Sustainability Advisory Board Meeting, January 19, 2022

Video Description: Sustainability Advisory Board Meeting, January 19, 2022

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a video recording. Although the transcription, which was done with software, is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or [software] transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the meeting, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
Read along below or follow along here: https://otter.ai/u/JhkBY1lGVAoqnuJUOzlK5ZtYsWA

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Hi everyone. Happy New Year. I would now like to call the January 19 2020 to Longmont sustainability Advisory Board Meeting to order. Please start with a roll call.

Unknown Speaker 0:14
Awesome. If everybody could just let me know that they’re here by just saying yes here present that would be great. Lisa Knobloch here Francy Jaffe air Aaron Fosdick. Your Thanks, Aaron. WC admin. Here. Thank you. You bet. Becky Doyle. Here. Kate Cullerton. Here. Jim Metcalf. Here. Mary Lynn. Here. Charles Musgrave. Here. Adam Reed. Cable Meyer. Here. Robert Davidson. Excellent. Chair, we have a quorum.

Unknown Speaker 1:14
Fantastic. I’m going to read our land acknowledgement statement.

Unknown Speaker 1:20
We acknowledge that Longmont sits on the traditional territory of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, ute and other indigenous peoples. We honor the history and the living and spiritual connection that the first peoples have with this land. It is our commitment to face the injustice that happened when the land was taken, and to educate our communities, ourselves and our children to ensure that these injustices do not happen again. Okay, so on to the annual review of duties and responsibilities. Who is reviewing that with us?

Unknown Speaker 2:04
So Tammy, I don’t know, I realized we, we may need to move this to the next meeting that something that’s had that Heather usually does with us, and we move some other things and I apologize that I didn’t touch that one. So if it’s okay with everyone to move that to the next, meeting your mind if we do that works for me. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 2:35
Then let’s move on to approval of the minutes of the last meeting, which I’m very sorry that I missed. So

Unknown Speaker 2:46
anyone who was there? Please go ahead and make a motion. Aye. Motion to approve the minutes. I second that motion? All in favor? Aye. Seems anyone to post married? It’s your hand.

Unknown Speaker 3:06
I wasn’t there. Oh, great. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 3:10
Um, okay. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 3:13
It seems that the the motion has passed. Okay. Do we have any members of the public who would like to be heard today? Is that still a No?

Unknown Speaker 3:27
Still no. All right.

Unknown Speaker 3:31
Then let us move on to the next item on the agenda, which is the agenda, the revisions and submissions of documents. Any one have any changes for the agenda?

Unknown Speaker 3:47
Just really quickly, if we could swap a and b, we have Aaron Fosdick and animal right from planning. So if we could let them go ahead and go first, then they can pop off and then we can do a sounds great to me. Thanks.

Unknown Speaker 4:04
Do we have to officially say that we’re moving item five to next week? Oh, is that an agenda change that we have to

Unknown Speaker 4:11
seems like an agenda change. That has been officially said I heard you. Great.

Unknown Speaker 4:24
So with all of those changes, let us move on to Item nine B. We will hear about steam and the sugar mill project update from Aaron. The floor is yours.

Unknown Speaker 4:41
Thank you Chair and members of the sustainability advisory board. I’m Erin Fosdick. And I’m a principal planner with the city of Longmont and I’m joined by Hannah Mulroy, who is our environmental and sustainability planner. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to meet Hannah, but we wanted to thank you have correct me if I’m wrong, Hannah.

Unknown Speaker 5:02
I don’t believe I’ve had the honor of being here before. So hello, everyone.

Unknown Speaker 5:06
Okay. So Hannah recently joined our team last year. And we’re incredibly excited to have her and I think this board will be excited as well, because obviously, she’s working on a lot of things that are probably near and dear to your heart. So I asked Hannah to join me today. She’s working with planning staff and other folks in the city on our sugar mill and steam sub area plan. So Tammy, I assume you will pull up the presentation rather than me sharing my screen. Is that how we do it at this board as well?

Unknown Speaker 5:34
I’m totally trying to do that. But I’m having some difficulty. So Aaron, if you can share your screen, maybe we’ll just go with you real quick here.

Unknown Speaker 5:41
Okay. Let me start the slideshow so that you guys don’t see me fumbling around. Okay. I’ve never gotten to share my screen officially at a board and commission meeting so well, there’s a first for everything right? This will be this will be exciting. I’m going to go. Okay, you guys can see this. Okay, we can, yes. So what I can’t see super great. Now is everyone on camera. So if you have a question what as we’re going through, maybe just shout to me. And that’ll be my cue since I’m navigating couple screens. So that’s also why I’m looking to the side. So what we want to go over today is just really to give you an introduction to this exciting planning project. Councilmember Martin has heard some of this, so bear with us. But we wanted to just introduce the project, which we’re we’ve we’ve been working on for a couple months now, but are really trying to generate some interest in the community and start getting some preliminary feedback. So today, we’ll give you an overview, show you some maps, go through our goals and some preliminary market information. And then just really open it up if you have questions or overall comments. I do also want to know that this presentation was has been modified from the original that was provided by our consultant team when we presented to council. And so we are working with a team led by Stantec. To help us through this. So this is a presentation just to give them credit that they started putting together. So in terms of the study area, the scope and purpose really what we’re trying to do is create a detailed sub area plan for what are essentially two sub areas, but we’re looking at really as one overall sub area and that will be the sugar mill site, which is kind of on the eastern portion. And then the steam area, which some of you may be familiar with, through conversations with council. Our focus on this will be to look at opportunities and challenges associated with this 250 acre study area, we really want to think about urban design and placemaking opportunities, also really want to look at multimodal connectivity. There’s some real opportunities in this area. And there’s some pretty significant challenges in that realm as well. And we’ll talk about that a little bit more. As there is continued development interest in this area, we want to talk about infrastructure utilities. And we want to talk about phasing and what the role of the public and private sectors should be in realizing the vision for this area. We’ve developed some high level goals for this project. You can see those here. We know housing remains incredibly important for long mountain, we think this area is one where we can encourage some meaningful housing options. And that would include a range of housing types, price points, ownership and rental opportunities. We know all of those things are important and we think this area can is really a great location to think about some of those things. As I’ve mentioned, transportation and connectivity are important. So we really want to think about how this study area provides both regional connectivity but also local transportation options within the site and to the to the broader area. There’s some development interest in this study area. And so we want to make sure that those development opportunities are connecting within the study area that there’s a cohesive vision, and that those also contribute to what’s already developed in Longmont. As we think about the community benefit of this area, we want to think about how we incentivize and encourage cultural arts facilities, community hubs for creativity and innovation. There’s a lot of momentum around this. And we want to figure out how we can build on the great things that are already going on downtown that are already going on at the coil campus with the museum and beyond. And then obviously near and dear to your hearts a focus on sustainability. So thinking about what are those longer term solutions from sustainable building standpoint and development practices? And how can we really weave that in to ensure that this site develops in a sustainable and resilient way? Just to kind of set the context I mentioned that there’s a lot of interest. And you can see here the study area is outlined in pink. We’ve had a couple pre application meetings in and around the sugar mill area. We’ve had some in and around the steam area. And we know that there’s already a number of projects that are either under construction or working our way through the development review process. And so you can see some of those here. Those are things that we’re trying to pay attention to. So again, that we ensure kind of that cohesive vision that we’re going to lay out. We

Unknown Speaker 10:09
just, yeah, just jump in really quickly. Yeah. Would you mind with not not spending too much time or going into too much detail, but I’m not sure that folks are super familiar with the development review process or the pre process? Can you share with folks like a, you know, high level one on one real quick, so they know what you’re talking about in this context?

Unknown Speaker 10:28
Absolutely. I’ll give you my elevator pitch. And then if you guys have more questions you can ask them. So we have a pretty robust development review process. And you know, people go through major and minor applications, it really starts with the highest level, which is properties that are within the planning area, but not yet annex to the city. And so as you’ll see in a second, when we look at zoning, some of the properties in and around the sugar mill aren’t even in the city, yet, they’re still in Boulder County. And so they’re part of our planning area, we anticipate they’ll become part of Longmont someday, but they haven’t yet been annexed. And so that would be a very early development review process that these properties would have to go through. Once the property is annexed and has zoning than they are able to develop within the city, they have to create lots, so they have to go through a subdivision process to create buildable lots. And so some of these properties are in that process where they’re, you know, creating lots for buildings. Once there’s lots developed and infrastructure in the ground, essentially, they can go through a site plan, a conditional use site plan, something else that will allow them to basically go vertical. And so some of these you’ll see that are mixed use developments or multifamily developments, they’re really going through that site plan process. And that’s really where we look at all the details to make sure that buildings are meeting our density and dimensional standards that they’re meeting our parking requirements, our landscaping requirements, our design standards. And so we have a lot of things that our development review committee which is comprised not only of planning, but of building services, public works, engineering, stormwater, affordable housing, and myriad other groups are all taking a look to make sure that city standards codes and regulations are being met. And so these projects are all in some varying state. And you can see, you know, some of them, like this project here is South Main Station that’s obviously mostly constructed, they’re still constructing the final building that went through site plan review. Whereas this big piece down here is the Costco that you may have read about, they’ve been going through some land use amendments, zoning process, preliminary planning, and are working their way through earlier stages in the process. And so this represents really, kind of a smattering of where things are in the process. We have an active development log, if you’re curious about any specific project, and that provides more detailed information on what the application type is, who the applicant is, and who the project manager is. And Hannah, and I could certainly give you information on any individual project. But that’s really a high level snapshot of kind of what you can expect if you’re going through our development process. You’re at one of those phases, either minor or major and you’re being reviewed against a bunch of standards. Some of these projects are going to our planning commission for decision. Some are going to city council, and then some are staff level decisions. Does that help Lisa?

Unknown Speaker 13:16
Hey, Aaron, I have a follow up question, if you don’t mind. Yeah, of course, as part of this review for us, as do you consider that half the steamier looks like is in a floodplain. Like what sort of mitigation is part of the review process?

Unknown Speaker 13:30
Absolutely. So our floodplain manager is part of that development review committee team that I mentioned. And so we obviously have floodplain regulations. Those are part of our municipal code, just as our land development code is another section. And so you’re absolutely right. There are some constraints with the floodplain in terms of development potential. Different uses have different allowances for what can be built. You know, generally, we don’t like to see building within the floodplain. And so there’s obviously a large project with the resilient St. Brain projects that I’m sure you’ve had presentations on and are aware of, that will remove significant portions of this area from the floodplain. But we’re actually looking at that, particularly on kind of the southern portion of the sugar mill. You know, there’s some Mining and Reclamation that’s being planned for a small portion of that site. There’s some I’ll say marginal wetlands in proximity to that site. And so we’re really looking at that as an opportunity. You know, is there a way we could maybe work with our open space group to, you know, provide for some regional satisfaction of open space and parks? Is there a way we can look at green infrastructure on a broader scale and do some low impact development that really recognizes the floodplain, the wetlands and some kind of marginal development potential on there? So yes, we’re specifically looking at it at a high level through this planning process. That being said, Every development application that comes in would need to look at that on a much more detailed from a much more detailed standpoint, and they’ll be required to do drainage studies and kind of show all of that information. There’s also setback regulations in terms of riparian areas. So there’s a lot of additional things that development applications are going to look at that we’re not necessarily looking at, through this sub area planning process. But certainly, you know, as part of Hannah’s job, she’s taking a look at some of those things. Again, our floodplain manager is some of our public works, engineers are reviewing some of the drainage information. So that’s all being considered, typically at a plat, but even more so at a site planning level. Does that help?

Unknown Speaker 15:47
Yeah, that’s very helpful. And what I can add is, my understanding is Fort Collins, and dirt, a pretty terrible flooding, 1997. And they really recovered from it and put the proper mitigation in place. And when the 2013 flood came in, they had very minimal damage, if I remember correctly, it was like they had no severe structural damage to buildings. And so I wonder if there’s something that can be learned from what they did to apply to projects like this?

Unknown Speaker 16:15
Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. Thinking about how we become more resilient in the face of those types of disasters is absolutely one of not necessarily a goal with this sub area planning process, although it’s important, but I think a higher level goal. And I know, I’ve talked with this group about our comprehensive plan, I know you’re intimately familiar with a sustainability plan. And so I think there are some real opportunities to continue to think about broader implications for land use for where we place buildings, what uses are where, and then what types of physical improvements we make, you know, in an adjacent to our river, and I know that we’re doing some of that with the resilient st Brain Project. But I think there’s definitely opportunities to look at what some of our neighbors have done what other folks nationally and even internationally have done. So I think you’re spot on with that. And that’s something we’re really interested in. Kind of doesn’t make sense at a high level for this project. But I’ll definitely, you know, take that message back to folks as we think about updating our our comp plan.

Unknown Speaker 17:19
Any other questions,

Unknown Speaker 17:20
say really quick? Um, I would say, Adam, I think that the floodplain itself actually on this one, it dips down kind of right now it’s much we’re where that cost and we’re going Thomas’s because that’s the kind of overflow plane that’s there. That property that was like slated for mining, I’m not sure if that’s still up for grabs as a mining or if if Costco and armas are in Thomas means it’s going to be at Costco or the mind. Is that what it means?

Unknown Speaker 17:46
So, I am not the project planner. So I will give you what I understand it to be the western portion is slated for Costco. And so there’s a portion of this property that’s been zoned for regional commercial. And then the southern portion, which is not on this map has been zoned for housing. But the eastern portion is still slated for mining activities. And so we do have some more detailed plans on that project on our website. But you’re absolutely correct. That that there’s a portion of that property that would be mined and reclaimed. So the Costco would be on this western side, you know, you can kind of see where it dips down here. Everything to the east is still planned to be mined and reclaimed. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 18:28
so in that Reclamation, that will most likely become those water reservoirs that will kind of become part of that floodplain. So your water has, has that additional floodplain to move into instead of going up into the steam area. Instead of going up to the north. It’s going to be draining, it’s going to come down to the south kind of along where the river already flows naturally. And through those mining areas into that old riverbed that kind of heads down that way. So that’s that’s kind of where your floodplain is, I think on this map anyway, and um, so I’m not sure how much within that actual steam area is

Unknown Speaker 19:05
will will would get hit with much.

Unknown Speaker 19:09
But go ahead, sorry. No, I appreciate I appreciate that. I am not a flood floodplain expert and do not even attempt to play one on TV. So any other questions before I advance? We don’t need to spend a lot of time on this. But I do like to show this. This study area has a pretty complicated pattern of land ownership. There’s over 60 property owners. We have been trying to meet with individual property owners to see what their vision for the area is and how might we create a plan that really supports them moving forward to help achieve what the community envisions and so you can see especially over in downtown, a lot of smaller individual property owners and you know a lot of them don’t don’t have plans to do much different from what’s there today and that’s fine. We want to support that as well. But this is really just to show kind of the complex ownership patterns in this general area. As I mentioned, a lot of this areas within the city, most of the area in the eastern or western portion of the study area, kind of in the in the steam area, so to speak, is already zoned for mixed use development. And so as we’ll see, in just a second, there’s been a number of planning initiatives that have kind of addressed this area already, as you move to the east of Martin Street, the fair majority of the project areas not actually within the city yet, and so that’ll need to go through an annexation process. But it’s still possible to go ahead and look at a sub area plan, which we’re doing now the rest of the area is generally zoned for mixed use employment, which permits a variety of uses. There’s a lot of open space, there’s a great network of open space, obviously along the river, I’m sure many of us know that and enjoy that today. And so we think that creates a real opportunity for this study area and creates a really nice opportunity for interfacing with trails, open spaces, natural areas that are you know, kind of forming this east west spine in Longmont. As we look at connectivity, you’ll begin to see a theme, as I show you the next few maps, the western portion of the study area has a lot more porosity, it’s a lot more connected, you can see the downtown grid is present here. As you move further east, there is a lot fewer street connections. And so this is something we really need to look at, also really need to look at how we interact with the railroad, there are some railroad crossings that are at odd angles. As many of you may know that it’s it’s challenging to do different things with the railroad crossings. I’m sure councilmember Martin is is aware of that with the work we’ve been doing on quiet zones. And so that’s something that we’re taking a look at. But obviously, as we think about connectivity, as we think about placemaking, our street network is incredibly important. And that’s not only true for vehicles, but also for pedestrians and so similar, you know, there’s a lot of pedestrian scale infrastructure with sidewalks, side paths, off street trails. And same with bike infrastructure. There are some on street facilities, again, primarily focused in the West a little bit fewer in the East. And you can see a lot of those sort of end at Third Avenue. And so one of the things we’re really looking at is what is the role of third? How could that possibly evolve? And how could we really create some of those connections to the north, the neighborhoods to the north, as well as Mill Village to the south east, which I think, you know, there’s residents there that would really like to see some additional connections back to the city. And this might provide a really good opportunity. So we’ll be looking at all modes. Yes, I see councilmember Martin.

Unknown Speaker 22:48
my spacebar still doesn’t unmute me. I just actually had someone asked today what the conductivity plan is for Mill Village to have an easier time accessing the Greenway without walking or riding on the shoulder of expressways. Do we have anything preliminary that I could use to dangle in front of his nose?

Unknown Speaker 23:13
You know, we’ve actually had a little bit of outreach from a few residents in Mill Village with this project, but also, as you know, beforehand, so I think there’s you know, there’s not a significant distance to get there. But if you’re on a bike or on your feet, it might feel like more than it is. So there have been some discussions about you know, ultimately there would be a path, you know, on the south side of 119. When that gets built and who builds that I think it’s not a funded project. You know, but obviously, there’s also some opportunities with future improvements and signals on the north side to connect potentially North ways. So I think those are things we’re going to need to evaluate. We don’t have any specific recommendations yet. But I imagine as we take a look at these network alternatives, there’ll be some things that we can work with transportation planning, as well as Public Works Engineering to kind of come up with what that preferred solution is. And I would hope I will urge them, you know that that would include a kind of an off street solution for Mill Village to access the Greenway and the trail head down here at 100/19.

Unknown Speaker 24:26
Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 24:31
I guess briefly, Aaron is a follow up to that. On that map. I just got to thinking it looks like you could have a bikeway connecting the greenery around Pei street down to the bikeway on self can Pratt. I don’t know what the feasibility of that is.

Unknown Speaker 24:49
Yeah, that’s a really interesting observation. And one of the things that we’re talking about on our current comp plan we show PE street going all the way through and connecting as an arterial road. way, you know, paste is 100/19 Street. And so our comp plan shows a connection here. If you’ve been out to the site, which I realize a lot of people haven’t, because there’s not a lot you would go out there for but it’s a it’s a really impressive place. It’s got great views. But what you’ll see is there some hugely significant grade changes and development that make that sort of a cost prohibitive from an arterial roadway standpoint, but that’s one of the things that we’ve talked about is, would it be possible to create a multimodal connection? So maybe a Bike Ped connection? Would it be possible, you know, this certainly already is a local road here. So would it be possible to do something that kind of utilizes the infrastructure that’s in place with maybe minimal improvements, that doesn’t need to be designed to an archer roadway standard. And so that’s one of the things we’ll definitely be looking at. But yeah, the grade, the grade change is pretty significant. But it’s also very attractive, because there’s a signal there, right, which makes it a bit safer. And then lastly, from a connectivity standpoint, again, similar theme, the western portion of the study areas pretty well served by local transit, the eastern portion, not so much, although certainly there is rail that kind of serves the site. So that offers maybe a much longer term opportunity for transit. But certainly, we will be looking at bus service and the role of transit in this study area.

Unknown Speaker 26:34
Just ask one question. So on that on the previous figure, the one that showed Yeah, this guy, so I was looking at it. And he had said that, you know, maybe reenvisioning, some other role for Third Avenue, and a Third Avenue from main east, I guess, or comes around, and I’m kind of, and then you’re talking about PACE, the potential of PACE becoming more of an arterial road. And it seems like then we’re starting to, like cut this up into, like arterial roads for cars, as opposed to places that people will live. And it’s something I do worry about sometimes that about how much of how much of this design will be, so that people can move through it quickly. And how much of it will be focused on people who actually live there are who who are going to be there. And I was just kind of curious if there’s any guidance on, you know, I’m not that I not that I necessarily want to slow people down. But so much of our nice areas of town are really just fast roads for people to move through quickly. And if we’re thinking about something that’s new, I just want to know if like guidance on like, overall traffic impacts, for places like third and pace. If there is there is guidance on that, or if that’s just still part before too early in the process.

Unknown Speaker 27:57
I think it’s definitely something we’re evaluating, I could manage to get myself in real trouble here, because I don’t have our transportation planner or engineer here. And so I can, you know, go off on what I think is a planner. But I will say, you know, our our approach is really considering placemaking. And I think you’re spot on that it’s not impossible, but more challenging when you have large roadways that are moving high volumes of traffic to create really great places. I will say, you know, pace and third are both are true right of ways. Now, that’s how they’re classified. I think what we’re looking for is opportunities for connectivity, we haven’t gotten to the point of defining what those look like my impression would be that based on the type of place and character that we’re considering that, that we’ve sort of already started to hear from people and that we’ve talked with developers about that we wouldn’t be talking about, you know, more six lane arterial highways. And interestingly enough, you know, our consultant team brought up the idea of third and, you know, that’s a big right of way, right? For those of us who, who drive it or walk on the north side of it, it is a big right of way that, you know, sort of the design of it does facilitate maybe faster traffic than what some of us would like. So that’s one of the ideas they had is how comfortable would the city be kind of re envisioning third? And I don’t think that something as staff we’ve really evaluated fully, partially because we haven’t seen any concepts of what that might look like. But one of the things they talked about is, what if we did create more porosity and more crossings and really slowed things down? What if we changed, you know, Lane widths and usage of that right of way to something different that change the character of that what would that do in terms of helping us tie this area together, and not having third kind of act as a boundary so to speak, and so I think that’s absolutely something we’ll identify And, you know, create some options around, right? And then we’ll test those right, we’ve got to actually have people who who look at traffic design and signalization and look at the data, obviously, I don’t want to speak for them, they’ll evaluate that we’ll make some recommendations, and then, you know, ultimately see kind of what the community thinks.

Unknown Speaker 30:20
I had a question, just kind of related to that, you know, I wonder about whether, you know, the existing infrastructure that surrounds this area can support additional development. And, specifically, it seems like Ken Pratt, between about sunset maybe in Main Street has reached its vehicular volume capacity at certain times of day. And that if a significant development in this area that would use that you’ll Ken Pratt, south of Maine, or west of Maine, as a feeder into this area, it seems like the traffic and congestion is a nonlinear effect. So adding volume as something that’s already near its threshold for reaching its maximum capacity, it really pushes that back further, and so we have congestion even further back into the 119 corridor, for example, is that something that’s already being thought of? Because it’s, it seems like it’s already a pretty significant problem at our current level of traffic volumes?

Unknown Speaker 31:26
Yeah, so that’s definitely something that we evaluate. I mentioned our development review process. And so we, we have folks from our transportation team that are evaluating specific projects. And so that’s really done at kind of an individual development proposal level through looking at traffic studies. But one thing we also do is kind of take a step even further back, and we do a lot of working, you know, not only just as Longmont but as a region, taking a look at the traffic model and tying that with our growth and employment projections to really see what our roadways can accommodate. And so our Trent, our traffic folks, and when I say traffic folks, I’m really talking about Transportation Planning and Public Works Engineering, are evaluating that. And there’s a number of different strategies that they can look at to address that, you know, all the way from Lane additions, which, you know, I don’t think most people want to continue to see increasing pavement, right, for a number of reasons. But, you know, I think we’ve been pretty successful in Longmont with making intersection and signal improvements. And so there’s lots of different ways that they’ll look at how could we address increased traffic? From this sub area plan perspective, we’re not going into that fine level of detail. But certainly, we’ve always anticipated from a planning perspective that this area would develop, right, that it’s going to be more than a vacant factory, right? We’ve always anticipated that there would be traffic generated. And so our roadway system and our future roadway system is has been planned to handle that, again, we’ll test those things when once we get individual development applications, and we will require traffic impact studies. But you’re certainly right, we need to think about what those implications are. That’s one of the reasons to we want to look at additional conductivity, because right now, there’s not a lot of options, right for accessing the sugar mill, there’s a few roads, and then there could be choke points, right. So if we create additional capacity in the network, by having more streets, there’s more options for people to travel, right. And it may help with congestion of some of those other roadways. So those are all things that will be evaluated, either with this process that kind of a higher level or through the development process when things are coming in for development.

Unknown Speaker 33:40
Right. Yeah, that definitely makes sense. I understand that a lot. And one another kind of maybe even a higher level question is, you know, we have the Envision Longmont plan that I think was 2000 approved by council in 2016. How much? You know, do we kind of map the goals of the development like this onto the Envision goal, Longmont plan or vision for the city? And and maybe a separate question is how long is your vision Longmont with you know, basically the thoughts of the people who provided input into that in you know, the middle of the last decade. And so at some point, those thoughts become maybe obsolete or a little bit out of date with the change in demographics, the change in the nature and culture of the city, even technology and things like that. So is there is there a pretty active comparison back and forth between envision Longmont of vision and and how very significant development like this would fit into that?

Unknown Speaker 34:43
Yeah, I’ll give you a quick answer. And then I do see Kay that you have your hand up as well. We definitely consider previous plans and I do have a slide that kind of shows on how this effort will build on a lot of previous work including the Envision Longmont plan and so though, obviously is, as you know, that’s a pretty high level plan. That’s kind of our vision for the future. And it’s not as specific as you know, this will be in terms of kind of smart parcels specific suggestions for land use placemaking urban design, but it’s absolutely an input. With regard to your second question. Yes, it’s a living document. And we do need to update it, to make sure that we’re keeping track of what the community how the community’s values and vision have changed. And so we actually have money budgeted this year, to update that and the sustainability plan, we find that those plans are really good companion plans. And so we want to not only update them as documents together, but also talk with the community about, you know, what adjustments do we need to make in terms of our values and visions? And what what isn’t reflected? Or what could be better reflected? What else is important to us to your point what new technology exists? And so we can definitely talk more about that. super interested in this group’s feedback. I will go to K and then I’ll go to Councilmember Martin.

Unknown Speaker 36:02
Perfect.

Unknown Speaker 36:04
Sorry, I’ve got a long list here. Um, I want to say, because you’re just kind of on the steam and envision Longmont I’m going to jump in with the quick steam project question. The same project I know when it took off it took off with a lot of steam it was you know, there’s going to be entertainment units there’s going to be access for this year Rex recreation here. Performing Arts here innovation centers here. Yes, we’ve gotten in we’ve got the Innovation Center down on quail row now. Um, you know, I’m looking on the website right now for an update because No, I don’t track this stuff daily. I have a job. But you know, I want to say in the times I’ve gone down yes, there’s there’s development of the I want to say kind of lofts and apartments that have been down there. And you’ve got will be brewing kind of that is expanded to have this great little, you know, concert kind of thing over there. But overall, aside from getting the I want to say Martin Street, kind of park down and done, I’ve not seen a ton getting developed in steam. And even looking at the website, I’m going well, what are we actually going to get in the steam area? Is that being is am I jumping the gun? And just way too far on the surface right now? Or I guess what is the general progress of the steam area? And how fast are we going to get beginning stuff into there? So you do you know, like I said before you lose track of what the Envision is or changes in the next 10 years, while you’re trying to incorporate this? Or have we just said, alright, well, steam has been on hold because of COVID. So now we’re really expanding the area instead. Is that the goal?

Unknown Speaker 37:44
I think we absolutely want to build on the visioning work that was done back in 2019 for that steam area. And it sounds like you may have been a person that participated in that, which is great. And so as you know, there was a lot of topic areas. And you mentioned several of those. And I know councilmember Martin was heavily involved in that. And so you’re right, a lot of things got a little bit sidetracked because of COVID. And so I think now is really a chance to sort of go back to that vision, check the assumptions and go into more detail. You know, that was a pretty high level visioning exercise that looked at kind of what could be right. And we didn’t spend a lot of time testing assumptions. I think now’s our chance to do that. And so really thinking about what type of network do we need to support this? What type of uses really makes sense? And what what could that yield? You know, what would a building like this be in terms of its square footage and number of units? How does that match with our code, and so we can build off that visioning work that was done to do some more of that detailed analysis. You know, that is an area where we do have some properties that are still encumbered by the floodplain. And there’s been work that’s been going on to do that, but I think that is impacting the development schedule a little bit, but I will say, there’s a lot of interest. And there are some projects, if you remember from that map moving forward, or that map of current projects that have started the development process and are thinking about, you know, what, what might be there, and some of those are, you know, maybe more in in alignment with steam, some of those are residential. I will say there’s a lot of excitement from some of the businesses that are there. And so that’s, that’s a really good sign, but I think it will be you know, a bit before we see full transformation of that area, if that’s what you’re looking for.

Unknown Speaker 39:33
I was gonna say snapping back to this shot that you had with ongoing projects out there to try and screenshot it and I completely failed. But if you can go back I would say when I do look at it there in this format, I don’t see anything being really planned in that same area. Aside from the the mixed use of the small the red patch, I want to say that or the orange patch that’s right above that 319 Unit multiple where that 319 unit multifamily development is I was kind of looking saying there’s nothing actually proposed within the pink line aside from the multifamily and mixed use development area over to the east. There’s not much within right there. There’s i That’s where I’m going. That’s that was part of the steam area that I’ve been excited about for the last five years or so that I’m saying before we start moving elsewhere. And no, I envision things myself for i There’s things I would love to see out at the sugar mill area, you know, but I’m going, are we going to, are we going to end up defaulting and bulking up on, you know, housing development in the same area, instead of the Performing Arts complexes? Would it be better and more attractive to place those on the very east end of town and make a large entryway into a complex at that area, instead of trying to do a bunch of crossroads, and put multi family homes on the corner of town where it is literally the first thing you see when you come into town? Anyway, so it just I my thought was I’m not seeing much in in this map that you have up right now that shows that there’s much being pushed on the Steam area anymore. And so I don’t know where the progress on that is. And if we’re bringing on to the south, I’m not I’m trying not to look too much at the outside, because I’m going those are things those are projects around going. And maybe we are just at the very beginning of saying we’re going to start annexing this. I know this this planning. The planning bid, I know went out last, like September or so. So it’s still probably very initial phase. For Stantec. I don’t think it’s it’s been in their hands that long? Because I watched that RFP go out? Um,

Unknown Speaker 41:44
yeah, and I should probably have mentioned when we talked about our development process, you know, the city isn’t the one building most of these things, right. It’s private developers that are coming to us to initiate things. And so if I would have updated this map, since we presented we do have a pre application meeting for this property. You know, this is City property here. There has been we have had a few conversations with developer developers wanting to do stuff here. You’re absolutely right, we do have a performing arts study. And I’ll show that on another slide where we talk about other things that are informing this. So that’s absolutely something we’re still thinking about. But again, I think I think there are some primarily floodplain concerns in this area that needs to be addressed before development can move forward.

Unknown Speaker 42:33
Okay. And I was gonna say, again, I’m going I know it’s developers that have to say, This is my idea. And I want to build it, and the city has to decide if they’re balancing that which is going to be difficult when you have things coming in over a 10 year plan. You know, but again, I thought that was also where this was a public private partnership, and not just dependent on the developers alone bringing in that the city would be saying, Hey, this is our idea. And we’re hiring so and so to build it. Now. I’m going to jump to another question and get off that because I have a list going here. So that was just in general the overarching was where was Steam itself and where the plans are in that and where is that going? And do we have an update on that eventually. The other question I wanted to jump to the roads comments that were going on about making these quarters north to south through this through the sugar mill area. I want to say that in my view, you know Ken Pratt is a direct shot to downtown on the South that and Third Avenue is the only real shot you have from the highway into downtown. And it even provides access for people on the west side of town and the north side of town to come in off 119 Without Third Avenue. If we are adding extra lights at Third Avenue you can tell I live on the west side of town because I’m going to not add more lights to these areas.

Unknown Speaker 43:52
You know other than that we have highway 66 which is a two lane highway accessing is on the north. It also you know is a high accident level 119 is really the main corridor into Longmont off the highway. If you are looking to add cross areas into the sugarmill area. Yes it will slow it down more intersections will lead some more accidents, everything about it. I would propose looking at and I’m going to use those little y weird y entry exits that you have off of you know interested intersections where you can have a moving kind of moving accident entrance into the area and out of it and inhabits own possibly sustainable you know neighborhood or network system. Where where if there are homes being built in here or there’s people traveling into this zone, it can be an exclusive kind of separate zone in its own a kind of a micro micro activity center within the city. I would prefer to see it have you know maybe bigger access points they can be four lane access points to get in. But something that channel channel Traffic in through an exit entrance, maybe with merging versus putting four or five or six lights through, that would be what I would think. But I also have always envisioned this more, as you know, the ballpark, the major soccer field where you could have a minor league team come play, this to me would be where I would have put that magic, beautiful pool. And in an ice hockey rink, this would have been the area where I say, hey, you’ve got great access in the long run off of 119. For those people in Frederick Mead, everyone to come in and enjoy some, some some excellent income and, and come into our city, see our city, bring that economy in from the outside in, you know, it’s in the middle of a bunch of ramp railroad tracks and the proposal to put in more housing there. You know, I look and say, I think you can go out with your housing, I think that you should try and consolidate your business in your attractions to the center of the city. And this being the easily accessible point, I would look and say you could you could bring in a lot of revenue. Now, my what I’m talking about has nothing to do with sustainability, which is funny. And it also brings me back to this is like I probably shouldn’t even have this conversation in and say, you know this about bringing an economy versus it being a sustainable housing development. And I know this is sustainability board, I will tell you, I did take the quiz the other day to provide my input. And it looked like it was maybe what five questions or something like that. Four of the five focused on what order do you think is most important of the traffic? Is it foot traffic buses, trains? This the next question on there was what kind of housing do you think is the most what would you propose for housing in here? And I’m going there is nothing in that survey that says, what kind of economy would you propose for this area? What kind of traffic actual pattern and and all this, I understand this as a stainability. Board. And yes, I should be more geared to say, you know, these are, and they are great concerns. But I’m also going I think we’re at a point now, where we know that bus, bus and bike, and pedestrian traffic is important, I think we know that it’d be really kind of cool to drop a little short train on, on that abandoned part of track and run it in a downtown with a little trolley or something like, that’d be pretty cool down there to access these areas, it would almost be an attraction on its own little electric trolley, if there’s no need for the if there’s, I don’t know what’s out there on sugar mill and how much the train runs out of that. But I guess I want to say, you know, the survey that’s online. To me when I read it,

Unknown Speaker 47:36
I think it’s I’m in this, like I said, I’m in the sustainability board meeting right now. And it is a very highly driven sustainability questionnaire that is out there, kind of saying, hey, everyone pitch in your ideas for the steam area. And, and what I want to say is when I read it, I was like, great, it’s a survey so I can feel like I gave you guys input. But really all this is said and done already. This is all pretty basic standard information. I would like to see that survey turn into more things about traffic patterns. Do you do think this is a good place for development? Would you rather see economy? Would you rather see entertainment venues going up? You know, would you rather see, like, you know, a college football stadium in there something I don’t know, when should we know? When you know, should we put in a giant Zoo? I don’t I don’t know, whatever it is, um, you know, children’s museums? I’m not sure what what what, you know, you could do what you could do a full sustainability museum down there? I I don’t know. I guess that was my thought. As you know, I took the survey. And like I said, it asked me the importance of these sustainability issues, the importance of the equity issues down here, which I’m going to say that I don’t, I can’t say Stantec is really going to take that into consideration. And no developer probably will either. So I’d like to see that survey directed, maybe even or opened up to more more of a, what would you like to see in this development, or a direct link to say, this is where this is where we would like to see you guys start dropping real ideas, as opposed to a survey that’s, you know, for public participation. But to me, I look and go tell me where that number is going to go. Tell me what my input is actually going to do for this area. And anyway, that that was my take on it. And I think that was less than I had. And I know you all love me because I’m the Group pessimist.

Unknown Speaker 49:43
And those are just thoughts, Aaron. I don’t necessarily need a response but just thoughts to the area and I may be totally I’m not in development by the way. That’s not what I saw. I hope you were able

Unknown Speaker 49:56
to put some of those in the other category. On the survey, you know, survey is a tool for engagement. So, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 50:06
I put some things in there on the other, but it was not. Jose, it was on my phone. There’s not a paragraph right in there. Yeah. Again, there was no question about what what what the traffic patterns should look like and stuff. And also, when I type something in other, I don’t anticipate that someone is actually going to read it when you get responses either. So I guess I’m not sure. I look forward to survey number two, three, and four to come out afterwards. How’s that sound.

Unknown Speaker 50:36
And we will be doing additional getting additional feedback on alternatives. And throughout the process. The last thing I’ll say, before we go to Councilmember Martin, just because I don’t want to get myself into trouble again, with transportation, I want to make sure everyone understands there’s not currently a proposal to you know, shut down third, or put a bunch of traffic signals, we have standards, we have a process. There’s not actually alternatives that have been developed yet. We’re still in the sort of visioning high level phase. So I just want to make sure that that’s clear in case I misrepresented that. So, Marsha. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 51:14
I just wanted to first of all, I want to respond to something that Kay said, because I have been can continually if if at a low level involved in the steam stuff, which is ongoing. And there is an operational survey, or not survey study going on, that will arm us with costs, addressable markets, stuff like that, that the Johnson survey didn’t really go very far into. And that will allow all our stakeholders to essentially make capital fund commitments to construct the public private partnership that is going to have to happen if this is going to come to fruition. There’s probably a two year period where you’re gonna see nothing break ground. Because first there needs to be a FEMA flood map study released dates, what’s going on with resilient St. Rain project and, and particularly with the Army Corps of Engineers project that is way to the west, but it’s going to essentially impact where everything goes, you know, how much how what the flood risk in all of this area is. And then the actual work has to be completed. And that’s what that that, you know, that two years two groundbreaking really is. So you won’t see buildings going up on the order of a convention center or a performing arts Hall, because you wouldn’t build something like that and get its foundation flooded? Well, it was on its way out of the ground. But what is going on is again, the economic case being built in real detail. And stakeholders essentially doing horse trading in terms of how we would do the land accurate aggregation what the city might lease, what stakeholders might purchase, as and contributions. So that’s going on, and I’m just saying that, essentially to tell people, it’s it’s not dead, the pandemic is has kind of driven it underground, but it’s, but it you know, the work is is continuing on the original reason that I had my hand up was regarding envision Longmont because over the past few years, I mean, Aaron probably knows better than I do, because, you know, it’s surfaced up to the point where, where we talk about it with the public, that and it’s a political issue, right? That Longmont needs to go from essentially a suburban style, land use code. If we’re going to continue on an economic growth path. Then we need to look at urban style land use and urban density and transit oriented development. And that is going to change the parameters of the comprehensive plan for the at least for the city core. And I guess I’m probably way out ahead of where Aaron is comfortable talking about it. But I thought that since this is sustainability and urban density is a big part of those sustainable urban economy that you know, I would get that out there so that you know, people would be thinking that way. Um, so, Aaron, do you want to make me take Get back.

Unknown Speaker 55:00
I will absolutely not, I think you’re spot on. And really, even with the Envision update, you know, we recognize that Longmont is moving from a community focused on greenfield development, meaning we’re developing vacant, maybe previously agricultural properties to really a community that’s more focused on infill and redevelopment. And I think you’re spot on that from a sustainability perspective, that’s really, you know, the type of thinking that we need to continue doing. And so I think we made some strides with our last Comp Plan update in our last code update, you know, going from one mixed use zone to five mixed use zones, looking at flipping parking minimums to parking maximums, we have and as we do these sub area plans, we’re able to target more specific zoning improvements. So for example, the Main Street corridor plan that we did in 2019, recommended looking at some specific things along Main Street that could do exactly what councilmember Martin just mentioned, in terms of, you know, now we have incentives for building height. Now we have, you know, the potential to look at parking reductions. And so I’m hopeful that over the next several years, you know, as our comp plan is updated as our community vision changes, that people will be supportive of those types of updates to our code. And you know, right now, it might seem like, like baby steps, but I think we are moving in the right direction. So I definitely appreciate that perspective. And you don’t need to bring it back at all.

Unknown Speaker 56:28
So I’ll just move us along and kind of close out. I do. And we’ve alluded to a lot of this. And so I appreciate this group being forward thinking there’s a lot of opportunities with a sub area plan. And I think as we’ve mentioned, we’re not starting from scratch, right, as Kay mentioned, and Councilmember Martin mentioned, there’s been a lot of work done in the same area with the visioning that was really led by city council starting, I think, in 2018, but really sort of gaining gaining steam, so to speak in 2019, the performing arts study that Councilmember Martin just mentioned, you know, we had sort of a phase one done, and we’re continuing to build on that. And that’s an ongoing effort with the city and several partners, the Planning Division sponsored and Urban Land Institute Technical Advisory Panel, which some of you may have participated in, in 2020. That was virtual. We’re really we had a number of real estate professionals provide some input on the sugar mill area. We I just mentioned, the Main Street corridor plan, we talked about envision, obviously, we had the first and main street revitalization plan way back in 2012. This sort of set our initial vision for the to do at first in Maine. From a locational perspective, again, this has been mentioned, you know, this is a great gateway site. If you haven’t been out there, obviously, you probably drive in off third and okay mentioned she did I do all the time. This is an incredible sight from a gateway perspective. Also, you know, coming from the south, it’s a an entry into downtown. And so I think there’s a lot of locational opportunities. We’ve mentioned housing, we know that there’s a great need for housing, affordable, attainable and diverse housing in Longmont. And so it’s really an opportunity to look at those missing middle types to also look at higher density housing, and really think about how can we not only provide affordable housing, which continues to be a priority for city council, but also attainable housing, which I think there’s a lot of folks in the community really talking about, when we looked at that open space slide, you know, you can see the proximity to open space, the proximity to Dickens farm nature area, an opportunity to really connect to the river, which not only gives us access to trails, but also provides some transportation access. We mentioned the Mining and Reclamation that will be happening south and so additional opportunities for open space integration. And then looking at this, looking at this from a best practices standpoint, looking at, you know how Third Avenue continues its transition to become a complete street, how we look at this site, in terms of creating urban drainage solutions and thinking about again, as we were just talking about as Longmont moves from a more suburban style community where potentially stormwater is contained in large drainage basins, what type of green infrastructure can we look at what type of regional solutions could we explore? And then obviously, you know, it’s been mentioned several times really thinking about this as a cultural hub and how we augment what’s already been been done and being done in downtown kind of in the same area at the museum and Quayle campus. So lots of opportunities. Also some challenges and we’ve talked about some of this access continues to be something we think about limited signalization. We’ve talked about the pace extension and some of the great challenges. We know there are some safety issues in terms of pedestrian crossings, particularly along Highway 119. And then there’s obviously the challenge of how do we kind of connect these two study areas and how do we connect the sugar mill to downtown which is obviously not very far. But if you’re if you’re getting there now it’s a little bit more limited in terms of how you might do that. I mentioned the railroad crossings there are some existing crossings. There’s some Interesting configurations in terms of angles. And so we’re exploring, you know what opportunities we have around that. The river is right there right to the south of these sites, but not necessarily easy access from all areas. So that may be a challenge we want to address. And then as many of you can imagine, there are some ongoing challenges with environmental cleanup at the sugar mill. And so this is slightly deceptive. The phase two is nearly complete, we have been working with Stantec to apply for a grant to help us figure out how cleanup might work. There’s development interests in and around the sugar mill that are looking at some of this. And then we’ve talked about the floodplain issues quite a bit. So those are, you know, working their way through and I appreciate councilmember Martin giving some more specifics on that.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:44
I’m going to spend just a second talking about the market findings. I think this is important as we think about what the potential is for the study area, both in terms of housing, but also in terms of non residential development. And this isn’t necessarily all specific to the study area. Some of this is a larger trade area in Longmont as a whole so we know our city is undergoing demographic shifts, we’re aging we’re all aging, there’s increasing number of children without households. So our household makeup is changing. And that is going to be a driver for changes in the demand for different types of housing going forward and preferences and so we’re looking at what those opportunities are. We’ve mentioned missing middle and so we know that people that are in these different demographic groups and just people in general have different preferences for housing and that can also be what we term missing middle so that’s you know, smaller single family attached like duplex triplex four Plex townhomes, you know, tiny homes, different types of things all the way to you know, larger multifamily. We know that our growth is slowing, it might not seem like that. For those of us who have been in Longmont, we do see a lot of projects. But forecasted growth is actually less and that’s true throughout the Front Range, and nationally. So reduced number of births, more limited migration and mobility is changing. And obviously all of this is changing and a little bit unknown with the pandemic. So, still the jury’s out on what exactly the pandemic means for our economy. But we know that industrial and multifamily development has remained pretty strong throughout the pandemic. And that outlook is good. retail and office are going through what has been termed kind of a great reset. And we did have an economic development professional that’s part of sandtex team prepare this. So this isn’t me making this up. But I think it’s going to be really interesting to see what the market is for retail and office going forward as the pandemic you know, continues. And part of that is people are realizing they can work anywhere, live anywhere. And so I think for communities like Longmont, you know you may have heard of the the rise of the small and mid tier city which Longmont is right people love the smaller vibrant communities with great downtown’s great amenities, but not necessarily some of the issues that you’d find in larger cities. And so what does that mean for our growth prospects? And really, I’ll close this portion with flexibility and convenience are driving everything. So people want this in terms of where they live, where they work, how they, how they recreate where they shop. So really thinking about the opportunities associated with that. And just to let you know, this sort of follows up on what Kay was mentioning, we do want to build on the community and stakeholder outreach that we’ve already started with some of the previous planning efforts I just mentioned, we’re not starting from scratch. We know people care a lot about downtown and the steam area. We know there’s a lot of community interest in seeing the sugar mill, redeveloped and reused. And so we’re trying to really understand what the community’s needs and interests are currently. And how can we really build on the redevelopment efforts that are already underway and being planned for in the study area, we want to make sure that we’re inclusive, and that we’re getting a variety of community voices. And so we are doing presentations to different groups, we do have surveys, obviously, it’s a little more challenging. In this time of COVID. You know, I can’t necessarily go out and talk to people as much as I usually would. So we’re trying to replicate some of that online. But we do hope to do some youth engagement in a classroom, we do hope to hold some virtual open houses and do different things because we really want to gather this input and really use use of the community feedback to help shape the final recommendations that will ultimately go to council. So we have a project page on the city’s website, we have a page on Engage Longmont. That’s where the survey that came mentioned is currently contained. And we’ll have some different activities as the project moves forward, including information on the alternatives we develop. You can always call me I’m happy to present to this group. I’m happy happy to meet with you or answer questions as they come up. My email should be in the communication but I’m not not really that hard to find. And with that, I know we’ve taken kind of questions as we as we’ve gone through, but I’m happy to answer any additional questions you have, or take any additional feedback that you might have? I appreciate the candid feedback that we’ve gotten so far. And I’ll obviously share that with the project team. But if you have anything else, please let me know.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:16
Can I ask a quick question just in terms of timeline, like what, what kind of timeframe? Are we talking about? Like? When would applications for annexations occur? When would the you know, when would the final plan and vision for this area be completed just to just to get an idea of how things will progress?

Unknown Speaker 1:05:34
So our timeframe with the Stantec group, and I’ll stop sharing my screen here. Our timeframe for the sub area plan is pretty fast. Actually, we anticipate wrapping everything up late spring, early summer, and our process would be going to city council to present a final draft plan for acceptance. So in terms of the actual development and annexation that’s really driven by the private sector, we’re certainly working with the property owners and interested developers, you know, that are have properties under contract and are working through things. But in terms of what their timeframes are, those were really driven by investment decisions and do their due diligence. And so I don’t know that in terms of annexation, you know, those would need to go to City Council for an annexation referral. First off, and we haven’t seen anything submitted yet. So those you know, those won’t, aren’t necessarily dependent on the sub area, although I do hope developers that we work with are participating, which most of them are, and, you know, we’ll kind of be following this process. But I would expect we’d have a sub area plan, hopefully accepted, you know, I can’t make decisions for council, but I would hope they would accept the plan, you know, by summer of this year, and then that can really start to be used to help with the development.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:58
Have any developers submitted concept plans yet, in preparation for a annexation application.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:07
A number of the properties are already annexed to the city. And so there is a property that has had a neighborhood meeting for a preliminary plat. And that’s just to the east of the sugar mill site. And Fairfield residential would like to construct some multifamily housing, and then they have a piece reserved for commercial use, I think maybe three or four acres. And so they’ve submitted, they’ve gone through a neighborhood meeting. And I don’t actually know if they’ve submitted yet, but they’ve sort of started the development process. We don’t have any applications for annexation, but we have had a number of pre application meetings. And that’s, that’s really the very first step in the development review process. So we’ve had some of those in the steam area, we’ve had a couple of those in the sugar mill area. And we’ll just, you know, kind of accommodate those as they come through. And those are again, separate from the the sub area planning process, not dependent on it. But certainly, we’re hoping to integrate them as much as we can.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:02
Yeah, that’s that’s kind of what I was getting at is kind of this. The sequencing is hard to control. But there’s certainly interdependencies with what what this plan would be, and then what developers will submit and plan. So it’s good to know where kind of all these things put together. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:16
It’s always better to be able to point to someone point someone to a plan to say, you know, this is our community’s vision, this is really what we’d like to see you develop in accordance with rather than like, well, we can’t tell you what it is. But we’ll tell you if you get it right, right, which no one that doesn’t really benefit anyone. So we’re hopeful we can get this wrapped up relatively quickly. So it can be used as a guide. Adam, I think I saw that you had a question?

Unknown Speaker 1:08:45
Yeah. Aaron, thanks for the overview, it was really helpful. One thing I noticed throughout the presentation is that it seems like there’s two sub projects this steam area, and then the sugar mineral area. And what I’d like to know is, are they being split apart and sort of working in a siloed? Way? Or are they working closely together? So this whole project is one unified hub?

Unknown Speaker 1:09:07
Yeah, that’s a really good question, and one that I think City Council brought up when we present it to them back in December. And I have, I guess, somewhat of a straightforward answer. It is one study area. But I think the way a good way to look at what a good way to look at it would be you can have one study area that’s made up of multiple character areas. And so if you participated in the Main Street corridor plan, that’s probably the easiest example relevant, past example, you know, the Main Street corridor is a five mile corridor that’s pretty different from, you know, north of 21st to Sixth Avenue and main, right, those are totally different character areas. And our plan recognize that right. So well, there are certain things that it’s important to look at kind of from a cohesive standpoint, right that there’s commonalities with there’s also other things that we want to look at on a more individual basis and there may actually be more than one character area, right. So in this area, for example, with kind of the western portion of the study area, that area north of first, so from maybe first to third might look a little bit different than the area, south of first to Boston, right, those might be different characters, that might look a little bit different than the core Sugarmill area than it does the area right up, you know, kind of the wishbone where third and 119 meets. So there might be some different design strategies, there might be some different placemaking concepts that we look at, depending on what those character areas end up looking like. I don’t know exactly how that’s gonna, you know, map so to speak. But I think there are some things you know, when we’ve talked about those connectivity, open space, green infrastructure and drainage, that will sort of apply sub area wide, and we want to look at how we connect areas, but there’s gonna be some other things that we look at on a more individualized basis. So it’s sort of a little both, I

Unknown Speaker 1:10:55
guess. Other questions? Saying?

Unknown Speaker 1:11:11
Listen, I want to say thank you for being here. It’s always wonderful to hear your presentations, and really appreciate you coming to us. And, and sharing what’s what’s happening. So thanks for being here.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:27
Great. Yeah, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. And I look forward to your feedback. Like I said, and Kay, extend this to you, if you have email feedback, feel free to send it over to me. And if you guys desire in the future, Hannah and I are happy to come back and give you an update. Maybe later this spring, if that’s something you guys want to see.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:47
I’ll probably be following a little bit more closely online, just watching for things to be posted. And, you know, he said surveys come over opportunities come up, or, you know, and I know, there’s also some times that you can click on is like an email for like email when there’s an update to the website, whatever, something like that. I’m sure there might be something like that on there. If there isn’t, that’d be great to find. Okay, um, but I would say I thank you for coming. And thanks for the presentation. I know that my, my my questions seem like pounding and many. I’ve been looking forward to hearing about it ever since that, but since I saw it going out, because I wasn’t aware that they were going to develop that area. You know, I thought that guy was never going to sell it. And so it was kind of exciting to see I am in the air and environmental, brownfields, all that stuff. So it’s also very thrilling to watch all that that that’s going to be happening as well. So it’s an area I’ve watched since the day I moved to Longmont wondering what’s going to happen with it. So I do have a lot of questions. I would love to try to follow closer I will be falling closer as it goes. You know, thank you for the presentation. I was I was like kids don’t go to the ER this today while you’re on the ice. I want to watch this. So anyway, thank you, Aaron. I do appreciate it. You don’t. Don’t let my many questions be a deterrent to anyone.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:06
We appreciate questions. That’s fun for us planners like that. So thank you very much. And I will see you all soon. Virtually probably but sounds good. Thank you. Thanks, Lisa. And Tammy.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:21
Thanks, Aaron. Lisa, floors yours. Excellent. Well, I think my section will go by pretty quickly. Hopefully that was great. I’m glad you all had a lot of questions and feedback for Aaron. I’m going to try to share my screen real quick. And hopefully this all works out. Okay, everybody can do

Unknown Speaker 1:13:46
it just just real quick before we get started. So I’m sorry, I, I have to excuse myself at five o’clock. And I just wanted to excuse myself now in case it’s bad past five, I’m on the Boulder County Community Advisory Committee or whatever for the 119 traffic corridor. So that starts at five o’clock. So I’ll be shifting over to that. So

Unknown Speaker 1:14:07
well, no problem doing that. Yeah, yeah. Keep us updated on that one. I know. I know. That’s been on the radar a bit. Well, I don’t think this will take too long. I’m just going to jump in, feel free to holler if you have any questions. Can everyone see my screen? Okay. should just be a spreadsheet? Yep. Great. So I just wanted to go through a quick overview of what I’ve laid out for the 2022 work plan for the sustainability advisory board. When we last met in November, since we didn’t have a December meeting. We just talked about briefly some upcoming priorities for 2022. And so you’ll see those reflected in here. And then I’ve been chatting with staff from across the organization have other things that are on the agenda for this year that we want to make sure to bring forward to this group. And knowing that in the past, we’ve kind of done more of a brainstorming Have what folks want to focus on. There’s so much happening this year and coming up that I want to make sure to be able to prioritize bringing those items to you and making sure that we’re getting your feedback and anything else that you want to provide to counsel with those things that are happening. So I did want to present this to you, it’s a little bit more prescribed than I think we’ve done in the past. And you all can let me know if there’s anything big that’s missing that you want me to look to include. But especially with the Envision and sustainability plan updates this year, I want to make sure we have quite a bit of space for this group to engage in that process as it gets going. Yeah. Councilmember Martin, you have your hand up?

Unknown Speaker 1:15:41
Um, yeah. Maybe I should wait and see what everybody else says. But I’ve been getting a number of emails around fire preparedness for obvious. And tracks shouldn’t be added for that, because a lot of them are sustainability things. Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to, I don’t give direction, right. But I’d like to have, you know, maybe suggest to the group that it be discussed.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:11
Yeah, and I’ll jump in real real quick. And then we can kind of circle back to that after our conversation and see if we touch base on that. That’s part of the conversation that we’re having, specifically with the climate risk and vulnerability mapping project. We weren’t historically, or not historically, but in the in the process. So far, we had been looking most at fire risk. And my, my furnace just kicked on, so please let me know if it’s too loud. And I can put my headset on. Okay. Um, mostly, we’ve been looking at the impacts from fire on Longmont more as an air quality issue. And that’s something that’s already included in that. But with the recent fires, we are now and we have some, some PHAs to work for the climate risk and vulnerability map already budgeted for 2022, but are likely to be looking at fire wildfire as an additional climate exposure that we want to include in that mapping process. And I’ve had some just initial conversations with our natural resources, folks on getting people looped into that to have that incorporated into that bigger picture of climate risk and vulnerability and climate exposures. And what we’re looking at in terms of climate projections as well. So that to some degree will be incorporated into that process. But but if it also necessitates or warrants as a standalone focus specifically on on fire, that would that would be the angle I would probably take with regards to sustainability and climate action, but feel free to let me know folks think differently. So just pretty high level. Oh, yeah. Okay. I don’t see you because I can’t see everybody’s,

Unknown Speaker 1:17:51
like, I’m little really tiny on the screen right now, I was gonna say as a emergency management junkie, because that’s the most drama and horror you’ll ever think about in your life. on things like the fire and the climate risk filter, really map I was gonna say, consider maybe talking with the OEM, and see what the emergency management plans, what they’re incorporating, and stuff like that. I know that I mean, I know that Office of Emergency Management, they have this like the world’s most horrible job to think of the worst disasters possible, and plan for them. And I want to say you can tell that they worked, because they got those hospitals evacuated in the senior centers evacuated. That’s where they generally will start on an OEM emergency management plan going putting it into action, those are the primary areas that do that do go. So So Lewisville and superior did a good their OEMs did their plans worked? As far as they could get them? To work on some of that, you know, and sometimes it’s just beginning level thinking. But I was gonna say yes, on the climate risk involvement and vulnerability analysis, all that stuff there. I would I would make a point to involve having the OEM review with you and see if there’s anything else that they’re thinking of, or any input that you could provide. Because I don’t know if if they do look at things like the Climate Analysis and stuff. And that would be something that they would probably be very interested in, to work with you on as well. So just another resource.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:24
Yep. I’ve sort of been keeping our OEM folks in the loop on this process. We haven’t been actively involved in the in the first phase of things other than me, letting them know kind of where we’re at, but we have talked with them about as we move into the second phase, part of which will be you know, now we have all this information, what do we do with it from a planning perspective? How do we how do we move into that space of making sure then we’re starting to talk more protect our residents against impacts of climate change, and they will be involved in that process there as you can? Imagine pretty overwhelmed with everything that’s currently going on. But but they will be involved in that process. And like I said, I’ve been keeping them in the loop. And I’ve been kind of looking at at sort of a two, a two tier response, which is really the first of which is the emergency response. What happens in in the wake of, you know, a natural or other sort of disaster like the fires we just saw? And then the longer term resilience piece of what are what are the policies and programs and things we need to put in place to build greater resilience, resilience in the longer term. So that’s the planning piece that we’ll be looking at next.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:42
I mean, it seems even even prior to the horrific fires, that the impacts of wildfire on our air quality would probably fit into that climate risk and vulnerability component anyways, it seems like those could, those could actually fit together really well for the discussion.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:59
Yeah. Any other questions or comments? For I read through everything? So from the general business standpoint,

Unknown Speaker 1:21:10
question, oh, sorry. I’m the PRP update. Are we going to have folks from the PRP come back and speak to the board? Or is this just a report summarizing the current status and what they’re doing?

Unknown Speaker 1:21:21
We’ll have somebody from PRP, EA and probably Dave Hornbacher from LPC that’ll do those report or updates. So will they ever?

Unknown Speaker 1:21:34
Did they ever get back to us on those questions? I missed it.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:37
We provided you all of that. All of that information. Yeah, a couple of months ago, I can resend that to you. If you didn’t see it.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:45
I might have lost it. But um, I know I missed like a chunk of meetings this fall. So and I was right when that was going on when we were getting those responses. So

Unknown Speaker 1:21:56
let me know and I can follow up with you.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:59
I’ll see if I can find it. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:03
So yep. Charles.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:05
Maybe not super related. And I have to go in just a minute. But I had a question about. You’re talking about PRP, who replaced Tim Ellis who’s going to be attending the boards. board meetings, who replaces Tim Ellis.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:18
Yep. Debbie Seidman. So she’s on. I don’t know if your last meeting when that was her first meeting. So she gave a brief introduction. So she’s our new rep from LPC. She runs our commercial benchmarking program.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:31
Yeah. Okay. Great. Yep. Yeah, my guess she’ll be connected with the PRP a report and give helping us with feedback. Great. Thank you. Yeah, I forgot.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:40
So problem. So just some general business items. So obviously, our work plan and staffing Council priorities, the sugar mill and steam presentation that Aaron just came. And she said she could come back in the March timeframe to get some feedback on the plan as it evolves that she spoke about today. We’ll also go through the 2021 year end progress report that will be taking to council the end of March for an update. And then we have our major progress report in August. That kicks us into the timeframe which we start looking at the next year’s priorities for the sustainability tax grant. And then the following month, usually so this might be August, September, September, October, depending on when the when it comes out from the county. But then we’ll have a an approval letter and letter of support of the PRP updates, PRP updates. So we had initially talked about quarterly but Dave said that they have some big business stuff happening early in the early part of the year. So he suggested these months, so April, August, and November. Again, we always take December off, I put it on here anyway, but we usually don’t meet in December because it’s close to the holidays. The electrification plan that you all have been kept somewhat up to date on I know Susan Bartlett from LPC was here in November, she’ll be back in February to give you all progress update. And then in May to have the draft plan to go through with you for review and feedback. The Zero Waste work that we have been doing so the Zero Waste resolution and looking at a universal recycling ordinance. So we’ll bring you just a high level update on that in February. We should have a draft Zero Waste resolution in the March timeframe and then bring a zero waste resolution but the final resolution to you all in May and probably ask for a letter of support before we take that to council in the June July timeframe. And then also an update on the producer responsibility legislation if if folks have been following some of the legislation that’s happening at the state level around zero waste, particularly plastics and then this is really The big legislative item that’s on the docket for for waste related issues in 2022 is looking at producer responsibilities. So a handful of states have now been passing producer responsibility legislation, and that is on the radar for for Colorado this legislative season, which just kicked off. So if that does pass, that’s something that I just wanted to add to the agenda to talk to this group to see just more as an update and what that might mean, for Longmont, the climate risk and vulnerability mapping, I just put a TBD right now, because we’re still working out the scope of work for 2022, the pesticides and pollinators I wanted to bring back I know that was something you all were interested in, in 2021. And we weren’t, we weren’t able to get to that. But I didn’t want to lose sight of that. So I just put that on in the for the June meeting as kind of a placeholder to make sure that that gets on the agenda for this year. Some water conservation items that Francy wanted to bring forward. Even though we are in the process right now, if y’all haven’t seen it, we have our water conservation specialists job posting out right now. So we’ll be hiring for that position. Pretty soon hopefully should have somebody on on board pretty quickly. But a letter of support for the water supply and drought management plan will be coming to you in April, we put on the June meeting, just as a progress report from 2021, water efficiency efforts, and 2022 progress update. And then an overview of the water efficiency master plan, update and request for a letter of support. So that won’t really be kicking off until later in the 2023 timeframe. But we want to make sure to get that on your radar sooner rather than later. And then bring that back for an update in October, so not an update to the plan, because that won’t start until later. But just an update on where that process is. And I especially want to find out because there was a recommendation from the climate action recommendations report specifically to look at increasing our water conservation goals. And the the recommendation from water board and from staff was to incorporate that into the next water efficiency master plan, update and really do the in depth analysis that’s needed to really understand increasing our our water conservation goals and what the implications are for that and what we would actually need to do to get there Francy, did you want to jump in and add anything on the water conservation stuff?

Unknown Speaker 1:27:45
I know I think you covered that pretty well. And then lastly, as I mentioned, and we’ve mentioned to you several times the Envision and sustainability plan updates will be happening this year. We don’t have the full scope of work laid out for that yet either. But I do want to leave a pretty, pretty good amount of time, I’m hesitant to have to add anything additional to this schedule for the year unless there’s something big that I missed that you all want to add or councilmember Martin, if you all have any other priorities that are on your agenda from the council standpoint that you want to make sure are on our radar. But I do want to make sure to leave plenty of time as to dig into that specifically in the probably the second half of the year. Because that’s going to be a big effort. So that I made a note for the fire preparedness piece. But is there anything else that that that we’re missing that folks want to add? Any other comments or feedback on this schedule?

Unknown Speaker 1:28:53
Format is very helpful. So thank you for putting this together.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:57
Second thought that was it’s great. And better than

Unknown Speaker 1:29:03
good as they better than the whiteboard. It’s great.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:12
I want to I just want to say I appreciate you keeping the pesticides and pollinators topic top of mind and and sliding it in. Thanks for that. Welcome, and sorry, we didn’t get to last year. Any other comments, Councilmember Martin, is there anything else from the council priorities side that might be on the 2022 agenda that we want to flag so at least I can keep an eye out for?

Unknown Speaker 1:29:47
Um, can you hear me now?

Unknown Speaker 1:29:49
Okay. Um, at this point, I don’t think so. Um, I would be now I just said that I’m in need You know, on the line between between the PRP reports and the climate risk and vulnerability, you know, there’s going to be a nexus there about electrification and getting aerial electric wires buried and whether we can accelerate that. And, you know, so so there is a lot of red sustainability that that I hope will not be directly managed by PRP, but we should still be prepared to consider it.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:33
Yep. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:35
Just making a note for myself on that specifically. Great, any anything else? Any other

Unknown Speaker 1:30:46
questions, comments? Thanks for putting this together.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:55
Hey, Lisa.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:57
Great. Thanks, everyone. And I’m sure none of this is the No 100% set in stone. I’m sure things will shift and change as we actually get into the year, but at least it’s it’s something foundation for us to start from. So. Alright. Well, thanks, everyone. With that I’m done with my items. I’m going to stop sharing here. Save, so don’t lose anything. Perfect. All right. Well, thank you. I’m moving on through the agenda. Is there any other business that anyone

Unknown Speaker 1:31:34
has to add?

Unknown Speaker 1:31:37
Items from? Yes?

Unknown Speaker 1:31:40
Is this the items from the board section? No, this is just general business. Okay. I’ll wait for that.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:46
All right. Hold on. I didn’t even staff.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:53
Are there any items from the board? Anyone would like to bring up?

Unknown Speaker 1:31:58
Okay, yeah, sorry for jumping the gun. Sure. I have an item. I am interested in presenting a climate policy simulator to the board. This climate policy simulator came out of the MIT Sloan sustainability initiative. And I think it would help ground some of our discussions, like the ones about the TRPA and electrification and so on, and some of the best available science. And so I’d like to hear your thoughts on that.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:25
I would love to see that. Yeah, that sounds very are you talking about like adding it as an agenda item to a future meeting?

Unknown Speaker 1:32:35
That’s right, I could tailor the presentation to be short, like less than a half hour or I could go a full hour and really go into the details. I’m happy to be flexible. Given our schedule, I know that we have a lot on our plate. And so I want to be mindful that

Unknown Speaker 1:32:50
having just looked at our schedule for the next year.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:54
I, it looks like we’re pretty packed. And and I’m really interested, and we’d love to see it. So I think I mean, what others think about that, can we

Unknown Speaker 1:33:09
half hour

Unknown Speaker 1:33:10
reasonable, I would love to see it. More than one person has sent that to me as a link. And I looked at him and said, so it’d be great if Adam would boil it down.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:25
I’m happy to take requests now at like whatever level you want me to just make it as succinct as possible. And you know, we could decide from there if we want to have a another session, but I can make it like you know, the one on one level of this thing and just keep it as simple as possible. And stay in the allotted time.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:49
Yeah, I have my opinion, I think I can probably if we do, like just a higher level, not brief, but enough substance to give people a good taste of it. I think we can probably manage to get that on in the in the February meeting, if that’s not too soon for you. And it might be a good overview folks, for them to keep that in mind as we go through other things. You know, when we talk about the electrification plan and talk about the sustainability plan and envision updates, that might be a helpful Foundation. And then if there’s time, we can go into it more in depth, especially if we see some really specific applications that we could use it for. I’ve seen it as well and have not had time to like really dig into it. But I think it’s a really interesting tool, and we’d love to spend some more time with it. So if that works for you, and if that sounds like a good approach to other folks. I can add that to February.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:44
Yeah, I’d like that.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:48
I would like that. Okay. I’ll aim for February then.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:52
Perfect. Thank you, Adam.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:55
And you and I can just touch base offline to get that figured out. That’s good. Thanks. So,

Unknown Speaker 1:35:01
thanks both. Okay. Um,

Unknown Speaker 1:35:07
if there are no other items from the board, then are there any items from Council?

Unknown Speaker 1:35:16
Not they haven’t already mentioned saints.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:18
Perfect. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:21
Matt asked,

Unknown Speaker 1:35:22
Do you prefer to be referred to as councilmember Christianson or Marsha?

Unknown Speaker 1:35:28
I would prefer not to be referred to as council member Christensen.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:34
But oh

Unknown Speaker 1:35:35
my god, Martin. I’m so sorry. That’s all right. Um, no, Martha is just absolutely fine. I’m not.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:47
Okay, long day. Sorry for that.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:53
Um, no need to apologize.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:57
Firstly, do you want to do a quick introduction, since this is your first official board meeting? We’re

Unknown Speaker 1:36:04
all we would all really like to know, is there there’s got to be some kind of ceremony for deciding who is the board Council liaison to this board.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:15
Um,

Unknown Speaker 1:36:16
oh, petition,

Unknown Speaker 1:36:18
calm wrestling.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:22
Actually, it was like, you know, it gets reassigned every two years, and Polly wouldn’t consider giving up the chair for the two years that she was there, so I had to wait. And then what happens is we all tell Dawn Kitana our priorities and she does her best. And then she takes kind of like one or two plum assignments, the ones that wield the most power and gives them the noobs Okay, so I got kicked off the long run Economic Development Partnership and the Longmont Downtown Development Authority. So that she Keaton, Susie could be on those

Unknown Speaker 1:37:12
instead.

Unknown Speaker 1:37:15
So I’m very happy with my, with my board assignments, and just a little tiny bit about me, I am a software engineer by training and the last decade ish of my career I was in a electric distribution of where the renewably powered grid inventing the the algorithms that you need to discover the grid topology, which is shockingly, not very well understood by grids that have been out there for a long time. Because the as built map keeps diverging from the as designed map is, as things get fixed, and, you know, and powered and stuff. So you know, the importance of knowing where everything is and what the carrying capacity of everything is, and, and oh, you know, what happens when there is a sag or a surge in power is is much more significant and important with a renewably powered grid. And that’s what I did for a living at the end of my career. So I’ve been well positioned to be the PRP a gadfly and you know, otherwise annoying person and but we we got the good meters, you know, we got the good AMI network out of out of my gadfly role. So, I’m, I’m a little bit proud of that. Well,

Unknown Speaker 1:38:57
we are delighted that you are our new council liaison. Welcome to our group.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:03
Thank you. I’m glad to be here. You guys are fun. Um, so we’re near the end of the agenda. Are there any way in your board packet?

Unknown Speaker 1:39:16
There was some likely some informational items and board correspondence, which is your for your information,

Unknown Speaker 1:39:24
please read them. Ah, all right. With that, is there a motion to adjourn? Oh, move to adjourn. I’ll second. That motion. Right. All in favor? Hi. Stay safe.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:46
Thanks, everybody.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:48
Take care. See you all, too. Happy New Year.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai