Council might vote to call up (review) the Diagonal Plaza partial redevelopment again. They already dealt with this project by passing a special ordinance to allow more housing there.
Or you can read more about the plans here. They call for
282 dwellings and 22,917 square feet of ground-floor commercial space on the west and south sides, mostly parking lot today. The ex-Sports Authority and Walgreens are part of that.
This project also calls for expansion of an existing Boulder Housing Partners community. And a new (small) park!
Planning Board OK'd this project, so council is the last step before permits are issued and construction begins.
Councilman Wallach wants to know how many parking spaces at the new project will have EV charging stations.
Number of parking spaces today that have EV charging stations: Zero.
I could be wrong about that, as I've recently moved away from that area. But having walked through the parking lot several times a month for the last 10 years, I never saw one.
Architect Bill Holicky comes on the Zoom to answer: Boulder just updated its sustainability codes. The new requirements call for 1/3 or 40% of spaces must have conduits in place for charging.
No other questions, and no one wants to call it up since council already looked at this pretty in-depth.
Yates: "It's such a joy that this is being turned into housing that our community desperately needs." It's a "blighted property," he says. Folks have been trying to make something happen here for 20 years, at least.
Shouts out Yvette Bowden for working "very, very hard behind the scenes" to contact property owners (there are, like, 12+ at Diagonal Plaza) and try to get them to work together.
Ed Stafford from city planning dept is back with more on EV spaces: 10% have to be EV ready, and 40% more have to be EV capable, and 5% *more* have to have dual-port or quick-charge spaces... at a minimum.
That's for new development with over 25 spaces.
"So 55% overall have to have some version of ready for or offer at that spot, charging," Stafford says.
Some more questions about EV charging. Never heard this discussed in this much detail (or, tbh, at all) during development review before. But maybe there's not been a big enough project since the new codes took effect.
They're done now. This project has a green light. Moving on!
I have lost track of how many times council has talked about this. It's a plan for the future of East Boulder: How much housing we can do, where it can go, transportation amenities/facilities/plans, etc.
We had a joint public hearing with Planning Board on this... at some point. I no longer remember.
Planning Board had a couple of big suggestions for changes that we're gonna discuss tonight. Council AND PB have to agree on the exact same thing here.
Annexations have dif requirements for affordable housing. They have to provide more, via either building or cash-in-lieu, than already-in-the-city projects.
The thinking is: You're getting the benefit of city services, so give us the benefit of affordable housing.
They're requesting $6.5M from DRCOG, the Denver Regional Council of Gov't, for 3 projects. They are a collaborative group who gets federal and state $$ for transportation projects.
Also asking for $1.5M from CDOT or RTD for one of the projects.
Those projects:
- 30th Street Preliminary Design (Arapahoe to Diagonal)
- Broadway + Table Mesa, Broadway + Regent - Transit Priority Intersections
- Baseline enhanced transit stops, bike lanes (30th to Foothills)
Looks like we're adding some $$ to tackle councils' priorities, including housing/human services stuff and wildfire/disaster resilience.
It also includes $2M for more staff: 22.5 Full-Time Employees. The city is still short on workers.
More details on those:
HHS: $612,500
- $375K to rehab existing city facility for “homeless respite center”
- $40K for middle-income down payment assistance pilot
- $70K for 5-yr strategic plan for inclusionary housing
- $7,500 for survey for updating ADU regulations
Council's not talking about this until next week.
Tonight, we've got
- Vote on East Boulder Subcommunity Plan
- Some interesting development projects
- A quick COVID update
- Adjustments to the 2022 budget
This meeting was *supposed* to be in person, with the public back in chambers, too, but then council members got COVID after an in-person meeting. So we're back virtual.
BoCo has moved into "medium" levels of transmission, according to the CDC. We'll return to that later.
We've talked about this before. TL;DR is that there are First Amendment concerns, bc if someone does something obscene during a live video, staff would want to censor it, but bc it's a government, it's problematic. Or could be.
For this reason, in the past council has always said no to video testimony.