hour, and that is shocking."

"There's been a lot of opportunity. That doesn't mean ppl like what comes out the other end. There's been a lot of good process."

Morzel dittoes that. (Dittos?)

Morzel: Could we improve options on the Area Plan a little more? Ppl have been really focused on the city site. "Not a lot of consideration about periphery."

Gatza: "It's really hard for ppl to imagine change on private property and there doesn't seem to be an immediate need for redevelopment."

"If we choose not to make land use changes, but think about those at a future date if that feels more comfortable, that could work..." but I don't want to lose connections or urban design elements.

Gatza: We did receive some qs about the traffic impact study from a member of the community, so we're sending out answers in the next couple of days.

We're gonna talk Pavilion first, then area plan. But first: council qs and comments.

Brockett thanking staff and Gatza in particular.

"I thought you all did amazing work."

He's questioning numbers of new housing units. Those could be reduced if offices convert, bc city is moving to incentivize housing over offices.

That's correct, Gatza says.

Zoning would result in a net loss of allowed jobs, Brockett says. Ppl are focused on housing, but ppl are interested in reducing potential jobs, too.

Young: It's in the comp plan!

Weaver also addressing Gatza: "You put your work out there, and ppl take it apart. And they do bc of misconceptions. "They see pictures in here, and they think of everything changing all at once. But the truth is, it changes over time."

"The misconceptions are enormous. I think some are misconceptions. I think some ppl stir the pot a little bit. I commend you for taking that in stride."

Weaver reminding ppl that changes could happen now on private property. That's the point of the area plan: To make sure we get the redevelopment we want.

Except the neighbors don't want more housing. They've been very clear on that.

"It's become clear to me that we really need to look at those shopping nodes. We asked you to bring those in." Area plan started with just the city site; council asked for it to become wider.

Carlisle: "The echo chamber's set up here."

She's thanking staff, too. "Its is a tremendous effort."

"My interest now that this sleeping community has woken up," how do we let folks feel like they "own" a part of the plan?

Young: "I got involved in city politics through something very similar to this." (Washington School redevelopment.) "A lot has changed in 12 years."

Here she is in a 2009 Camera article speaking to council about neighborhood impacts: dailycamera.com/2009/08/15/bou…

"I didn't go along with something (in that case) bc of a lack of process." That's not the case here. It's been "extensive."

Yates, too, thanking staff. "The fact that you worked hard and did a good job and the fact that ppl are frustrated, scared and confused, are not mutually exclusive. Ppl are allowed to be frustrated, scared and confused."

"Change is hard for people, and we bit off a lot here."

Suggests council might table the area plan and focus on the city site.

Key q, Meschuk says, is should city services be located at Alpine-Balsam?

Jones suggesting straw poll: We've got 3 council members "mostly" there on city services being at AB. Others have some reservations.

Weaver: Yes. I'm all the way there.

"Fundamental question is do we spend the $2M to learn about the next phase of the plan?"

$2M would be toward design, Meschuk says. "We've got to re-skin the building" and then the interior renovation to make it into a city service hub. 1.5-2 yr design process.

Jones also ready to put city services there.

Yates: I'm not a ditto but I might eventually be a ditto.

"You guys have made a very compelling argument" for consolidating city services. "I have a very simple question which I'm trying to get the answer to."

$70M to get us into Pavilion: "Can we do better?"

"I'm talking build vs. buy."

"If it turns out that the going rate for 93K sq ft to own it is $40M, this would be a really bad mistake. That's all I'm looking for: just comps. What is 93K sq ft of office space in Boulder, CO, going for?"

Meschuk: We can get comps pulled of recent sales and market values.

Where is there anything that big? Let alone available for sale?

Brockett: It's gotta be apples to apples. This building will be net zero. Others for sales comps might not be.

Yates: "The smaller the delta, the more this makes sense."

Carlisle agrees with him, with more concerns about putting employees on the west side of town "when the city is moving east."

Jones: It's implied that we would put another hub out east to consolidate in the future. But right now, the west side "is where most people live."

"But the future will eventually be out east."

Carlisle questioning that, talking about how many ppl live in SoBo and how long it takes to get downtown.

Jones: I don't think it's either/or. It's both/and.

Carlisle: We're talking about the future, remote workers, not using office space. "Do we have to have the same kind of built environment we've always had in the past?"

Asking for customer counts, which staff didn't have an answer to yesterday when Yates asked. (Actually, he asked awhile ago, but they didn't have the answer yesterday.)

Meschuk: Those are really good qs, and we're thinking of them, too. "Not every service you obtain from the city will be virtual is in the future. There's always going to be a place for physical structures."

"The amount of space, we believe, can start to shrink."

"There's times between phone calls an in-person, there's 100 contacts a day in Park Central building alone." That's staying steady recently, but that will evolve.

Buildings right now aren't built to evolve along with them. The future ones will be.

Jane Brautigam jumping in: This Alpine Balsam hub will be for customers. (Permits, paying bills, etc.) Out east will be the hub for things we take to ppl; they don't come to us. (Transportation, snow plows, etc.)

Weaver: We could do a satellite office out east for high-traffic services. It's not duplicating; it's putting things closer to where ppl are.

Kinda Carlisle's point. Re-stating her claim about where ppl live.
Brockett: But transit out (east) isn't great. It is here.

Another "fundamental" q from Meschuk on the Area Plan: What should we do with it? Timeline? Shrink it? Pause it?

Talking about phasing now. Transit Village, for example, is phased. Phase 2 doesn't start until certain criteria are met.

Land use and zoning changes haven't been done for part of the area bc that's in Phase 2, Meschuk says.

Young: Could that be criteria or time based?
Meschuk: Either. You could make it 5 years, 10 years or criteria based.
Young: What's staff's preference.
Gehr: Criteria based better signals your intention to the community.

Weaver: The whole point of an area plan is to come up with a vision that we work on and agree with the community.

We have to be "super crystal clear" that "things can still happen here," Weaver says. I think ppl are unclear about "what can happen now."

"Whether we phase it or not, we have to communicate that every private property owner" can do something right now. That's why we're doing the area plan.

He prefers doing the whole area plan with phasing. No land use changes outside of the hospital site.

"Focus on the site plan first. Keep conversations with community going."

Yates: "I'd like to park the area plan." I don't want to do an area plan in tandem with a site plan.

He actually said in parallel, not in tandem. That part's not in quotes, so it's paraphrasing anyway. But I wanted you to know.

Weaver: It's a little Dif than what I'm thinking. We've got all this work done now. For the stuff outside (the city site), we've really got to communicate with the community. Idk that I would shelve it indefinitely. All that other stuff is important.

He wants phasing, not just putting area planning on the shelf.

When I was talking with ppl today about what can go there now, Weaver says, they were surprised. "That concept was just kind of mind-blowing to him, that that could happen now."

Yates suggested timing area plan with the mid-term update of the BVCP. Pretty sure they just wrapped that in 2018(?) before my time, tho. They're gonna start the mid-term update in December, which Meschuk announces to groans from council.

Jones: We're all in agreement that land use, zoning, vision of what needs to go at city site all needs to be in what we'll adopt in a month?

No, rest of council says: Land use and vision, yes, but zoning is separate.

Young agreeing with Brockett....? After much confusion.

Brockett is the one who said re-zoning comes after land use.

My head is spinning a little bit. I always feel I have a better grasp of these things before council starts talking.

Gehr with some clarity: Typical process is that the vision is created (land use). The next step is zoning the property and getting it ready for development.

Morzel: Why can't we do land use and zoning at the same time so we're not dragging it out?

Meschuk: That's what we would do. First council and planning board adopts area plan, painting the future vision.

Then you would change BVCP land use map and rezone the city site.

By "we" he meant that's what staff would suggest council to do.

Morzel: Could rezoning happen this fall?
Gehr: Yes.

Morzel: I would like to proceed as quickly as possible.

Weaver: This is a great way to phase. Adopt the whole area plan. Make land use and zoning changes to city site but no land use changes outside that. We still have area plan for next council to come in.

"It's a way to stay engaged with the community, through the election but still get our work done."

Young: If we do land use changes and zoning changes at the site, wouldn't we need to do "much more outreach?"

Does an analogy; asks if it's good.
It is not.

Other council members said that, not me. To be clear.

Meschuk going into land use vs zoning.
Land use: These are the uses we want here (housing, retail, etc.)
Zoning: We want this height, these setbacks, pitched roofs, etc.

Young: My q still stands. In order to lay out zoning, do we need further outreach? Or is it defined well enough in urban design plan?

Brockett: You said we could change land use and zoning this fall, I wouldn't say that's realistic. We would need to do more outreach. We could adopt area plan this fall.

Meschuk: You could adopt area plan this fall. You could also do land use changes with BVCP for city site this fall "if you wanted to."

But prob not zoning; we do need to do more outreach.

Weaver: I think it's important to get the area plan adopted.

"We don't need to change the land use or zoning in any stuff outside the city site. I want to do outreach. But if we want to do it, land use changes on city site would be one of the last things this council did."

NO. Morzel says. "This whole thing of making up new zones and stuff, idk if that's true. In looking what's on city property, I'm fine with going forward with zoning suggested in this (area) plan."

That was a capitalized no for a reason. It was very emphatic.

Carlisle: I'm more with Yates and Brockett. "Now that we've shaken the giant, we need to have more engagement. I want community engagement on that site rather than council moving ahead."

Let's throw out land use and zoning changes and see what comes back, she says.
Jones: That's what we're doing now.
Morzel: That's what we've been doing for years.

Carlisle talking more about community engagement and neighborhood feedback.

Jones: "We have to stop this conversation. I'm going to go crazy."

Brockett suggesting: Adopt area plan, do land use designations on city site only.

Jones: Can everybody live with that?
No, Carlisle (and maybe Morzel) says.

Jones: It means we recognize that at some point, we will continue this conversation.
Young: That's doing a single-parcel area plan, and I *SWORE* I would never do that again.

Jones: We need to adopt the plan bc of flood and connection work.

Young: If something comes in and it redevelops as a four-story office building, I'll be the first one to say I told you so.

Brockett: If we move forward with area plan, "I would absolutely take the two shopping centers out."

Jones: Do ppl want to go through city site and see if we have agreement?

NO, from almost everyone.

Morzel: They're looking for feedback. We're going to vote on this Oct. 1. This is just dragging feet.

Carlisle: I thought there was some talk of slowing down the process, hearing from the community. Did we just have one hearing and that was it?
Jones: omg we had four years of meetings!

Morzel getting really heated with Carlisle.

Weaver breaks in to remind there is another hearing on Sept. 24. "It's not a decision tonight; it's guidance to staff."

Maybe moving into discussion about the city site.

We're gonna walk through block-by-block. I kinda can't believe this but my charger isn't working and my computer is dying. ARGH

I need a Mac charger, stat.

East block: Pavilion building and public plaza, with "flex" space on the northern part of that for civic mixed use or housing.

Charging crisis averted: It was a faulty outlet.

We're talking the flex space.

Morzel: From my perspective, consolidating city services on SE corner of east block. I'm happy putting housing, but I would not be too open for civic uses (on the ground floor).

Gatza: Some things tossed around: Relocating senior center with housing above. Or is it another part we sell.

Jones: Tonight we're just giving feedback on that land use?
Yes.

So for east block: civic, residential, retail, mixed use.

Brockett: "I would really look for housing on that block and not just additional offices."

Yates: Are we agreeing to any density or height?

Weaver: Mid-rise, 3-4 stories. 35-55 ft; taller buildings would only be to allow better forms of buildings (pitched roofs, etc.)

Weaver: Important to include that office is discouraged. We want housing and "active" first floors. "This is right along Broadway. This is the most intense part of the development. Everything else is going to get smaller."

Carlisle: I'm disagreeing with 55 ft. I don't think we should be going up that high.
Yates is agreeing with Cindy! "We still have a public hearing to go through, and I don't think we're ready for a public hearing. I'm not going to agree to anything tonight."

Jones: I'm baffled by that. We've been leading up to this.
Yates: We just heard from ppl last night. We've/They've had 24 hrs to digest it.
Morzel: No. They've had years to participate.

"We want to give staff something to work with," Morzel says.

Carlisle: "So I'll say not 55 ft."

Carlisle: Four stories is OK. Just not 55 ft.

Meschuk: It's buildings up to 35 feet but higher for pitched roofs or building forms.
Carlisle: That's great. It's not what Sam read.
Weaver: It is.

Brockett: Where plan is calling for building over 35 ft — not 55 ft! — we have buildings that go up to 65 ft currently
Morzel: 68 ft.

Jones: To the extent we're going to have tallness, it's going to be along Broadway here. "If we build nice buildings, it will be fine. If we build ugly buildings, it will not be fine."

Weaver: If we develop or we sell (parts), every one of these buildings will go through site review.

OK, next block: North Center
High-density residential 2 (stacked apartments, 3 floors, with potential extra height above 35 to allow for pitched roofs; 100-ft setback)

Morzel goes "on record" that she doesn't like taking down the hospital, but she realizes she's in the minority.
Brockett: You're not in the minority of not liking it.

OK, West Block: High-Density Residential 1
Townhome-style homes. 3 stories.

Morzel: Could you have ADUs in the back? So for every 2 townhomes, 1 ADU atop a garage?

You could, is the answer. "We'd need to write it into the zoning and look at that later," someone from city says.

Morzel wants no retail on the ground floor near NoBo park, as Planning Board suggested. Consensus on that.

Brockett: If it were right at the park, I think it's a cool idea, but it's across 9th Street... I don't support that

Young: How about we allow push carts in the park?
Ding ding ding, Jones says.

Council also rejects four stories near the park, a planning board suggestion. Heights should continue to scale down toward the park.

The few neighbors in the room are giving thumbs up.

Some discussion over zones that give density bonuses for affordable housing. Brockett, Young support. (That's phase 2 work, but still.)

Meschuk: Feedback we heard was concerns over height but wanting to see varied roof forms. So we did height map that says you can go up to 35 ft, but higher for pitched roofs (in some land uses) or an additional story (in other land uses)

Carlisle: Where else do we allow over 35 except for along Broadway?

They're using a map to answer this, which is hard to describe. But ONLY Pavilion building and parking garage can go up to 55ft, Meschuk says.

But most of the site will be 35 ft, with exceptions ONLY for pitched roofs. A couple areas can go above that but not to 55..... Gosh so confusing.

Ok, we're talking about the block where the county might go.

Morzel not in favor.

"We would be losing at least 90 housing units. That is just not acceptable to me." We bought this site for two reasons: To move city offices and for housing.

Young agrees: No county offices there.

"The lack of process alignment ... gives me pause," Young says. They were asked about co-purchasing it together in 2015 and didn't. "We've been talking about it for 4 years and there hasn't been forward movement."

By the time Broadway and Iris is ready for development (in exchange for Alpine-Balsam land), we might not get those 90 lost units bc costs will have escalated.

Carlisle: "I'm going to be disagreeable." She actually wants county on the site.

So many curveballs on this tonight.

Carlisle: If this wasn't used for county offices, how dense of housing would go there?

Brockett: If county goes there, it has to be contingent that we get more affordable housing than we would here without the county.

Yates agreeing with Brockett and Carlisle.

"I agree this has been a frustrating process."

"I only want to do this if we ended up with buildable land that yielded materially more (housing)," Yates says. And "I don't want to build a new parking garage."

Won't settle for just an "agreement" that "something someday will be built there."

"I would want to own Iris and Broadway." But we need to know what that might cost.

"I think it's worth exploring. I'd like to explore faster than we are now."

Suggests working group of city council, city staff, BoCo staff and county commissioner to iron out the details.

"Let's find out soon whether this is going to work or not."

Morzel: They need to make a decision. They still have 7 sites. We could help them make a decision and then they'd only have 6 sites (to consider).

"They" being the county.

Morzel: One thing public said clearly last night was they don't want county here.

I must have missed that...?

She's restating the (false) claim that the county said how much parking it needed. James Butler has repeatedly said the county doesn't know how many it needs.

"If the county was that interested, they would have doo-doo'ed or gotten off the pot by this point," Morzel says. "They're just stringing us along."

Jones: I think it's worth exploring. The way this plan is set up, it reserves the option. "Given the potential at Iris and Broadway, we'd be crazy not to look under the hood."

Yes, "the process has been clumsy, but it's clumsy watching two bureaucracies talk to each other."

"If it doesn't work out, so bit it, but I think we'd be remiss not to" explore it.

Yates addressing Morzel's concerns but wants to see "if there's a deal to be had here."
Morzel: "You told me this afternoon" you were against this.
Yates: "I'm not optimistic."

Young: It's concerning to go down this path where we say we're going to need 90 or more units, 150 units, whatever. and the public never responds well to that.

Morzel: If you think Alpine Balsam has been a hurricane, I can assure you when anybody goes to Iris Balsam, it will be another 5 years of planning.

Weaver also saying having county offices here is preferable to the public "in early feedback." They were concerned about the number of houses.

Odd, since they are so concerned about traffic. The study shows offices will bring more vehicle trips at rush hour than housing would.

Kurt Firnhaber, housing and human services: This is a city site. We wanna get the kind of affordable housing we can't usually get here. We may want to put additional resources ($$) on the site to get it.

We need 3 market units to get one affordable one, typically, Firnhaber says. Morzel asking if that changes bc we own the land.

"However, the land does have a value. The city paid a value for it. You as council would need to make a decision if you want to get value out of that land or not, or if you want to invest that in affordable housing." (Firnhaber)

Firnhaber would like to see ownership units here, which are hard to get.
Brockett asks about Holiday's model of market and affordable ownership units interspersed.
Yep, Firnhaber says, likely in the West Block.

If county doesn't take the site, does council like the housing form proposed there? staff asks. It would be four stories.

Morzel cool with that. She thinks neighbors would be cool with it, too. "Especially if there's affordability," Jones adds.

This is in the Center Block, to be clear. We're jumping back and forth a bit.

Morzel just made a snide, sneaky reference to CU. Talking about the county "they say they need 120,000 sq ft. That sounds like another group we're dealing with to the south."

Two insults in one.

Yates: "We're going to get 90 units in an acre?"
Yes, staff says.
Yates: Can you give me an example of anywhere else in town we get 90 units in an acre?

(Again, this is the part that could be either county offices OR housing)

Yates really questioning staff's findings here on how many housing units can go here.

"It's important bc if we say the deal with the county is subject to getting more (housing) than we can get here..." he says.

The range for the part of the site is 60-90 units, staff says. But you really don't know until you get further into the process.

Meschuk: Overall, with set of land uses on the site, without BoCo, then it's 210-260 housing units.
With BoCo: 120-170.

It's 60-90, based on the land use prototype. The working group could figure that out.

Weaver: We'll have to do test fits on the county property as well.

That was all the housing stuff. Now we're going to talk urban design and connections, which haven't gotten as much coverage bc... well... it's kind a tedious. I only pulled out a few things:

City wants to extend 11th street through the site. And do quite a bit of open space per housing unit. Something like 50% of park/open space per dwelling. (I don't know enough about that to explain more, but that was the figure in there.)

Morzel butchering some Dutch word. "I don't speak Dutch."

I speak a little bit. Just enough to get by, order a beer.

Morzel suggesting something: "Add a nice way for ppl to accidentally come in contact with one another."

Hold up, I heard the word "car-less" from Brockett. Not sure for what part of the site.

Weaver asking about that, too. Apparently the "equivalent" of 10th Street... ? I'm sorry, this is hard to translate through text without a visual.

11th might be car-free, too. If not, it will have very slow speeds and whatever this Dutch word is Morzel said.

Brockett pitching for a shuttle from here to the downtown bus station.

Morzel: Why can't they go on the Skip?
Brockett: Sometimes it's really full.

Brockett wants a multi-use path to be extended ... somewhere? I caught Broadway, Balsam and 13th but I'm not sure of more detail. But I think leading toward (past?) the shopping centers.

Morzel: Ppl are concerned about 9th and Balsam. There are a lot of collisions there... idk. I haven't seen the data for that.

Suggests a "small traffic circle."

Young: You're talking about 9th and Alpine.
Morzel: Maybe.

Edward Stafford, public works: "Multiple intersections have been identified for future improvements."

Brockett asks about parking.
Gatza: It depends on how much office v housing is there. We could share bc of the day/night thing.
Meschuk: We don't want to make over-assumptions about car turnover during the day.

Brockett: This is an opportunity for car sharing. This is a good site for car-light living.
Morzel: I'm not interested in building for cars. I recognize ppl have them. Where this site is, we don't need a lot of parking.

Jones: Ppl go, 'hey you guys are building too much' as if we control how much is coming forward. You can't explain it enough to ppl that we are not propelling things. Private land owners are the propellers.

Trust me, I think ppl know you're not propelling things. Their anger falls on two sides: You're not slowing things down enough AND/OR You're slowing things down too much.

From my observations on this.

Here's what (might) happen Sept. 24, joint public hearing with Planning Board: Staff will come back with land use map for city site ONLY. And a draft plan to phase the Alpine-Balsam Area Plan implementation.

Per Meschuk. (My understanding of what he said.)

Yates asks staff to sit down with neighborhood groups, including to look at the 2 citizen proposals brought forward. "Maybe there's some good ideas that come out of the neighborhood group."

"I'm talking about all neighborhood groups, not just one neighborhood group."

"If you could at least keep talking to them for the next four weeks."

Jones: All the land around are ... whatever
Meschuk: A future phase. But do you want us to gray it out completely or say this is what we've already thought of.

Gray it out completely, council says.

But incorporate the process somehow. "You guys did a lot of work. It doesn't need to disappear," Jones says.

I'll explain the "gray it out" comment, in case that was confusing. All these land use maps have different colors. So by "gray it out," council is saying to remove any land use proposals from the conversation — right now.

Weaver: "If we don't make an area plan and something comes forward (redevelopment) the only option is landmarking" to keep things the same.

Gehr: Any major redevelopment would include a site review. One of the first steps is landmarking.

Weaver: Even if landmarking were to happen, there is development potential in surface parking lots?

Gehr: There's still urban design principles (setbacks, open space, etc.) And in site review, you'd talk about "community values" as one of the criteria for approval.

"Decision makers have a lot of places to exercise discretion" in site review, Gehr says.

Some discussion over when to form the county/city working group. Weaver though about waiting until the Sept. 24 hearing; Yates says all we'll lose is time if we start now.

Nod of five to do a working group: Yes.
No volunteers for that.

Wait, Yates!

Yates and Weaver.

Council discussing giving Nagle a shot at it. "If she wants it, I'll step aside," Weaver says, laughing. (You also should have seen Jones face.)

Young asks that, at the hearing, staff highlight what COULD be built in the larger Alpine-Balsam area without an area plan in place.

Young, again, on the facilities master plan. We've talked before, she said, with HAB about looking at city facilities and their appropriateness for housing.

10-12 yrs ago, Morzel says, we did an inventory to see what could be used for housing. They were all occupied.

Gatza thanking council for their gratitude about engagement. "I'll share that with staff; there's quite a few who had a hand in this."

This was actually an interesting meeting.

I won't be gone long. I'll be back tomorrow for a candidate forum, and the again Friday for another!

@threadreaderapp please unroll. Thank you.