Video Description:
Longmont Planning & Zoning – September 20, 2023
Read along below:
Unknown Speaker 5:45
Are we ready, Jane? Okay. I’ll go ahead and I’ll call to order the September 20 2023 long term Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. First Order is Roll Call.
Unknown Speaker 6:00
Chairman Polen. Commissioner high. Commissioner teta. Commissioner Goldberg, Commissioner flag. Commissioner Luke couch. Commissioner Popkin Chairman you have a quorum.
Unknown Speaker 6:14
have buttons are going on at the same time
Unknown Speaker 6:25
it okay.
Unknown Speaker 6:28
That’s the one. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 6:31
Okay.
Unknown Speaker 6:33
Next item is communications from planning director Glenn van Nimmo Good.
Unknown Speaker 6:39
Mr. Chairman and Commissioners, the only thing I want to do is introduce our newest planner Kent Hanoch and Gila, who is here from the private sector. And we’ll be presenting your first case, but I did want to at least tell you, we have a great new staff member. Thank you very much. And welcome.
Unknown Speaker 7:00
Next item is Approval of the minutes first, we’ll take the August 16 2023 meeting minutes. If there are any comments, questions or motions.
Unknown Speaker 7:14
Commissioner Goldberg
Unknown Speaker 7:17
Yeah, thanks, Chairman. I move the for approval of the August 16 minutes. We have a motion to approve. Do we have a second Commissioner Popkin just want to enthusiastically thank Jane for the significant effort that went into some of these here. So with that, I will enthusiastically second the approval. Okay. Jane, let’s go to vote. Commissioner high.
Unknown Speaker 7:41
Commissioner teta.
Unknown Speaker 7:43
Can Commissioner Goldberg?
Unknown Speaker 7:46
Chair Poland? Yes. Commissioner flake.
Unknown Speaker 7:49
commissioners will catch Yes. Commissioner Popkin. Yes. Chairman those pass. Five in favor? Two abstentions? Thank you very much. Next item is the August 2320 23. Meeting Minutes. Do we have any motions?
Unknown Speaker 8:05
Commissioner cash.
Unknown Speaker 8:08
Thank you chair. I moved to approve the August 23 meetings. Thank you very much do we do have a second?
Unknown Speaker 8:19
Commissioner Popkin. Second. Thank you. We have a motion. We have a second. Any other comments? If not, let’s take a vote. Commissioner height. miss that one. Commissioner teta.
Unknown Speaker 8:33
Commissioner Goldberg Yes. Chair Polen. Yes. Commissioner flag high. commissioners will catch Commissioner pumpkin.
Unknown Speaker 8:40
Sure that passes five in favor, one abstention.
Unknown Speaker 8:45
Six in favor, one abstention. Thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 8:50
Mr. Popkin? Sorry, I misheard you on the first vote. I need to change my vote to abstain for the 16th I was not present for that meeting.
Unknown Speaker 8:58
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 8:59
It’s still passes for 234 to 304 to zero with three abstentions. Thank you very much. Next item is public invited to be heard. This is a chance for the public to comment on items that are not in front of us or will not be a quasi judicial item coming up shortly to the commission. We have nobody on the same sheet but we still do invite if anybody has any comments or would like to come forward, we get five minutes so we just ask that you’d state your name and your address for the record.
Unknown Speaker 9:30
saying nobody come up. I’ll go ahead and close out the public invited to be heard. Next item or the pub is the public hearings.
Unknown Speaker 9:40
First item is Item A 1301 IOI Avenue conditional use site plan.
Unknown Speaker 9:48
First up is
Unknown Speaker 9:50
the city
Unknown Speaker 10:03
Good evening.
Unknown Speaker 10:14
As Glenn said before, my name is Hannah Candela. I work over at the development services as an associate planner. Tonight I’m presenting a conditional use site plan for the commission to review. The property is located at 1301. Io Avenue. This application was submitted by flywheel capital and representatives from flywheel are here tonight to present and will be available for questions for the Commission.
Unknown Speaker 10:42
In the conditional use site plan process, the Planning and Zoning Commission is the decision making body ultimately approving or denying such types of applications. I would ask the commission tonight to review the proposed improvements to the site against the review criteria for all application types. Then I’ll request the commission hold a public hearing to review any questions the commission has and address any public comments. Lastly, the Commission may review the provided resolutions and vote on one of them. Additionally, conditions of approval may be appropriate if the commission finds them necessary for the project to meet the review criteria.
Unknown Speaker 11:20
The project is generally located here south of Ken Pratt Boulevard and east of Sunset Street. This is in southwest Longmont. The parcel is zoned for mixed use employment and is surrounded on all sides by parcels that are also in the musc zone district. Additional zone districts in this general location are the residential mixed neighborhood residential, single family and public facilities, notably where the Longmont power and communications facilities located. Addition.
Unknown Speaker 11:49
Adjacent uses on these parcels also include outdoor storage, such as on the LPC parcel and the adjacent CenturyLink facility located across Iowa Avenue to the north.
Unknown Speaker 12:03
Here’s a photo of the pre improvement condition of the site.
Unknown Speaker 12:07
The site was previously used for medical manufacturing and in February of this year, the applicant contacted the Development Services Center and requested a change of use through a site plan waiver.
Unknown Speaker 12:18
And they changed the use to medium industrial and proposed improvements to the building exterior, the parking surfaces and the general landscaping. Medium industrial is a permanent use in the mixed mixed use employment zone district. The applicant also wanted to add outdoor storage to attract more potential tenants. Since the proposed storage areas exceeded 10% of the gross floor area of the principal use. A conditional use site plan is required per the code section 1504 30 e three
Unknown Speaker 12:45
and why we’re here tonight.
Unknown Speaker 12:49
Here is a diagram of the proposed improvements. The improvement areas are located within the dotted lines. So essentially improvements include, like I said resurfacing and restriping of the existing parking surface addition of parking islands which are new to the site. These parking islands include landscaping and low impact development features to help with drainage on the site.
Unknown Speaker 13:10
The applicant will also fix existing curb cuts and repair and extend the existing irrigation system. They will
Unknown Speaker 13:19
maintain existing landscaping and replace a dead tree as well as create two outdoor screened storage areas. They also retain and improve the fire and emergency access to the rear of the building by resurfacing the drive surface.
Unknown Speaker 13:34
And here’s rendering provided by the applicant. You can see the building improvements on the facade, new landscaping installed in the parking area and the existing vegetation along Isla Avenue.
Unknown Speaker 13:49
The project has undergone three rounds of review thus far, and DRC has concluded that the project does in fact meet the review criteria analysis for all application types. The proposed improvements and the use are compatible with the surrounding land uses and will not negatively impact any surrounding properties. Public Works has reviewed the project to ensure that the improvements to the utilities meet code requirements and that there is sufficient access for fire and emergency services on the site.
Unknown Speaker 14:17
The project has followed the steps for notifying adjacent landowners that are provided in the development review procedures consistent with a conditional use site plan. The initial neighborhood meeting was waived for the planning director as the surrounding parcels include warehouses and the large city owned parcel. After the notice of development application was sent out and the property was posted. I have received no comments from the community after the notice of public hearing, including mailers, a property posting and a notification in the newspaper. I’ve received one call from an individual expressing interest in attending tonight’s meeting.
Unknown Speaker 14:51
That you
Unknown Speaker 14:54
okay,
Unknown Speaker 14:55
I made an effort to call this gentleman back. I did not get in contact with him and I was unable to
Unknown Speaker 15:00
would like leave a voicemail. So
Unknown Speaker 15:06
lastly, I had asked tonight that the commission and hold a public hearing on this proposal and then consider the three resolutions that are presented. Staff’s recommendation is that the Commission approve resolution eight be conditionally approving the site plan with the conditions at all items stored in the outdoor storage area shall not be stacked or stored higher than the provided to screening fencing.
Unknown Speaker 15:28
Thank you all for listening. And I’ll be available if you have any questions again. Thank you very much. Let’s hear from the applicant.
Unknown Speaker 15:46
You
Unknown Speaker 15:55
think
Unknown Speaker 16:02
first, I want to say I’m sorry for jumping the gun. For Hannah’s presentation, and
Unknown Speaker 16:08
we did not realize Hannah was new to your team she has been amazing to work with as well. It’s done and the rest of the folks at the Planning and Zoning Commission. I’m Jennifer grant, I am the principal architect at Quintessence Design Group. I’m joined by John Fef Lee, who is the Senior Director at flywheel capital, and PJ Danna. He who’s the owner of Danna, he development advisors. We’ve all been working together on this project. And we appreciate the opportunity to present it to you today. So we wanted to introduce flywheel to you today. They’re a boutique developer, commercial developer located in based in Denver, Colorado and active in multiple jurisdictions across the front range. And they have several philosophies but two of them that I wanted to kind of talk to you about today are that they like to create relationships with their vendors and tenants and business partners as well as the jurisdictions where they own and manage property. And so this is their first introduction to Longmont, so we want to introduce them to you. And then secondly, they engage in a lot of what we call a value add development, which is where you buy your purchase an asset that is
Unknown Speaker 17:15
a little bit depressed and create improvements to increase the value of the property. And I’m going to talk about why that why that’s important. In a second, Hannah covered some of the logistics of this property acquisition, but essentially, flywheel purchased the property or acquired the property
Unknown Speaker 17:32
less than a year ago, and it was from a Japanese pharmaceutical company that also had a facility in Kansas. They relocated their operations to Kansas many years ago. And so they had many years of deferred maintenance that were never addressed at this building for the last several years. And so as a part of this acquisition flywheel is engaged in kind of bringing this building in, which has great bones, kind of up to the standards of today’s today’s development.
Unknown Speaker 18:01
We already talked about the location of the project, in terms of the existing conditions that the the building is there, there are two buildings that are connected. One is an existing masonry office building that sits in front it’s 7600 square feet, it sits in front of a 56,000 square foot metal warehouse, fronting that building is a parking area. And then flanking it on the sides are the they’re basically we lost right now with a little bit of kind of broken asphalt and those are the areas that we would propose for the screened outdoor storage areas.
Unknown Speaker 18:39
So our conditional site plan incorporates modifications to landscaping,
Unknown Speaker 18:45
incorporation of landscape islands, the industrial outdoor storage yards that are screened, improvements to the flat work as well as access for fire vehicles that we’ve talked with the jurisdiction about. So there were several review criteria statements that Longmont wished for us to address. And so I just
Unknown Speaker 19:07
copied them into this presentation so we can talk about them. So the first one as the applicant is consistent with a comprehensive plan and the purpose of the code and zoning district conforms to any previously approved concept plan preliminary plat or PUD overall development plan and complies with the applicable statutes, codes and ordinances and regulations. So firstly, as far as we know, there’s no preliminary plat or I’m sorry, there’s no pre existing PUD or pre existing site plan. This would be the first site plan on the property. So we wanted to start to talk about how it’s consistent with the comprehensive plan.
Unknown Speaker 19:46
We already talked about that it’s in the mixed use employment district. So we looked into envision Longmont to see how we could incorporate a design that is complementary to your comprehensive plan. And there were several things that we have
Unknown Speaker 20:00
really aligned with the owner. First is that from a commercial perspective, the owner is interested in the same interests as you which are recruit support, incentivize and retain quality businesses to provide a comprehensive range of job opportunities and promote economic diversity and promote and increase opportunities for collaboration, innovation and entrepreneurism and address building space infrastructure needs and other considerations of target industries and the workforce. And finally, Longmont is facilitating the development, rehabilitation and or adaptive reuse of existing property to meet the contemporary needs of emerging businesses, while making a positive contribution to the appearance of the city. And this is the one that we felt really kind of aligns with flywheels value add type of property development.
Unknown Speaker 20:57
So if we look a little bit more into the framework development plan they’ve identified or I guess you have identified the primary use that’s encouraged in this district. And so this zone district primary use is a range of employment oriented uses, including small scale manufacturing, processing, wholesaling, indoor and screened outdoor storage, office, flex space and commercial services. So we talked about this primary use of 1301. Iowa is medium industrial, which means development that involves the manufacturing, processing, fabrication, storage, transportation, distribution, or wholesaling of goods and services, where no adverse environmental impact, including noise, smoke, odor, dust or vibration takes place beyond the boundaries of the lot on which the buildings located so we feel like we the proposal that we’re putting before you is in keeping with these things,
Unknown Speaker 21:57
as it as it is already zoned.
Unknown Speaker 22:00
So let’s look at review criteria statement two, it says the application complies with applicable city standards, including for street utility design and layout and adequate utilities are available or will be provided for appropriate urban level services.
Unknown Speaker 22:15
This is our utility plan. And I’m going to talk a little bit about everything that’s in it. So for fire access, the building already is equipped with a full sprinkler system. And we spoke with the fire marshal and negotiated with him that we would incorporate a fire loop around the perimeter of the building that would be designed to adequately
Unknown Speaker 22:35
support the weight of the 82,000, I think pound of a firetruck. But it also serves us because we can get trucks around there and they can access the docks. So that’s one of our upgrades. Another one is water. So currently, the building is equipped with a five eighths inch water service line, which isn’t very good water service for a commercial building of this size. So we’re upgrading the water line to an inch and a half service line with a one inch meter, which has been approved by Hannah Chen, who’s one of the engineers that’s been working with us on the project with Public Works and engineering. Our sanitary access is already appropriately sized for the facility. In terms of power, we’re working with long lot power on replacing some of the existing equipment, there is an existing piece of equipment called a trans closure, which is not manufactured anymore, and you can’t get parts for so we’re working with them to replace that with a transformer. So more modern piece of equipment and how that
Unknown Speaker 23:32
provides power to the building. And in terms of heating and cooling access, the the gas is private. So I don’t know if that applies here. But we are replacing some of the heating and cooling equipment in the
Unknown Speaker 23:46
the tenant improvement project that we have going on in the office area, which is under a separate permit. I don’t think it’s part of this application.
Unknown Speaker 23:55
So we moved to re review criteria statement three, the application proposes development compatible with surrounding property in terms of land use site building layout, design and access. So in terms of the building layout, it’s not changing. We’re not adding to or subtracting from the building layout, so that doesn’t change. We’ve talked a little bit about the site. We’ll talk a little bit more about it. I’m going to talk a little bit about design and access in a minute. But
Unknown Speaker 24:25
we want to kind of focus right now on compatibility with surrounding properties in terms of the industrial outdoor storage.
Unknown Speaker 24:34
So if you look at this diagram, each of these properties that I show you the purple color bar is our building 1301 Iowa and the yellow color bar is an adjacent property. So in this case, this one’s 811 Sherman is catty corner from us on the intersecting Street and it has industrial ladder storage. This one’s 907 sells Sherman is just across the street across Sherman from us. This one is 805 South Lincoln is here
Unknown Speaker 25:00
half a block to the north of us it has industrial outdoor storage. And this one is 1100, South Sherman and that is a city of Longmont property. And it shares our south and eastern borders. And
Unknown Speaker 25:14
really a large portion of it is industrial outdoor storage. So that’s two of our property borders, our North border is on Iowa Street. And then I want to talk a little bit about our East corridor. So you can see the the purple diagram there. On the plan left side, there’s a little building right beside us, it’s an adjacent property.
Unknown Speaker 25:37
And we’ve been working with them on access. So if you look at the right hand diagram, the right the right block is one of our like, half of the warehouse of our building.
Unknown Speaker 25:50
And then just to the left of that is you can see part of the adjacent neighbor, now they have to enter our our driveway to access their building from behind. And they have docks on the backside of their buildings. So we have worked with them to create an access easement that will allow them to access access their back docks. Even though they’re trespassing on our property, they’ll have this shared access easement so they can continue to use their property in perpetuity as long as this access easement is in place. And so, with that building, if you look at the left hand diagram, we had a little bit of a siamese twin situation where our gas line was coming in off of Sherman street connecting to our building, and then transitioning to connect to the adjacent building two separate property owners. So we had the we had to consider whether or not we would replace those gas lines or provide an access easement. So we went ahead and worked with the adjacent property owner to provide access easement so that each property owner is protected in the case that anything happens to that that gas meter or it needs to be serviced in some way.
Unknown Speaker 27:04
And then Hannah just showed you this rendering, it shows that we’re going to be surrounding the industrial outdoor storage yard with six foot high fencing that’s going to be stained to medium gray town, it’s in keeping with the fencing standards for the city. And we also wanted to tell you that there’s an existing six foot high hedge of Chinese junipers, full size hedge. So when you’re driving along that street, it only at the very entrance where we have the parking, can you really see into the property, it’s mostly screened already. So behind that hedge, we’ll have a screening wallet that’s required by the city. So I think it’s going to be really well screened. So let’s move to review criteria statement for the application will not adversely affect surrounding properties, the natural environment, existing or plant city transportation or utility services or facilities, or the adverse impacts of the use will be mitigated to the maximum extent feasible. So
Unknown Speaker 28:04
we already talked about the utility services and facilities were kind of upgrading a lot of them that need to be upgraded.
Unknown Speaker 28:11
I’m going to talk about city transportation in a second. And we’ll talk about the natural environment in a second. But what we want to talk about here is adversely affecting surrounding properties. And so in, in my experience, when you improve a property, the surrounding properties, values tend to improve as well. And it kind of works in the opposite direction too. If you let a property go fallow, then some of the adjacent properties can as well. So we have already replaced the roof at a new exterior paint. And then we’re in this whole process with the jurisdiction of refinishing the office area, replacing utilities and upgrading the site amenities. So we’re really in the process of trying to actively improve the property.
Unknown Speaker 28:58
And moving on to review criteria statement five, the application where required complies with sustainability evaluation system requirements to mitigate impacts of development within the city’s riparian areas, as applicable to other projects as determined by separate agreement.
Unknown Speaker 29:15
So when we talk about the landscape plan, we have in existing la have beautiful, full grown honeylocust trees that adorn the perimeter of the site. And when we when flywheel purchased the property, many of them were about to die because they hadn’t been watered or they just they didn’t have any water was the biggest problem. And so we engaged in an arborist to give us a strategy to bring those trees back to life. Now one of the trees did die. And so it’s going to be replaced with a shade Master honeylocust. So if you look at the bottom tree there, they’re beautiful. They they have this beautiful rich golden color in the fall. And then in the landscape islands that Hannah mentioned earlier.
Unknown Speaker 30:00
We’re going to have Tartarian hot wings maples, which are a beautiful tree. So it’s in the upper left corner, you see the bright red tree. That’s what it looks like in the fall. And during the summer, it looks like the picture on the right, so it’s a green tree, but it has bright red seed pots. So it’s an amazingly gorgeous tree in all seasons. And we’ll be placing them in landscape islands that don’t have curbs so that the storm drainage can drain into the islands and be processed on site as well as provide some irrigation for the landscaping.
Unknown Speaker 30:34
So moving to review criteria statement six, the application includes an appropriate transportation plan, including multimodal transportation access, and is integrated with connected and connected where appropriate with adjacent development through street connection sidewalks, trails and similar features.
Unknown Speaker 30:55
And so, we were really lucky to be right here in downtown Longmont, because we are already adjacent to multiple existing and planned trails, and bus stops and bike paths and vehicular access, including roads and highways, and municipal services all around. So I think that’s just a function of being located in beautiful Longmont.
Unknown Speaker 31:22
And that concludes our presentation. So we’re happy to take questions. Okay, thank you very much at this time, since this is a public hearing item, but we’ll go ahead and open this up for public invited to be heard. Jane is going to get the comments. Hold still, I’m sure there gonna be some questions coming to you in a minute. But first, we’re gonna let the public if there’s anybody in the public? Sure.
Unknown Speaker 31:45
As Debbie pointed out, in general, the site has been administratively approved. So the item that we’re focusing on here today is the use of the outdoor storage, because I just want to contain the comments and discussion to that use.
Unknown Speaker 31:58
Yes.
Unknown Speaker 32:04
Nobody?
Unknown Speaker 32:06
Well.
Unknown Speaker 32:08
Okay, nobody signed up. But we will go ahead and invite anybody in the public who would like to come forward and speak on this item. Please state your name and your address for the public record. And you will have five minutes.
Unknown Speaker 32:22
Wow, Hello, and thank you for a very clear presentation. I’m Andy Bartlett and I live at four South Bush lane, which is about one block away. And maybe this should be directed to the Streets Department. But Iowa Avenue badly needs a sidewalk. And there’s none Presently, the traffic has increased greatly. Since people have been avoiding can Pratt Boulevard and using Iowa as a bypass road. And so the street is a good 65 Street feet across. There’s plenty of room for a sidewalk, it doesn’t need to interfere with any plans here. But if you could add into the street as part of the redeveloping a good four foot sidewalk on the south side of Iowa,
Unknown Speaker 33:13
that would be greatly an improvement
Unknown Speaker 33:18
that would go along with this general approval.
Unknown Speaker 33:23
And so sidewalk sidewalk sidewalk that was in the last section there. No sidewalk right now on neither the north or the south, someone’s gonna get hurt. And it just needs to change ever since that development.
Unknown Speaker 33:42
East of west of Sherman
Unknown Speaker 33:46
Walker I think his name that used to be the school district that has now about 102 houses. So there’s there’s two residential neighborhoods. And this is in between those two. So I think when Longmont was originally built, the thought was nobody’s going to be walking here. Well, now there are a lot of people walking there. And there’s nothing to protect us from the traffic. And so that was my one point. Okay, and maybe that could come home and tie into this as adjacent to the property and not on the property. So thank you. Thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 34:29
Is there anybody else in public who would like to come forward? If not, we’ll go ahead and we’ll close out the public invited to be heard and will now turn to the Commission for questions, comments and our motions.
Unknown Speaker 34:46
We have anybody who would like to step forward
Unknown Speaker 34:53
Commissioner flaig.
Unknown Speaker 34:57
Thank you
Unknown Speaker 34:59
i
Unknown Speaker 35:00
Have I don’t know who I would direct this to exactly. But I wanted to verify the type of fence that will be used. So what is the material? Yeah, it’s going to be a six foot tall, fully opaque wood fence, with the finish side facing out. Like you said, it’d be stained like a natural gray color. And so that is in alignment with the city standards for fencing. And I imagine that
Unknown Speaker 35:25
you need the outdoor storage because these items can’t be stored inside. And what would those items possibly be? Do you want to trust?
Unknown Speaker 35:36
It we don’t know yet, because we don’t have a tenant for the space. But we did have a tenant looking at the space that was a contractor. So they would have the items that they don’t normally store inside. So maybe a stack of trusses or stack of bricks or something, it would be very orderly, and we would have lanes going in the outdoor storage area to adequately designate and provide access, and there would be nothing stacked above the level of the fence. So as a pedestrian or as someone in a car, you wouldn’t be able to see anything.
Unknown Speaker 36:11
Tell me about the lighting for those two storage areas. Yes, we have an electrical plan that we’re incorporating pole mounted lighting, so we adequately lit and safe and that’s a priority for the owner. So there, there are two, two large pole mounted lights in each storage yard, and it’s shielded so that the light trespass doesn’t leave the site.
Unknown Speaker 36:35
Also, uh, let me know that as part of the DRC review process, we reviewed the photometric plan for this, and the light temperature and all the other standards are in conformance with city code. And the light bulbs themselves would not be viewable from any residential area. Yep, correct. All rights are fully downloaded and full cut off. And there’s no light trespass beyond
Unknown Speaker 36:55
the property property line. And the last question came to me because
Unknown Speaker 37:01
as the gentleman talked about, I know this is a small area that you’re changing on the site. Is there any possibility that our traffic department could have required sidewalks in addition to any improvements. So as part of the DRC review process, we actually discussed adding sidewalks to this portion of that.
Unknown Speaker 37:32
As the gentleman from the public describe, there’s currently no sidewalks on either side of Iowa Avenue from South Sherman all the way to South Bowen. And we reviewed a proposal to add sidewalks adjacent to just the Iowa port, sorry, not Iowa, just this applicants portion of Iowa Avenue. But it was determined that without connectivity to either side,
Unknown Speaker 37:53
that
Unknown Speaker 37:56
the sidewalk would not function as intended if it’s just a single strip along the entire right of way. So it’d be a standalone sidewalk instead of providing connectivity. To my knowledge at this time, there’s no capital improvement project for modifications to the right of way, this time. I understand that part. And one has to start somewhere. So does public works, traffic transportation have in place, any kind of a way to collect funds towards the possibility at some point in time enough could be collected in the city could match funds? I’m just thinking out of the air here and create sidewalks. Because as everything changes over to mixed use, we don’t know what kind of uses that might be requiring people to walk. Or if they want to walk to work. There’s that.
Unknown Speaker 38:53
Good evening Chair, Members of the Commission. Josh Sherman, civil engineer with public works on the Development Review Committee.
Unknown Speaker 38:59
Great question. And, you know, I think as Hannah tried to explain that that was something that was considered during the review process. Just to elaborate on what she said a little bit that in looking at, you know, where the property boundaries are the property line in relation to
Unknown Speaker 39:15
the back of walk or not the walk, but the back of paved section, there would also be some additional dedication right away to be able to facilitate a sidewalk, which would also disturb a lot of that mature vegetation that was described previously on the front end to this lot. So that was one consideration. And then I think you actually mentioned it before something else. That’s also considered in situations like this is the scope and scale of the proposal that’s being considered. So just the outdoor storage use piece related to the overall property as if it were,
Unknown Speaker 39:46
if it were going to like fully redevelop, which in this case, it’s not necessarily fully redeveloping, since the building’s not changing and things like that, that’s been described. To answer your question on the second part with regard to
Unknown Speaker 39:59
Cam
Unknown Speaker 40:00
We take in funds there, there’s the ability to
Unknown Speaker 40:05
in other development applications, we do that.
Unknown Speaker 40:09
In fact, we
Unknown Speaker 40:11
do that through our public improvement agreement. If one of those are in place in this case, there’s not substantial or really any public improvements
Unknown Speaker 40:20
that were considered with this particular application. So that wasn’t considered it is something that is considered in other applications or could potentially be done here if directed.
Unknown Speaker 40:30
just for curiosity sake, how wide is the existing right of way there, I was looking at their Alta map, which I don’t have in front of me right now. As well as measuring Google Earth Well, while this conversation was going on in the background, looked like it was about 44 feet flow line to flow line. So actually, in this industrial area, what’s happening is there’s not even curb and gutter, there’s just a small gutter pan along the edge of asphalt pavement.
Unknown Speaker 40:58
And then the right away was immediately behind that on the south side at least. And in looking at our minimum street cross section design standards 44 feet and you know, street like this is is a typical cross section flow line to flow line, which is why I mentioned before that if we wanted to start looking at sidewalks it might be it’s gonna be one of two things either narrowing up the driver pavement section or acquiring additional right away
Unknown Speaker 41:26
since part of the uses here are industrial
Unknown Speaker 41:31
probably the usual drive aisle I’m forgetting is it 10 or 12 Feet has to be wider to allow for trucks turning
Unknown Speaker 41:41
the
Unknown Speaker 41:43
off the top my head I believe it’s 11 feet on a
Unknown Speaker 41:47
on a street section like this for that for that type of use or for that type of street would give you what for so even attach sidewalk, you get six feet on both sides, I want to run and grab my computer that I’ve got this standard detail pulled up on but I’ll be right thank you
Unknown Speaker 42:22
so I have in front of me our city standard details under Section 200 for the street standards. And
Unknown Speaker 42:32
for for a local street section. And um, forgive me, I’m gonna have to look and see, or maybe Hannah can help me if this is a local street designation, which I assume I might be.
Unknown Speaker 42:43
It’s actually 10 foot travel lanes, and then seven foot parking on both sides. So it’s a relatively wide street cross section there existing today versus what a local street parking on two sides would be 34 feet. If we were looking at a
Unknown Speaker 42:58
much larger street cross section such as like an industrial collector, then we’re talking about 12 foot drive lanes. I don’t think this is a industrial collector Street in Iowa at this location. But it’s sort of acting like when based on the traffic going through? Well,
Unknown Speaker 43:14
that’s based on volume, not necessarily the type of traffic.
Unknown Speaker 43:19
So I still think it’s probably acting closer to a minor collector or a local street. But the width would be indicated because of that residential. I mean, the industrial use down here, right? Okay. Yep. Thanks very much. You’re welcome.
Unknown Speaker 43:34
Hey, Josh, come real quickly.
Unknown Speaker 43:39
Not necessary for this. But for public who have any questions regarding sidewalks, should they? You know, instead of waiting for some they can certainly reach out to me
Unknown Speaker 43:50
or they can reach out to my counterpart is Tom Street on the engineering administrator side for our streets and drainage on the capital program side. Okay. Thank you. You’re welcome. Next is Commissioner height.
Unknown Speaker 44:05
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 44:07
I slaughter names can Gela. Yes, fantastic. The applicant indicated in materials that I read. After I sent an email out to you earlier today. Regarding whether or not this this property ever been subject to any type of reviewers I plan or conditional use plan or a preliminary plat conditional use plan.
Unknown Speaker 44:30
And the indication was at as reported by Miss Grant today to that there’s never been a site plan for this property. Is that correct? Thank you for your question, Commissioner. The parcel was annexed in 1961. As part of the really large South Moore Park annexation at the time of the annexation, no concept plan was created. So there’s no way to amend a concept plan. At this in the same way there’s no preliminary plat that pertains to this parcel in the area. We reviewed all development applications for the whole annexation area.
Unknown Speaker 45:00
Appreciate that.
Unknown Speaker 45:02
Then my next question for you is the six foot high fence and then those storage, I guess is indicated in your recommended condition of approval that there’ll be no storage higher than six foot. Where’s the six foot come from? Longmont municipal code standards. So all outside storage in this area or anywhere in the city is limited strictly for non residential zoning districts Yeah, behind screen, or just that the fence height is six feet.
Unknown Speaker 45:31
It Okay, so this fence height is six foot. But that is the screening, they’re required to be below six foot. I’m just wondering why eight both are six. So as part of the standards for outdoor storage, all items stored have to be fully screened from public rights of way. So that’s the vegetation plus the fencing is to achieve that purpose.
Unknown Speaker 45:53
Then my last comment to the African is I’m so happy that an M U EE application is coming before it’s not to be a secondary use for residential.
Unknown Speaker 46:05
Commissioner teta?
Unknown Speaker 46:09
Well, I
Unknown Speaker 46:12
know I’m a little torn because I know we’re just here to review the storage containers. And yet, it really seems like it’d be a shame for us not to get them to put a sidewalk in on their piece of the front edge on Iowa, regardless of when the city might catch up with the rest of the connectivity in the area. So I’d be in favor of trying a condition that feels like they’re willing to spend a lot of money on their property on the parking lot. And maybe they could spend a little less on that and put a sidewalk in.
Unknown Speaker 46:57
Do we have any other comments? Input? Commissioner Popkin.
Unknown Speaker 47:04
Thank you, Chair. Maybe just a couple of quick clarifying questions. I respect to my fellow Commissioners suggestion for a possible condition on the sidewalks. Is there a precedent for that? And maybe you’re a little bit new? So my so I’m asking out of ignorance here as well, in terms of properties that are kind of improved looking at similar types of situations across Longmont? Do we know if there’s similar types of precedent for this kind of request, I understand the spirit of it. Don’t fundamentally disagree with the spirit of it. Just want to know kind of how we handle that. I might actually call up some extra firepower and institutional knowledge, please. I hear they’re enhancing the firepower.
Unknown Speaker 47:46
Thank you for your question. Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 47:58
Chairman, Poland, members of the Commission number chat, could you repeat the question? Commissioner Pollock. And of course, I just want to understand if there’s so my fellow Commissioner had floated the idea of a possible condition for a sidewalk for the public facing sidewalk for the portion of their property that’s adjacent adjacent to their portion of the property. Just curious, like how the city has handled that in the past for similar types of conditional site use.
Unknown Speaker 48:24
upgrades, similar types of situations? Sure. So, you know, it really varies by I would say the the location, the extent of the improvements that the applicant is going to be putting into the property, looking at trying some proportionality. And also looking at the existing conditions and the type of application that’s in for review. So if we were looking at a larger project where we were doing building additions, we were, maybe we didn’t have existing landscaping in the location where this sidewalk would go, if we were doing a plat that was creating the lat where we could get the adjacent right of way, added, so that we could have that and have the applicant build that for us, then then yes, we have done that. But on smaller projects or projects where the scope of the improvements are limited, and the impact truly to for the for what needs to be done. And based on what the applicant is proposing. We’ve done where we’ve not made them put in all their improvements either. We This isn’t uncommon, and I would say that not only is it for public improvements, but it’s also for other kinds of features that we do on sites like landscaping as an example, you know, we could try to apply in the code says, you know, is it commensurate with and that statement, when you look at the improvements that projects are doing oftentimes we’ve got to have a balance if we’re going to put in $300,000 worth of landscaping, but the project itself is only putting in 75,000
Unknown Speaker 50:00
And for the building improvements and changes maybe that they’re making to the site. That’s not really commensurate with what they’re doing with the project. And so we did look at this with the DRC, we did take this into account. At the beginning, when we were looking at the pre application meeting, when they very first came in, it was a discussion amongst, you know, the staff and the departments. The decision of the departments was that for this location at this time, this wasn’t appropriate to ask the applicant to build it. And then when you look at its location with having gaps at both ends, with other property owners, again, that would need to be something the city’s going to have to pay for, to connect in the future, then we start looking at road projects.
Unknown Speaker 50:44
When we go in, and we do re redo that road for overlay, if we look at improving the drainage, if we put in curb gutter than we do the sidewalk, that would be part of that capital project that we would do when we work in that neighborhood. That’s really helpful done. And if you were to do that capital improvement, project type of approach with the sewer, the gutters, potential landscaping other design, I presume your goal as we’re looking at the city’s goal will be to make it contiguous and consistent credit and having this kind of one patch of the sidewalk, however necessary, it does sound like it will and how useful it will be.
Unknown Speaker 51:23
That would almost be a disruption and perhaps a construction impediment. Could be you know, because in order to tie that in to the full length, we would have to look at the full length of that road right of way for an intersection intersection. You bring up a great point there. A couple of things. I do want to point out example, one other thing that was talked about by Commissioner Flake is does the city have a have a funding mechanism? Well, I don’t know that we have a funding mechanism. But we have a program for missing sidewalks sections in the city. And so for example, on 17th Avenue this year, staff has been acquiring rights of way and is going to be putting in missing segments of, of sidewalks along that arterial street, a very busy street, a lot of activity, a lot of pedestrians, we want to make sure we fill in those missing areas. We also have looked at that south of Ninth Avenue on Hofer road on the west side, down by the Daniel West project, there’s again, gaps in our system. So there is a program for identifying where those are missing, and then prioritizing those and working on getting those done. So it is a cost to the city, obviously. And so we try to prioritize those areas where we feel that there’s high potential for danger and conflicts with our pedestrians and our vehicular traffic. And those are typically on our arterioles right now. Those are the primary areas we’re working on for that. So that kind of answers a little bit to what Mr. Flake was talking about. Right. And while I have you got two more questions. The first is, in your professional opinion, you kind of mentioned this kind of size of project matters. And in your professional experience and opinion. And Hannah, welcome your take on this too. From from small to large, like does this generally sit more on the small type of upgrades? Yes. So site versus large, just so we’re thinking relative to other types of properties and all that. Yeah, for the the amount of the you know, while there are some landscaping improvements in the parking lot, they’re going to happen irrigation improvements that are going to be put in, when you look at the actual area that they’re asking for the conditional use on it is the outdoor storage itself. So we’re really looking at some kind of material in those areas, that things can be stored on, and then fencing around it to screen it to make sure that it is screened from the rights of way and the other properties. So when I look at that, in relation to,
Unknown Speaker 53:48
let’s say,
Unknown Speaker 53:51
a building an addition of 30,000 square feet, this is really minor. And Hannah, would you also agree with that.
Unknown Speaker 54:01
Just getting a second opinion from
Unknown Speaker 54:04
for what it’s worth. For reference, the original improvements to the site were being processed as a site plan waiver is a change of use, which is one of our most minor application types. Thank you for that. That’s really helpful context. I also just want to note that like I appreciate that the applicant clearly seems to be thoughtful with how they’re approaching their conditional site upgrades could just, you know, pave over paradise and put a parking lot here. And it sounds like you’re actually giving some thought to the irrigation, the utility upgrades necessary. The fence, the fencing is required in terms of the city code with the landscaping, the approach. So I appreciate that you’re thinking about all of that. One more question for either Don or Hannah. The also a precedent question. So is it common that the city requires, as the strap condition suggests that all items stored in an outdoor storage area shall not be stacked or stored higher than the screening fence? Is that a common condition that either the commission has applied in the past
Unknown Speaker 55:00
Just again, pardon, my ignorance has been still midway through my first year, or that the city has generally applied for similar types of projects.
Unknown Speaker 55:12
Commissioner Popkin. So what I would say is that there’s a, there’s a couple of things going on. And I don’t remember this section of the code the best. So I’m not going to say that it is a requirement, although it may be. But to be clear, we want it in the record as a condition that that storage areas will
Unknown Speaker 55:33
be screening, the outdoor storage, in order to make sure that happens, we want to make sure the applicant understands anything that’s stored in those areas has to be below the screening so that it’s not visible, the intent of the code is to make sure that we’re mitigating that outdoor storage, the impact of seeing that from the adjacent properties. That’s why we’ve put the condition
Unknown Speaker 55:55
think we have Josh, behind you ready to add to this? Alright, I’ll just take
Unknown Speaker 56:05
I don’t know if I want to add to the the to that particular response. But I want to add to the previous response. So mentioning the city’s capital improvement program. And like Don mentioned, we have a missing sidewalks program, which actually may have come up in conversation in the last commission hearing a month ago. So I pulled that back up again here. And then the 2023 to 27 Capital Improvement Program and the approved budget. In fact, Iowa Avenue from Sherman Street to Bowen Street is included in the funded
Unknown Speaker 56:38
project for missing sidewalks.
Unknown Speaker 56:41
So that’s the section along this front edge.
Unknown Speaker 56:49
Just second, let me get to you. I gotta.
Unknown Speaker 56:53
I will yield to my fellow Commissioner.
Unknown Speaker 56:56
Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 56:59
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 57:01
So Josh, what year?
Unknown Speaker 57:04
It looks like it’s funded in 2023. I don’t know where that is exactly in design, in bidding and construction. But it is a funded capital project in five years somewhere.
Unknown Speaker 57:17
Well, as you know, we do a five year capital program, but we only fund a budget for the for the following for the first single year. So it’s on your radar. It is absolutely on the radar. Thank you. You’re welcome.
Unknown Speaker 57:31
Okay, Commissioner Goldberg.
Unknown Speaker 57:34
Thank you, Chairman, Commissioner Popkin, were you done with your questions?
Unknown Speaker 57:38
And you should.
Unknown Speaker 57:43
Okay,
Unknown Speaker 57:45
first, sorry. Is it better? Is it plenary Kegel or cannula? cannula? Thank you. I know Commissioner height already. Yes. But I had already forgotten. I just wanted to say welcome. Nice job on your first presentation. Thank you. And then I definitely cut Jennifer grant. Jennifer grant, I wish all applicants presentations were like yours. That was an excellent, concise, you know, thoughtful, clear presentation that makes our job easy. So thank you.
Unknown Speaker 58:20
A couple really quick questions, because high level I’m favorable to this project and in this application, and I don’t see any reason to push back. Okay, so my first question was, when might the sidewalk improvements occur? Well, I think Mr. Sherman just clarified that there’s funding for that in the near future. Commissioner flag one year in five years, I don’t care if it’s, it’s fun. It’s gonna happen. Right. So that’s cool.
Unknown Speaker 58:45
And then really, I do want to honor Commissioner Ted, his concerns about the sidewalk.
Unknown Speaker 58:52
I too, was, you know, I thought it was thoughtful, and certainly in line with how we generally look to make our projects more connected and have really inspired connectivity throughout our town. But it just doesn’t sound like it was right in this scenario. And it sounds like there’s a bigger project to kind of improve the whole area. So I think that’s really wonderful.
Unknown Speaker 59:19
Jennifer, are you able to accommodate the height restriction, there’s a condition rec being recommended to us by city that you limit your storage to the height of the screening? Is that something that you feel comfortable accommodating? Yes, the development we’ll put that in the leasing agreement with a tenant that they can’t stack anything above the requirement for the city.
Unknown Speaker 59:44
Okay, well then, thank you. I think you’re gonna say that. I don’t have any more questions. I think as I just look to my peers,
Unknown Speaker 59:53
and I don’t see anything wrong with this project this
Unknown Speaker 59:59
year
Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
For sure.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:02
I don’t see any problem with this application, I see a ton of improvements. I see an applicant who is really committed to improving their property. That’s, let’s see, actually made a list of all the improvements they had. But you guys heard him it was water, it was utilities, it was fire, it was just long term benefit to this property that will hopefully inspire improvements in the neighborhood. So for all the reasons that
Unknown Speaker 1:00:30
that Hannah identified as it met all of the criteria, and for all the improvements that the applicant is looking to do, and given the concern around the sidewalk being addressed,
Unknown Speaker 1:00:43
and the applicants willingness to accommodate the condition that the city is recommending.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:48
I’ll yield the mic, but I am supportive of this project.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:52
Thank you very much. Commissioner Popkin. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Commissioner Goldberg for perhaps holding you’re holding your fire for one moment. I just had one follow up question from before actually, it’s not a follow up. It’s just a separate question, which is, I appreciated the thoughtfulness around the multimodal access and the transportation plan. And I know we’ve already addressed some of the pedestrian and sidewalk issues. And just I understand that in your plan, you currently stipulate you’re going to add one bike rack out front, I just wanted to know how you’re thinking about capacity for the bike rack versus capacity for the parking lot, given the regional connectivity, and frankly, quite a bit of, you know, pedestrian and bicycle access in the region.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:33
Yeah, so on in this project, there’s no minimum. I mean,
Unknown Speaker 1:01:39
there’s no, what is it maximum?
Unknown Speaker 1:01:46
bike parking is calculated commensurate with the amount of available vehicle parking spaces. So that is calculated by our transportation planners at the time of the DRC review. So it’s a ratio of vehicle parking to bicycle parking. Got it? And based on the expected tenant use, you think that the requirement of the city is sufficient for what you expect? Are you thinking there might be more how just curious processes? Well, it’s providing more than
Unknown Speaker 1:02:16
more than the requirement, which is 10%? I believe, and aren’t we I think we have 44 parking spaces. I hope I’m not getting this wrong. But we’re providing six, we’re providing a rack that has six spaces for six bikes, because it’s a nice rack, and we want the building to be nice.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:33
And yeah, so we don’t, we aren’t required to have 44 parking spaces. That’s just what we could fit on the side after we incorporated the landscape islands. So there’s no minimum.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:46
But there is a maximum on the site. Great. I appreciate that. Like my some of my fellow Commissioners have said I have no qualms with this project. And I think it sounds like a good neighbor upgrade.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:57
I yield. Thank you, Commissioner will cash.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:01
Thank you Chair, I’m just going to add my two cents here. And my my opinion
Unknown Speaker 1:03:07
is in,
Unknown Speaker 1:03:09
in sync with all the other Commissioners are most of them, that this project brings a lot of value in the neighborhood with all the improvements that the applicant is promising to make. And I definitely appreciate the conversation around the sidewalk. And I’m glad to see that it’s on the CIP schedule. So I think I’m happy with
Unknown Speaker 1:03:33
with the project. So I will be in favor of this project.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:37
Thank you. I’ll go ahead I’m going to put in my two cents. Once again, I appreciate the applicants thorough presentation to us. They did a good job explaining how it meets section 15 Oh 2055 sections one through six. And so for that I will be in favor of this. And I guess I’ll go ahead and I’ll go ahead and make a motion that we approved PCR 2023 Eight B with the one condition all items stored in the outdoor storage area shall not be stacked or stored higher than the screening fence.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:14
missioner height
Unknown Speaker 1:04:20
so Miskin, Joe, I have come back. Plantar Tenjo. We have motion so we have to Oh, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:28
I have more questions.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:31
Okay. Commissioner Goldberg. I’ll second the motion. Okay, we have a motion. We have a second. Any other comments or questions? Commissioner height? Sorry.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:42
So cleric. Angella you
Unknown Speaker 1:04:45
identified for me, I believe that the six foot high fencing is a requirement of the city of Longmont and that all outdoor storage can’t be higher than the screening. So why would we need condition 1.51
Unknown Speaker 1:05:00
He,
Unknown Speaker 1:05:02
Don Burchette was speaking about this, that the intent of the code is for to ensure that no
Unknown Speaker 1:05:10
items being stored are visible. There is an example of
Unknown Speaker 1:05:15
a facility where they had a conditional use for outdoor storage and the fencing was the six foot requirement, but somehow the way they’ve stacked their outdoor storage, it’s still visible from the public right away. So we’re waiting to ensure that, despite any considerations around the code or loopholes, that we have the precedent to go in and enforce the fact that nothing should be stored above this fence or visible from the public right of way.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:41
So
Unknown Speaker 1:05:47
there’s a problem with the way the code is written such that we need to have this to ensure that we meet the intent of the code, which is now contradictory to what I understood to be the code.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:02
Thank you for your question.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:06
In essence, we also want to make sure that the applicant here has a way to enforce with any tenants that they sign that that’s a condition of signing a lease as well.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:16
Done, thanks.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:20
What exactly is the code?
Unknown Speaker 1:06:31
Do Chairman Polen Commissioner heights so you know, the thing that you guys, I think hopefully understand is that we have property owners that they tell us they’re going to do something, they do it.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:46
We have codes that say you have to meet certain requirements. And then oftentimes, we add conditions that are another way for us that if we have to get into the
Unknown Speaker 1:06:59
going through code enforcement, and prosecuting them through court, we not only have a code section that talks about screening, but we also have a condition of approval of a project that said they agreed to do it.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:13
So
Unknown Speaker 1:07:16
from my standpoint,
Unknown Speaker 1:07:18
we have an applicant who’s willing to agree to a condition that helps us with any other future person who goes in store stuff out there.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:27
From my personal opinion on this, I don’t see this as a problem.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:32
But I don’t know how we’re going to address this for you.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:36
I appreciate that. And I understand belts and suspenders. Now I’m going to ask
Unknown Speaker 1:07:42
Jeremy
Unknown Speaker 1:07:46
if we if we add belts and suspenders that suggests that the belt wasn’t properly fitted, meaning that you’re that the statute is unclear, you want us to put suspenders around this belt that would allow then somebody else to say, well, the belt doesn’t mean what the code?
Unknown Speaker 1:08:06
I’ve stopped with the metaphors that
Unknown Speaker 1:08:10
that the
Unknown Speaker 1:08:12
the statute has drafted, apparently doesn’t mean six foot high. And therefore we’ve had to adapt conditions to supplement whatever is meant in that code.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:24
I think it’s clear, I think the applicants clear they’re going to cap their storage at six foot. But there seems to be a different problem, that maybe we’re making worse with this condition.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:41
Thank you, Commissioner height. I do believe the code adequately addresses the issue. I’m looking at 1505 130, which is under outdoor service storage equipment loading and display for development standards. And specifically Subsection C, which is stored item shopper project above the fence or wall use screen set materials. I think the code is sufficiently clear that we don’t need the condition. But I recognize staff position that the condition is just an added level of insurance. I don’t think adding it here is in a impact us in the future, given that the code is clear that it says shall not project about the fence. So if the commission is so inclined to drop the condition, I think we’re fine if the commission is fine, leaving it as per staff recommendation. I’m not concerned for future enforcement other properties. Thank you. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 1:09:34
done.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:37
Any other comments? If not, Jane, I think we’re ready for vote.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:43
Commissioner hype
Unknown Speaker 1:09:46
with reservation.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:49
Can Commissioner Ted Mr. Goldberg Yes, Chair Polen Yes. Commissioner flake. Hi, Mr. Arnold couch. Commissioner Popkin.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:00
Chairman that passes seven zero. Thank you very much. This item now enters a seven day appeal period. During this time any aggrieved party may appeal the Commission’s decision by submitting a written appeal letter, stating why the planning and zoning Commission’s decision should be amended or reversed by city council. All appeals must be in writing and must be received in the city clerk’s office and the planning office within the seven day appeal period. The appeal period begins Thursday, September 21, at 8am and ends Wednesday, September 27th. At 5pm.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:36
Thank you so much. Thank you. Do we want to take a five minutes Okay, let’s take a five minute break and come back for the next item.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:35
station for property at 11386 Rogers road
Unknown Speaker 1:16:39
in terms of location,
Unknown Speaker 1:16:42
the subject property is this particular one outlined in yellow. So it is basically north of the sugar factory area. It is just south of the intersection of third and Lashley. So, this particular site is roughly nine and a quarters, not a quarter acres. It has a comprehensive plan designation of mixed use employment, and it is part of a larger county enclave in this particular area.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:13
So, city council have referred this annexation for formal application at their October 25 2022 meeting. This particular request meets the contiguity requirements of Colorado Revised Statutes 3121 104. A, as I mentioned, it is part of a larger county enclave. It is designated M UE, the applicant is seeking the musc zoning, which is the appropriate zoning district for this particular envision Longmont just a land use category.
Unknown Speaker 1:17:46
It is north and immediately adjacent to the sugar factory planning area, which was approved last night at city council. So currently this is unincorporated Boulder County, it’s their general industrial zoning district and it is being used for storage and auto wrecking type uses.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:08
So as I noticed, this property is immediately north of the sugar factory sub area planning area. So red star adjacent in reference to the steam and sugar factory sub area plan. So this sub area plan is focused on restoration and reuse of the historic sugar factory building and the surrounding areas with a mix of urban scale uses. Building a walkable community is a priority in this area
Unknown Speaker 1:18:38
just to provide some context for this particular site.
Unknown Speaker 1:18:45
So
Unknown Speaker 1:18:47
the applicant in this case is proposing a multifamily development for the site which is a secondary use in the mixed use employment zone. It actually exceeds the minimum density of 18 units per acre.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:01
The current proposed probably the maximum proposed 355 units of multifamily would have a density in excess of 35 acres which is permissible within this zoning district. It does meet the review criteria for all application types and annexation is consistent with Envision Longmont So just as a side note, as well all required notices were mailed and posted for this project and the required neighborhood meeting was held. No members of the public participated in the neighborhood meeting, nor did staff receive any written comments regarding this particular application.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:39
So I just want to discuss the concept plan. Briefly at this point in the development review process. The concept plan does not contain a high level of detail largely because there is only one use proposed multifamily residential. All code requirements and development standards for this type of development will apply and any deviations
Unknown Speaker 1:19:59
would require
Unknown Speaker 1:20:00
concept plan amendment from the proposed development. So effectively, the full vicinity doesn’t really show here, but we’re still figuring out exactly where the where the exact access points but there would be one at the northern end one at the southern end and probably a smaller one for accessing a leasing office.
Unknown Speaker 1:20:23
More likely than not, you would see some sort of connection up to Lashley Street at the north, most likely.
Unknown Speaker 1:20:35
So in terms of Envision Longmont consistency, the proposed annexation is consistent with the growth framework, the goals and the policies of Envision Longmont the mixed use employment land use category allows for residential uses as a secondary use at minimum densities of 18 units per acre with no maximum. Primary uses include a range of employment uses, and secondary uses include supporting retail, hotel, cultural, high density, residential, and other civic type uses.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:10
So in terms of specific
Unknown Speaker 1:21:13
policies and goals for consistency goal 1.1 does seek to embrace a compact and efficient pattern of growth while policy one B
Unknown Speaker 1:21:22
encourages infill and redevelopment particularly higher density, infill and redevelopment in centers, mixed use corridors and other accessible areas of change. This is the site is located within an area of change as designated within envision long lot. The surrounding area is largely at least to the south is underutilized in industrial area that is for the most part unincorporated Boulder County. To the north, you have some of your industrial and flex space employment uses off of Weaver Park Road.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:58
So a goal point go 1.2 promotes a sustainable mix of uses. Specifically policy to D under this goal seeks to plan for a combination of greenfield development, infill development, adaptive reuse, while policy to E encourages a mix of housing types, and to four does encourage higher density housing.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:23
So given that its location is immediately north of the sugar factory planning area. This particular planning area that it is adjacent to contains a number of sites that are targeted for infill and redevelopment. And this proposal would build the type of higher density housing encouraged by policy 1.2 F. That would be complimentary to some of the larger planning activities that are going on in this area.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:50
As noted previously, the site is a designated area of change policy 1.4 A encourages targeted infill redevelopment on vacant lots or sites where existing structures and uses are no longer viable for be under this goal, further permits activity generating uses such as the multifamily development proposed for this property. As noted, the subject property includes currently a mix of both outside and inside storage with a large number of inoperable vehicles on site, which is really not the kind of use promoted by the policies related to go 1.4.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:34
So I’d like to discuss briefly the annexation review criteria. So the proposed annexation does comply with the municipal annexation act of 1965. The property boundaries are contiguous with the city of Longmont along at least 1/6 of the perimeter of the property. Approximately 45% of the property perimeter is adjacent to city of Longmont municipal boundaries.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:59
This property is located within the municipal service area as shown on the Envision Longmont future land use and transportation system map.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:09
In terms of the appropriate proposed zoning, the proposed MeV zoning district is the appropriate zoning district for the mixed use employment comprehensive plan designation. As noted the proposed multifamily development is permissible as a secondary use within this zoning district. This particular area of immunity zoning and land use has not yet approached the 50% maximum threshold for secondary uses. And I’ll discuss that in more detail momentarily.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:39
In terms of criteria for the annexation of this property would not limit the ability of adjacent properties to integrate into the city or annex into the city would not create any additional enclaves is really a step in filling in a larger and us a larger unincorporated county enclave adjacent
Unknown Speaker 1:25:00
To the city of Longmont.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:03
Additionally, the
Unknown Speaker 1:25:05
excuse me,
Unknown Speaker 1:25:07
the adjacent unincorporated areas are generally eligible for annexation into the city.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:15
So the annexation agreement with regard to criteria five will include conditions relating to continuance and termination of the existing uses on the property.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:24
In terms of the environmental requirements, we’ll just I’ll discuss this in more detail momentarily as well. The applicant has provided a completed phase one environmental assessment as well as a limited phase two assessment. And these assessments did not identify any recognized environmental conditions and did not recommend any additional assessment on the property. Again, there was some question that questions that I received earlier today. So I’m going to address some of these questions in in a little bit more detail momentarily.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:58
So in terms of the criteria for all application types, we have found that this particular proposed annexation is consistent with all of these review criteria.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:10
It’s consistent with the existing MeV designation and envision Longmont as discussed previously, it’s within the municipal service area, and it is eligible for annexation based on its continuity and location within a county enclave. Additionally, it’s accessible to planned or existing utility and transportation infrastructure. And it’s within an identified area of change that is appropriate for the type of infill and redevelopment that’s being proposed.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:40
Compliance with the applicable city standards for utility and transportation improvements will be addressed as this project moves through the development review review process. At this point, I adequate utilities have been identified as existing to serve the proposed development of this property.
Unknown Speaker 1:27:01
In terms of compatibility, this property is as I noted, located within a county enclave that does include a number of vacant and underutilized parcels, uses within the city of Longmont to the north and include a number of commercial and enclosed small scale industrial employment type uses to the west are an area known that are zoned mixed use corridor. There is currently a proposal for redevelopment in this for multifamily development within this area that is under review.
Unknown Speaker 1:27:37
And again, the adjacent property adjacent Sugar Factory planning area is targeted and proposed for a mix of urban scale uses. So staff feels that this this is a compatible
Unknown Speaker 1:27:49
proposed proposal for development in this area.
Unknown Speaker 1:27:53
In terms of mitigation of impacts,
Unknown Speaker 1:27:58
annexation of this property would not adversely affect surrounding properties, the natural environment, or any existing or planned city facilities did note that utility providers have adequate capacity to serve the proposed development.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:14
There have been environmental site assessments completed for this property there have been initial drainage studies as well as initial initial rafter nesting surveys.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:26
As this project moves through the process, there would need to be updates to the drainage to the drainage surveys or studies to the Raptor and habitat surveys to
Unknown Speaker 1:28:37
as well as you know detailed tree surveys and tree mitigation studies etc.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:44
See
Unknown Speaker 1:28:50
So regarding additionally regarding the road network, a traffic study was submitted and accepted as part of this process. And it did find that the proposed development would be successfully incorporated into the existing and future roadway network in Longmont. These studies are included with your packet. And as noted because this is the really initial stage of the development review process and planning for this property,
Unknown Speaker 1:29:17
any future development review processes, so planning site plan etc. will incorporate updates to these studies and design of any improvements that are needed.
Unknown Speaker 1:29:31
So in terms of the sustainability evaluation system, staff did identify potential wetland south of this property through the review process, and the applicant has submitted a memorandum of understanding that a full assessment of any wetlands on or near the site and findings from this assessment would be included and reviewed as part of the site planning process. Required buffers would mitigate any potential impacts though at this time. The southern portion of the of the property is
Unknown Speaker 1:30:00
Um, proposed relief for on site detention with no drive lanes or any sort of hardscape development beyond drainage features.
Unknown Speaker 1:30:10
So Should any wetlands be identified and
Unknown Speaker 1:30:14
the property that applicant would be held to those required setbacks requirements for wetlands. So, as noted, again, a traffic study has been submitted for this application, it was found found sufficient
Unknown Speaker 1:30:28
future applications will require a multimodal plan as well as appropriate improvements and connections to be incorporated into the planning process. With regard to the multimodal plan, I will go ahead and note
Unknown Speaker 1:30:41
as noted in the traffic study, that there are RTE stops at third and Lashley, which is about a block north of this property. And third and Alpine, which is about two blocks northeast of the property. And on the north side of Rogers road as well as the north south streets. There are sidewalks on those properties as well. So any any future development of this particular property would require improvements to Rogers road on the frontage of Robert Rogers road adjacent to this property to city standards.
Unknown Speaker 1:31:20
So in terms of secondary use criteria,
Unknown Speaker 1:31:26
you know, the proposed development or the proposed
Unknown Speaker 1:31:30
residential does have good access to the road network, it would be compatible with the surrounding uses.
Unknown Speaker 1:31:37
As I noted, there are residential uses under review for an adjacent property which is located in a different zoning district. And then the adjacent sugar factories planning areas targeted for a mix of uses that would presumably include some multifamily residential, there are some that that particular planning area, they’ve had the mat sub area plan completed and approved, which really sets a framework for future development in that particular area.
Unknown Speaker 1:32:07
So original, so the proposed residential use is in close proximity to employment uses and could provide a viable alternative to driving for employees who happen to work in this area as well. So, it really does meet that compact efficient development target that we talked so much about.
Unknown Speaker 1:32:28
So, in terms of whether the secondary use is consistent with the comp plan, it is a permitted secondary use under the MEP comprehensive plan category and the intent of the underlying zoning district as far as having that complimentary mix of uses. It is high density residential is considered a supporting land use for higher density commercial and employment uses within the MUFG categories.
Unknown Speaker 1:32:58
So, the map on the following slide will further illustrate the compatibility with this criteria and in terms of
Unknown Speaker 1:33:07
substantially whether it would not whether or not it was substantially diminish the availability of land available for primary uses. So we had our GIS specialists perform an analysis of secondary uses within this larger mixed use employment area.
Unknown Speaker 1:33:27
One thing to note is this analysis was done based on the mixed use employment envision Longmont category simply because there are some significant unincorporated county enclaves in this area. So it made a little bit more sense to to do it on that broader scale.
Unknown Speaker 1:33:47
So as a rule total total area of secondary uses in a given contiguous area of zoning shall not exceed 50% of the total area. The subject property represents two and a half percent of the subject area, and all other secondary uses comprise about 15 and a half percent of the area f for a total of about 18% of this larger immunity area. This is well below the threshold of 50%. The other secondary uses include two car car dealerships on Third Avenue to self storage facilities, an existing multifamily development on the south side of Ken Pratt Boulevard, that would be the farmhouse apartments down here on the southern end
Unknown Speaker 1:34:32
as well as the proposed Sugar Mill station multifamily development on this in this particular area.
Unknown Speaker 1:34:49
So since this packet was posted, questions have been raised about environmental conditions on the site.
Unknown Speaker 1:34:55
A phase one environmental site assessment was submitted with the application
Unknown Speaker 1:35:00
for annexation, that recommended no further assessment at this time. This ESA I’m going to be referring to them as ESA is now because I don’t want to say environmental site assessment over and over.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:13
So this ESA reference day 2021, phase one and limited phase two ESA that had identified recognized environmental conditions, particularly groundwater levels of arsenic, cadmium selenium, in excess of state standards.
Unknown Speaker 1:35:29
The 2001, ESA is included as an appendix to the 2022 phase one ESA,
Unknown Speaker 1:35:37
its import important to note these PSAs are marked as draft because they typically are not considered final until the property closes. As well as they have a limited period of validity. So a follow up limited phase two ESA was conducted last year that is referenced in the most recent phase one ESA to confirm the previous findings. This ESA as well as a summary memo had been provided in hardcopy to the Commission since it does appear they were inadvertently omitted from that 2022 Phase One ESA report. So the 2022 esa has identified errors in the professional approach and methodology and the 2021, esa and testing completed as part of the study,
Unknown Speaker 1:36:23
they did follow up testing and
Unknown Speaker 1:36:27
in the same vicinity where the contaminants had been found, and as part of this 20, the follow up phase two.
Unknown Speaker 1:36:36
And they found that these areas did not actually have levels of contaminants exceeding state standards, and they were more in line with the background levels of these types of contaminants you would see in the soils in this particular area.
Unknown Speaker 1:36:53
So also note to you that section 15.02 140 C does address environmental asase of land to be annexed. Subsection one B states that the city may require a remediation by the owner of any environmentally contaminated property within the annexation as a condition of approval. And subsection one c does not prohibit an annexation of land with known environmental contamination. But it also notes that annexation does not act as a waiver of any remediation requirements. So with that,
Unknown Speaker 1:37:30
staff does recommend approval of this project, finding that it does meet the review criteria for annexations for secondary uses, and for the general review criteria. And with that, I’m going to turn it over to Ryan mcbreen, who is the applicant and we’ll discuss their project.
Unknown Speaker 1:38:05
Was after Justice. Good evening, Ryan mcbreen Norris design to 44 North College Avenue, Fort Collins, Colorado. Excited to be here tonight. So thank you for your time this evening. And first foremost, I want to thank Jennifer and the rest of staff thanks for a thorough presentation. And actually getting to this point, as she mentioned, we started back October was when we were at the City Council. So and we understand we’re very early in the process, we have a ways to go. But this is this is the process. So we’re gonna go through it. And we’re excited to be here tonight. Jennifer did a really great job of being thorough with their presentation, especially hitting review criteria. So we’re going to try not to belabor the point this evening. But we’re excited and we want to hit over hit on a few highlights and points and add some color and just talk a little bit more about this project because we’re excited to move it forward
Unknown Speaker 1:38:57
all right. Um, just a little bit about Cairo residential, they’re the applicant. They’re a very thought there was a thoughtful and high quality residential developer throughout the Colorado Front Range with a lot of experience and they’re very excited to be here in Longmont and bring their product here. In fact, Tyler Sibley is here tonight and he can answer any and all questions you might have about them and and what their vision is for this project in this property as well.
Unknown Speaker 1:39:21
I think we’ve identified where it is. It’s great location, a lot of momentum building in the area with the sugar mill and the steam plan and just as proximity to downtown Longmont
Unknown Speaker 1:39:31
little further added color, you know, obviously we’re asking for annexation. As enumerated through Jennifer’s presentation tonight, she talked about how we do meet the qualifications and requirements to qualify for annexation. As you can see here, our property highlighted along with a few others around it. We’re kind of the hole in the doughnut in this part of the city so it makes natural sense to be annexed into the city along one
Unknown Speaker 1:39:57
little more color obviously it’s in Boulder County unincorporated
Unknown Speaker 1:40:00
Right now here is kind of what the property looks like, right? You know, as a city planner, we understand there’s always parts of the city that you do have to have storage and junkyards and stuff like that. But we believe the time has come for this area to redevelop. So right now, it’s kind of a blighted area, if you will, and it’s kind of ready for fresh new look. Few other views and pictures of what’s going on out there right now.
Unknown Speaker 1:40:25
As noted, envision, Longmont wants to call it mixed use employment. And we want to comply with that. We agree with this assessment. And the full intent is for us to develop the property in line with the mixed use employment zoning designation. And all the trappings that come along with following the city of Longmont land use code for this property.
Unknown Speaker 1:40:48
We’ve already been through the concept plan. But our intent is to follow through on this, this gives a high level view of our access where detention when we’ll be highly amenitized project to have different amenity pockets. So the plan is to move forward, assuming we have recommendation for approval to move forward with the site plan and kind of fully develop that which is the exciting and fun part. And we’re excited to get to that point.
Unknown Speaker 1:41:14
You know, there’s benefits to this project. You know, this is further building on to all the momentum as we mentioned tonight going on in the sugar mill area as well as the steam plan. This is just going to further build upon what’s going on there a lot of exciting cool stuff. I know there was an article earlier in the week about what’s going on over the sugar mill. That’s very cool stuff. So this is just going to bring more people and more mass that area they just to help keep this going. Obviously, as we know, there’s kind of a housing issue along crowd Front Range, this is just going to further help alleviate that. And let’s be honest, it will being in the city, it will provide increased revenue for the city being that it’s not an unincorporated any further. And as mentioned before, high quality development, which is what Kira is all about. They want to bring a great residential community to Longmont. And it’s very important to them that they do that.
Unknown Speaker 1:42:04
As mentioned, we don’t have the design done for this project yet. That’s the next step. Don’t put the cart before the horse. But we have an idea. And we just want to show some representative
Unknown Speaker 1:42:13
architecture and kind of lay out some what what Cairo has done in other parts and other communities. As you can see great architecture, great spaces people want to be in, people want to use places people want to live, indoors and outdoors, as well as resort style amenities that that’s what the residents, that’s what people looking for housing are looking for. And we want to provide that in these communities. So
Unknown Speaker 1:42:37
Jennifer did a great job going through all the review criteria, so we’re not going to do that. That’s, that’s in your staff report. She went through it tonight. We believe we meet all the criteria to to be approved for annexation. So we ask for your support this evening tonight to push us through to the next stage now. I will be here as well as Tyler and we’re happy to answer any and all questions you have about the project including if there’s any further clarifications needed for the environmental reports as well. Okay, thank you very much.
Unknown Speaker 1:43:05
Since this is a public hearing item, we will go ahead and open this up for public invited to be heard for comments on this. We have nobody who has signed up if anybody in the public who is in the audience would like to come forward you get five minutes to speak.
Unknown Speaker 1:43:20
Seeing nobody come up, I will go ahead and close out the public invited be heard and open it up to the Commission for questions and comments.
Unknown Speaker 1:43:39
Okay,
Unknown Speaker 1:43:42
Commissioner flaig.
Unknown Speaker 1:43:45
Thank you chair.
Unknown Speaker 1:43:47
I don’t know with whom I need to talk about the environmental situation on site presently.
Unknown Speaker 1:44:08
Tyler Sibley with cover residential. Thank you, Tyler.
Unknown Speaker 1:44:13
I noticed that the site doesn’t seem to be paved, looks like it’s dirt. And so in spite of any environmental assessment, yes or no on it, what is it going to take to clean that site up in order for residential development to be permitted on it?
Unknown Speaker 1:44:35
And it’s a great question. So our agreement with the current property owner calls for them to completely remove all the current occupants materials. There’s about 500 or so leases on the property today that just are governed by month to month, primarily month to month leases that have everything from RVs to boats to buses to inoperable cars. And so by the time that we purchased the property, what the
Unknown Speaker 1:45:00
Current owner owes us is a completely vacant site. Like you mentioned, it’s all called compacted dirt today, primarily that, you know, effectively operates as a as an asphalt surface just from a impervious cover perspective. But ultimately, they owe us the site in a clean condition, vacant of all current occupants and materials.
Unknown Speaker 1:45:22
To what depth will the soil need to be removed?
Unknown Speaker 1:45:27
Yeah, we don’t believe based on the reports that we’ve performed today, we don’t believe that there’s any extraordinary environmental soil remediation or contamination that needs to be, you know, mitigated or removed, or hauled off site.
Unknown Speaker 1:45:43
You know, I know that there’s been a couple of reports that have been thrown around, I think it’s important to talk about our process on the environmental front, just relative to our due diligence, the report references and April of 2021, environmental report from an RRSP engineers, that’s not our engineering group that was an engineering group engaged by the current owner as part of their due diligence process when they purchased the property from the former owner. Our process for this property along with any other property that we pursue across the country, really involves a two man team of professionals, an environmental consultant group that does all the physical on site testing, and also an environmental attorney, that handles call it state and local matters that come up and arise then arise with these environmental conditions. And so as noted in the Phase One report, part of our due diligence is we make sure that our consultant team is provided with those historical reports that are provided to us as part of due diligence. So naturally, we noted, we noticed that there was some potential recognized environmental conditions associated with that April 2021, report that the current owner performed. And so as we really analyze those reports, as we did our own due diligence, we did our own testing. As Jennifer mentioned, we did six, groundwater, boring samples, right in line with where their test results were. And all those test results that we performed were different readings than they ultimately that they, you know, provided via their consultant. And so we did a phase two report, not necessarily because we had to just out of the abundance of caution, belt and suspenders, if you will, to ultimately just confirm that, that we didn’t have to go do anything else. Above and beyond, you know, there’s just the traditional onsite construction activities. Just big picture. I mean, we attack environmental issues, head on very aggressively, very stringently, because, you know, we ultimately don’t want to be liable. We’ve gone through the Brownfields Program here in Colorado with cdphp. I mean, we’re very familiar with it, we’re very quick to go down that path. And if there was any environmental conditions on site
Unknown Speaker 1:47:57
that existed today, we would be sure to go, you know, mitigate those, to the extent necessary, but we spent lots of time lots of money, both with our environmental consultant and our environmental attorney, to make certain that, you know, we’re completely comfortable, they’re completely comfortable with the overarching environmental condition of the property. So in terms of just answering your question, very simply, we don’t think there’s any extra ordinary, you know, over excavation, if you will, it’ll just be you know, pursuant to the the geotechnical standards that do require some over excavation, moisture conditioning, lime stabilization, so forth, to stabilize the foundations and the structures. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 1:48:39
Commissioner Popkin?
Unknown Speaker 1:48:41
Thank you. I’ll just follow up on that same line of questioning since we’re on the topic. It’s Tyler. Right. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. Welcome. First of all, Jennifer, thank you so much for I know, I sent you a little bit of a an errand this this morning. And I appreciate the extra documentation here. This is really helpful, and hopefully extremely clarifying today. So that’s what I’m hoping to get to. I want to follow up on Commissioner flags line of questioning as well on the PSAs.
Unknown Speaker 1:49:08
And so just so that everyone, including the public who’s watching, if they’re really enthralled by this, it is on the same page of phase one environmental site assessment, or ESA is really focused on that kind of desktop kind of surface level review, right? That’s sort of phase one looks like looks at. And then a phase two is more of a it includes soil or water samples and water samples, looks at the same things that the phase one looked at, but in more detail, and involves kind of that on site extraction, and then laboratory testing is that basically the distinction between phase one and phase two, anything else you want to add? Yeah, yes and no, I think phase one is definitely more than just a cursory desktop review. As you mentioned, I call it phase one. A comprehensive historical use of the subject property and the adjacent properties.
Unknown Speaker 1:50:00
I think the key distinction to your point between phase one and phase two is the actual physical work and testing that happens on site. So phase one really generally typically stops with just physical site inspection, looking around, you know, interviewing historical property owners interviewing and the occupants on site in terms of things that they’ve seen, either presently, or historically on site, either on this subject property or with neighboring adjacent properties that could suggest, you know, environmental, you know, risks, if you will. And so just the aggregation of that historical data, really, you know, you know, either says, hey, you need to go do more additional studies to go confirm that you either do or don’t have issues that you need to rectify, or just simply, you know, clarifies that, hey, there’s no reason that this property should have any environmental conditions that are extraordinary compared to a property that’s been prairie land for its entire existence. And so
Unknown Speaker 1:50:58
the key distinction is just the physical work and the testing that you do between phase one and phase two, like I mentioned, you know, we went ahead and perform the phase two, because, again, you know, you know, environmental RECs are a four letter word for us. And so ultimately, making sure that there’s no environmental situations or issues or cost drivers for us is, is a huge part of our due diligence process. And so hopefully that answers your question, but that’s how I’ve kind of distinguish between a phase one and phase two, both both of which we did, yeah, that’s great, and very much aligns with my understanding. And I want to make sure we’re all on the same page here.
Unknown Speaker 1:51:37
So just so I understand the timeline here, there have been four ESA is conducted on the site, at least in recent memory since 2021, there was a phase one ESA conducted by the seller, a phase a limited phase two ESA conducted by the seller, and then you got you all did a phase one. And then you also did a limited ESA phase two, correct? Yeah, I don’t know, the extensive all the sellers. Due Diligence, were just off the top of my head. I don’t remember if they APR 21 report was a phase one or phase two. So it was both. I know that we did a phase one and phase two. So yes, three, minimum three, perhaps four total tests and the last call at three years. Great. Thanks. And it seems like at least from the communication here that you thought it was optional to, from your professional opinion to do a phase two. But you went ahead and did that anyway, probably for some good due diligence, especially in the state of Colorado and given the surrounding area. And I just want to note for the record, like, that’s not pocket change, like that’s 10 minutes, a few $1,000? If not, 10s is 10s of 1000s. Yeah, 10s of 1000s of dollars. So I appreciate that you guys are thinking about that. And clearly you have, you know, significant knowledge navigating some of these topics, which not every developer has. So I appreciate that.
Unknown Speaker 1:52:50
They’re in the so in the phase two in the limited phase two ESA conducted by RSB, which I understand is not your consultant team, the laboratory results have side because I know that there were some issues that I want to understand that in a moment. But there were two recognized environmental conditions identified in that. And you may take issue with the approach and methodology. But I just want to kind of acknowledge these for the record. So we hopefully can just clear the air and perhaps clear the soil along the way.
Unknown Speaker 1:53:23
So that you don’t have other four letter words to bring to our attention.
Unknown Speaker 1:53:27
There were two the the second one talked about the nature of staining from kind of the material stored on the property talked about the mismanagement of the material stored on site, again, not from you guys from prior prior use of the site.
Unknown Speaker 1:53:40
talked about the possibility exists. And I’m reading here that over the duration of the operation, potential release of hydraulic fluid and petroleum products might have impacted the subsurface conditions at the subject property. So they flagged that as a recognized, recognized environmental condition.
Unknown Speaker 1:53:54
And then, but that seems to be disputed by your ESA, phase two, are limited phase two, given the laboratory results and testing that you all did. Is that am I correctly understanding kind of this back and forth here? Yeah, look, I can’t represent or, you know, Warren, what, you know, another owners, environmental consultant says on the property or not, what I can stand behind is, you know, our team and the depth of their experience and dozens of projects that we’ve done with them and dozens of projects, hundreds of projects, probably that they’ve done here in the front range metro area. So all that said, you know, obviously the reports do say different things. I mean, we’ve worked with our team on many, many projects, and ultimately are very quick to go into, you know, these brownfields or VCP, or whatever program is applicable for these types of conditions. But ultimately, again, we certainly stand by the reports that our consultant team has put together can’t necessarily speak to reports that other folks have put together Sure, understand that
Unknown Speaker 1:55:00
And for the record VCP is voluntary cleanup programs. Yes, folks to understand the acronym there.
Unknown Speaker 1:55:05
The first recognized environmental condition or a wreck that is flagged in that the in the RSP. So not yours, but the RSP. Phase two was the historical usage of the subject property. And I’m curious if because I didn’t see any mention of the historic usage discussed at least, granted, I received only yours about two hours ago. So in the executive summary that I looked through in the introduction, I didn’t see any mention of the historic usage in that. And I don’t recall seeing that in your phase one, when I was reading that earlier. But if that isn’t there, I mostly just want to know, like, the historic usage of the property is kind of, you know, water under the bridge at this point. But in terms of how you’re approaching this going forward, when you look towards development of the site feet in the future, how does your team generally handle kind of more historically complicated projects where development might be potentially complicated by the potential presence? If, you know, fluids or other other substances? Yeah, I don’t remember if the RSP report talks about historical uses, or just the the on site, current occupants and,
Unknown Speaker 1:56:10
you know, elements that were, you know, occupying the site that they had staining of, you know, there’s some gasoline on on the property that was just visual, visually observed. Yeah, that makes it. So ultimately, I mean, the way that we handle, you know, all projects that we do, whether they’re, you know, you know, going through the VCP or Brownfields Program, or it’s, it’s prairie land development, if you will, right, as we have a soil management plan that we put in place with our contractor that deals with some of the unknowns because you know, while a phase one or even a phase two, and you know, all the geotech, geotechnical borings that you might be able to do, just doing your deal due diligence phase, the reality is, you know, you don’t know what you don’t know until you really start getting out there and excavating the soils and seeing what lies beneath, if you will. And so how we govern that with our contractor is a soil management plan that ultimately talks about, hey, if you if you encounter, you know, underground storage tanks, you know, do this if you encounter, you know, hazard materials, call that number, you know, so it really addresses just the potential scenarios of just all those, you know, multitude of different environmental conditions or unforeseen circumstances that you could encounter during the construction activities. And so that’s how we generally govern that. Knowing that, again, it’s impossible to know what you don’t know until you really start doing it on site.
Unknown Speaker 1:57:33
Gotcha. I appreciate that. And, you know, just for anyone who’s watching or for other commissioners, and folks here, like these kinds of redevelopment happen across the country, like they’re hundreds of 1000s of examples of this. And that’s great. And it just requires additional due diligence requires thoughtfulness that it seems like your team is bringing to the table here. Yeah. And then just to piggyback on that, I mean, I always ask a simple question to our, our two man team. Okay, on a scale of one to 10. You know, how severe Do you think this property is just from an environmental contamination and risk perspective? You know, one being, you know, it’s it’s prairie land development, it’s has no issues whatsoever. 10 being, you know, there’s no way in the world, you know, you’re able to, you’re gonna be able to develop residential uses. On the site, which we’ve certainly encountered some of those properties across the country, their answer was a one and a half. So just for context purposes, it’s very low, in terms of their, you know, call it professional ranking, if you will, that of just how to evaluate what the risk spectrum is for environmental concerns for just everything that you can encounter in this type of arena. Right. And that’s really helpful. And so then the mitigation, the management approaches that you guys would take your team is comfortable with that you have experienced doing that. Not too concerned, but there’s some additional thought that needs to go into as you continue to move forward. Is that fair? Yeah, that’s fair. Yeah. Good. What I don’t always see when I’m looking at environmental science assessments is a little bit of this discrepancy. And so I just wanted to kind of clear clear the air here, in your email that we’re seeing today, and I guess was sent today. I think it was yours. Yes, Tyler.
Unknown Speaker 1:59:07
There was a reference to professional errors in approach and methodology.
Unknown Speaker 1:59:13
I just want to understand what that’s referring to, just so that we can have a deeper understanding that again, sorry, we’re just getting this. Yeah. Yeah. Understand. And this, you know, came across my desk this morning at I think 11am. to So appreciate our team and Jennifer for jumping on this quickly. So full caveat. I’m not an environmental engineer, I’m an accountant. So just with that disclosure, the end without trying to disparage RSP. And their, you know, company means methods. I don’t I don’t know them. We’ve never worked with them never talked to them.
Unknown Speaker 1:59:44
You know, my understanding is that the approach of how they ultimately tested the groundwater, how they filtered the groundwater pursuant to cdphp and state standards. You know, what was was not fully followed, and so on.
Unknown Speaker 2:00:00
I don’t know, you know what impact that had on the the nature and the character, the results, but do know that that was the feedback from our team. And so just as we kind of got educated of kind of this potential risk factor, because as we get the due diligence report, we don’t have the benefit of our own phase one or phase two. So we just get these reports, and we see oh, my gosh, there’s groundwater contamination, we’re gonna have to, you know, install temporary or permanent monitoring wells might have to have, you know, the watering during construction, all the different things that could go into, you know, proper execution of handling those potentially contaminated groundwater conditions.
Unknown Speaker 2:00:38
That’s my understanding in terms of just how that those groundwater samples were treated, and treated and filtered. And ultimately, you know, handled with the laboratories. Great. So just to kind of recap this, this whole journey here that we just went on, it sounds like there was a phase one and phase two conducted by the seller.
Unknown Speaker 2:00:57
That raised some potential flags, obviously, your team took interest in that and wanted to see, we’ll dig into that more. So you then can do your team then conducted a phase one and phase two, as well to, let’s say, Trust and verify or, in this case, contradict and verify, don’t don’t trust, but verify.
Unknown Speaker 2:01:14
So after those, those four reports,
Unknown Speaker 2:01:17
your environmental consultant team not only said, Hey, this is kind of very low end of the concern spectrum that you have from your professional experience. And then also said, and I presume it’s the environmental team that you had here said, and we’ve identified some potential errors and approach and methodology in that first one. And we’ve done the sub sort of subsurface testing and groundwater testing, to basically backup is that that’s fair, fair. Great.
Unknown Speaker 2:01:44
Thank you for all of those clarifications.
Unknown Speaker 2:01:50
I think I will yield. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:01:56
Thank you. Do we have any other comments, questions? I have a question for Jennifer.
Unknown Speaker 2:02:05
Has there have been steps taken to create a synergy between this and the sugar factory area? Is that been taken into consideration? Has there been any kind of back and forth talking about we’re planning on doing this, we’re planning on doing that? Is there any of that going on in the background? So my understanding and Glenn, you can pipe in on this as well, Tony shikonin is the project manager for the sugar factory steam sub area plan, he is also a redevelopment coordinator. And I know he was has had discussions, even before this project, came through the application door with the applicant team regarding this. So there’s definitely some talk, there’s some coordination. Yeah, and I’m happy to jump in there, too. So I’ve probably personally been involved in probably at least five different discussions with the various stakeholders associated with the sugar mill project, that includes, you know, the team that’s working on the sugar mill itself, along with the folks that are developing the community to the west of us, and the Fairfield folks that are developing in closer proximity to the sugar mill proper. And so lots of different factors, as you all well know, in terms of how that Sugarmill property gets, you know, goes to their own environmental and, you know, asbestos cleanup, you know, situations and ultimately finds a way to, you know, bring that property back to life. And so, we continue to stay engaged in those discussions with those various stakeholders knowing that, you know, their process, as you know, our process, and each of the different stakeholders processes are all, you know, on different timelines and have different pinch points and considerations that are involved to, you know, get each project to their respective finish line. Okay, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:03:55
As a follow up, Jennifer,
Unknown Speaker 2:03:58
will this have any impact? I mean, is the sugar mill area kind of already planned out as far as the percent of residential versus or I should say, the percent of secondary uses versus primary? Is this going to affect that at all? You know, that kind of getting the first the first dip at it? So, Mr. Chairman, and commissioners, we don’t have a lot of detail yet as far as the land uses for the sugar factory. I mean, we know some raw numbers, they’re looking at potentially
Unknown Speaker 2:04:31
the roughly 258 acres, maybe 2000 units, 250,000 square feet of retail and other non residential uses that would fit just a rough calculation.
Unknown Speaker 2:04:47
I was pretty close to what our GIS folks put as far as percentage of secondary uses being well below. You know what we
Unknown Speaker 2:05:00
You’ve kind of just said as a staff and a planning commission
Unknown Speaker 2:05:04
policy as less than half.
Unknown Speaker 2:05:07
Okay, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:05:10
Commissioner Goldberg.
Unknown Speaker 2:05:12
Yeah. Thanks, Chairman. Thanks for the applicant. Thanks, Jennifer. Yeah, I don’t have any issues with this project. I’m really favorable to this. I think there’s a lot of strengths to what the applicant is proposing.
Unknown Speaker 2:05:27
Jennifer did an excellent job highlighting most of those, you know, its compatibility with Envision Longmont consistent with mixed use infill in a fairly blighted area.
Unknown Speaker 2:05:40
You know, general improvement to what’s happening there, it meets the review criteria for annexation or general review criteria, or secondary use criteria.
Unknown Speaker 2:05:51
It’s close to public transportation opportunities.
Unknown Speaker 2:05:57
So I don’t see, I don’t have any issues with this project, I think this is really a wonderful opportunity to improve an ugly part of our town. And I think when you’re talking about revitalizing
Unknown Speaker 2:06:13
the Rogers corridor or revitalizing this part of town, I’m generally favorable when you’re talking about annexing inland into Longmont that’s in our within our borders, almost always favorable to that.
Unknown Speaker 2:06:26
And when it serves our massive housing gap that we can’t, that we’re struggling to build our way out of, I’m going to be favorable to that. So
Unknown Speaker 2:06:36
barring any concerns from the rest of the commission, I’m likely to be supportive of this.
Unknown Speaker 2:06:42
Thank you, Commissioner height.
Unknown Speaker 2:06:45
Thank you, I’m gonna keep beating the horse.
Unknown Speaker 2:06:49
Me we is supposed to be primarily
Unknown Speaker 2:06:52
employment based land use with secondary uses for residential activities. The interpretation that we’re going to look at secondary uses on a
Unknown Speaker 2:07:03
zone wide basis, I don’t find to be a rational basis of interpretation of that code provision. And so I will continue to not support
Unknown Speaker 2:07:13
plans that are not at least on site, less than 50%. Residential. That’s my interpretation. That’s the problem I’m going to have in YUI.
Unknown Speaker 2:07:25
m mu projects that contain residential, that’s greater than 50%.
Unknown Speaker 2:07:32
More significantly, however, maybe not more significantly, but significantly, nonetheless, I too, had environmental questions that I posed to the Miss Hewitt Apperson. This morning regarding the phase one, phase two assessments. There was a May 21 assessment in April and or June 22. Assessment.
Unknown Speaker 2:07:52
Their earlier assessment, I don’t know who it was performed for.
Unknown Speaker 2:07:57
But it documented
Unknown Speaker 2:07:59
with photographic evidence of environmental concerns, there was staining on soil, there was mismanagement of drums, don’t know what was in those drums. There was a phase two done, there was arsenic,
Unknown Speaker 2:08:12
which is kind of a nasty thing found in groundwater found in soil. Mr. Sibelius response scene in our Dyess this evening, I guess, in response to questions that possibly more than one Commissioner posed
Unknown Speaker 2:08:29
to staff indicates that well, yeah, we looked at that.
Unknown Speaker 2:08:35
There phase one that the June 22 assessment
Unknown Speaker 2:08:41
doesn’t have photographic evidence of, of these problems that were found a year before. I don’t know why that would have happened. I don’t know why.
Unknown Speaker 2:08:52
The earlier report was appended to the later report why the early report doesn’t even reference the environmental concerns identified in the earlier report is somewhat concerning. But to now describe that the sampling done in 2001 was remiss, because there were not proper filtering of materials seems stretched to me. Arsenic, to my understanding is not used as a buffering agent is not used as a preservative in environmental sampling. So the presence of arsenic because it wasn’t the sample wasn’t properly filtered. Doesn’t doesn’t add up to me.
Unknown Speaker 2:09:37
So I don’t have the answer to that. My question is, does the city have someone who’s looked at these two reports and as the city have some type of
Unknown Speaker 2:09:49
profession professional review that they can share with me to get me comfortable with this, these two disparate conclusions? Sure. So
Unknown Speaker 2:10:00
Our Public Safety Group does have staff a staff member who does these reviews. Unfortunately, she was on she was unavailable to two folks that would have the knowledge of, of this particular item. They are out there out of town this week.
Unknown Speaker 2:10:17
As part of the DRC review, they would have been referred Yeah. Had this document referred to them for review, and we did not have any comments or concerns expressed by them. Respectfully, she wouldn’t have seen the material on the Dyess this evening. Correct.
Unknown Speaker 2:10:39
That wasn’t included in the applicants materials. That is correct. It was referenced in the applicants materials. There was no reference to a phase two assessment. There was a reference to a phase two it not to split hairs. But there was a reference within that there had been a phase two done in June. It just for some reason did not get included. I’m not really sure why I might have to retract that. I apologize. Was there Yeah, RSP did.
Unknown Speaker 2:11:05
Reference, but it wasn’t included in the materials that are that the city’s staff would have reviewed? That is correct.
Unknown Speaker 2:11:17
So yeah, I find that there’s a big open ended issue with respect to environmental conditions of this property. That, again,
Unknown Speaker 2:11:25
not a criterion for annexation, two thumbs up or thumbs down, but a matter of concern. Nonetheless, that gives me pause. Thanks.
Unknown Speaker 2:11:38
Jennifer, is a follow up to that.
Unknown Speaker 2:11:43
Are there any other plan future?
Unknown Speaker 2:11:46
Es, ESA is? So when they go to the next phase, if this does get approved? Will they have to be any other ESA is done to go past the next step?
Unknown Speaker 2:12:01
So typically, ESA s are required for annexation.
Unknown Speaker 2:12:07
We can always request them as part of an additional development review process if we find that there’s sufficient reason to want follow up work done.
Unknown Speaker 2:12:20
Okay.
Unknown Speaker 2:12:24
Thank you, Commissioner Popkin? Thank you, Chair, I appreciate my fellow Commissioner height over there continuing to share his thoughts and some of his concerns regarding the ESA, as I shared many of them myself, mostly until the conversation we had, though, I still wanted to discuss that a little bit further, maybe a way that you can handle help.
Unknown Speaker 2:12:46
Give us some confidence here and just kind of how your company approaches this and how you’re thinking about the property is, you know, conditions aside, I mean, you know, what you’re taking over, you know, the kind of site you have, like, it’s not hidden from public view. Like, it’s pretty obvious if you walk by if you bike by if you just walk the site, and it’s probably you have for acquiring it. So, you know, there’s been, there have been two phase ones and two phase twos. And, you know,
Unknown Speaker 2:13:14
eras like, irrespective of what your Phase Two said, at this point, you know, the current seller is going to be removing a bunch of oil drums and a bunch of other fluids and chemicals from on site. So walk us through kind of your process. I know you’d mentioned before the soil management plan, and maybe some other strategies. Can you just kind of clarify on the record here for us? Like, how do you guys handle these types of properties, even if they’re a one and a half out of 10? Just to make sure that you’re all aboveboard and that people who are future tenants who are moving in, have a safe place to live going forward? Just walk us through your process? Because maybe that can help speak to you know, give some more confidence to my fellow Commissioners here as well. Sure. Would you mind just expanding on the question a little bit more? I don’t I don’t fully understand. Yeah. So let’s say everything goes smoothly, this is approved, you’re annexed and you’re starting to work on the actual development plan, like what steps do you guys take along the way
Unknown Speaker 2:14:03
to make sure that you what you’re building is safe, clean and healthy for the people who are living there. I mean, our view of the environment again, I’m not an environmental engineer. But again, we we do this across the country, and I’ve done it very extensively.
Unknown Speaker 2:14:18
We believe that there’s no issues on the environmental front period. And so I don’t know, maybe Commissioner height is an environmental engineer, I’m not, but I trust our professionals that have gone to school for many, many years to go get educated about these matters and to go protect us as we go build, you know, 100 million dollar projects on these types of properties and try to bring them back to life and so our process specifically to this property is to really do no environmental work from here until the time that we buy the property before we buy the property we will go do a final sidewalk inspection to make sure that all the things that you mentioned in terms of you know, equipment, and you know, automobile removal are all handled appropriately. So
Unknown Speaker 2:15:00
There’s nothing that’s occurred between now and that period of time when we have to take title to the property. And then, you know, whenever we go to, you know, start construction on the property, that’s when we’ll put our soil management plan in place that is, you know, customary for all of the projects that we do, just as part of our contractors contract documents in terms of, again, how they handle the different conditions that may arise as they start, you know, excavating the soil and, you know, encountering different things that you couldn’t have found during the due diligence process, which, you know, happens from time to time in construction. You don’t you don’t know what you can’t, can’t see, necessarily. So that’s our general process.
Unknown Speaker 2:15:40
So hopefully, that answers your question. I’m happy to expand if it didn’t, yeah, thank you. I mean, it sounds like this is part of the very definition of a Brownfield, right, like this is development, that is, as the EPA defines, complicated by the presence or potential presence of a contaminant. And that’s what you guys are wrestling with here. And that’s what these all these four e essays are wrestling with.
Unknown Speaker 2:16:02
The historic, I think what my fellow Commissioner height is, was kind of reacting to is, you know, the photos of the site, regardless of who did what, you know, the photos of the site suggest these oil drums and some other fluids, and the historic use of the site doesn’t suggest exactly like a clean sandbox to play in here. And so that doesn’t mean it’s contaminated. But it does mean, it’s something to watch for as you go forward. And so I understand the soil management plan as part of this, I’m just curious for other kinds of perceived environmental concerns, even if they aren’t tested for, if there’s anything else that you guys, as developers have put in place or thought about to be, you know, conscientious and responsible as you proceed. No, I mean, if there’s stained soil that has been, you know, buried or, you know, compacted over time, or whatever, that’s, you know, on Earth during the construction process, right, our, you know, soil management plan will identify, hey, you know, you’ve got, you know, crude oil, or some type of gasoline or, you know, other chemical spill that, you know, says, hey, you need to call our, you know, Construction Materials Tester. So, you know, not only will, you know, the group that did the environmental report,
Unknown Speaker 2:17:11
you know, perform all those environmental services prior to you buying the property, typically, we also engage that same firm to provide the construction management services to help administer that soil management plan, and so that they’re on site doing their soil inspections, and foundation inspections, and so forth. You know, daily, right, so just make sure that, you know, none of the issues that, you know, could potentially, you know, arise, you know, aren’t glazed over or, you know, swept under the rug, so to speak. And so, again, they’re really another tool that we use both during due diligence and during the construction process, to make sure that, you know, things are executed in the field in a way that’s that’s safe and aboveboard, as you say. Thank you, Tyler. A couple questions for Jennifer and maybe Glen, as well here. First of all, just process wise, I realize this the annexation, we’re recommending body to city council in this
Unknown Speaker 2:18:06
when if at all would plan zoning see this project again, before it is, you know, live and functioning? If they meet the threshold for a preliminary plat, then it would come back to you. So preliminary plat is if they’re creating more than three new lots on the property that would require approval by the Planning and Zoning Commission. That would be the only sort of like a site plan, no correct site plans or administrative. If they were to make any changes to their concept plan, it would need to go through a process very similar to this that we’ve seen with previous previous projects here, but typically, it would be once annex the general process after annexation is going to be planning and Site Plan Review and public improvement plans. So it just depends on whether or not they meet the threshold for a preliminary plat.
Unknown Speaker 2:19:01
Anything to add? Glen
Unknown Speaker 2:19:03
did
Unknown Speaker 2:19:05
appreciate it. So and just in your professional opinion on a scale of let’s say, one to 100 100 being 100%? Likely, how likely do you think it is that we will be seen this?
Unknown Speaker 2:19:17
You know, I really can’t speak to that that might be a question for the applicant in terms of how they typically, you know, parcel out
Unknown Speaker 2:19:26
their projects,
Unknown Speaker 2:19:28
such as Tyler if he wants to see our faces again, we’d love to, but I think that it won’t necessarily be in the more than three lots context. I mean, the plan here is just to simply have a singular platted lot that houses the entirety of the property. Thank you. While you’re while you’re up there.
Unknown Speaker 2:19:46
I will maybe ask a couple couple other questions here. You’ve already addressed. questions I had that Chairman POLIN asked about the sugar mill integration and kind of how you’re thinking about that. Just one follow up on that which was a
Unknown Speaker 2:20:00
Um, you know, there are a few kind of key pillars of the sub area plan, many of which are also concurrently reflected in envision Longmont in terms of sustainability, housing mobility access. I’m just wondering how you think about your development intersecting with those values? Yeah, great question. I mean, we’re certainly advocates of the area plan and everything that is contemplated for, you know, the sugar mill, you know, I think our, you know, small, but big piece that, you know, certainly is going to be a central theme of our project, is all the improvements that we’re going to, you know, provide a long Rogers road, in terms of, you know, street widening sidewalks, street trees, but we’re bearing, you know, the current, currently existing overhead and overhead electric lines that, you know, bound the property today. And so, those different elements that will continue to, you know, enhance the overall, you know, pedestrian and community experience or, you know, again, I think that the things that we you know, can I have direct control over that will will help integrate into a bigger picture vision and bigger picture plan that gets developed out over the course of, you know, years and if not decades. Great. And then just to follow up specifically on the sustainability front there, I appreciate the undergrounding. And that’s not a small feat, you know, that often, I think that makes a ton of sense for the area and for the region, given the wildfire risks. So thank you. Just on the sustainability front here. In terms of kind of green building materials, green infrastructure, drought resistant plants, sustainable building design, how do you all think about that for your the projects that you’ve done? I know you were just doing representative samples before it just want to get a sense of your thoughts. Yeah. I mean, it’s certainly something that, you know, is on our minds, as we go design these projects, we haven’t gone through our comprehensive checklist, if you will, of, you know, here’s the different things that we’re going to, you know, explore and incorporate on this project, just because we are, you know, at that step one phase, but, you know, certainly, you know, elements that will, you know, make its way in into the design, that, again, are environmentally friendly and sustainability focused.
Unknown Speaker 2:21:59
Great, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:22:05
And I can’t remember there was a lot of information this packet, including a lot of ESA material, just Can you clarify, I didn’t see anything about affordable and attainable housing here. I’m just curious kind of where your proposal fits into those values versus market rate. And I realized that any additional housing increases the supply and has kind of a macroeconomic effect. Let’s speak just to the specifics. Sure. Yeah. We I mean, we understand what the ordinance says we are prepared to adhere to the ordinance. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 2:22:33
Great. Well, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:22:36
That takes a lot of my boxes, as I think one or two of my fellow Commissioners have said like, this makes a lot of sense for the region. This is a dramatic improvement to the property, it sounds like your firm has
Unknown Speaker 2:22:47
a lot of experience handling potentially contaminated or contaminated properties. You understand the process, even if you’re not an environmental, environmental engineer in this, I appreciate you working with us on that. And you know, I want to be sensitive to my fellow Commissioner heights kind of concerned about the MBE definition there. And I really anchored on the provides flexibility for adaptive reuse piece of of that part of Envision Longmont
Unknown Speaker 2:23:15
and just to read that for for everyone’s benefit, it provides flexibility for the adaptive reuse of existing industrial buildings, and for the incorporation of high density residential and live work opportunities in close proximity to employment and supporting services and transitional areas. This seems to kind of go smack dab in the middle of that. And, you know, I think some projects will make more sense for a true a true mix use on site than others. And I appreciate all the thoughtfulness that the applicants are bringing to the table. I will yield for now. Thank you, Tyler follow up question for affordability. I think I saw on one year slides that you are anticipating having four stories. Yes. Does that I think I think one of the slides said that. That was what was allowed him to him up zoning district I believe is that with or without affordable housing kicker. So there are height bonuses for on site affordable housing. So four storeys is the maximum height in MeV absent any density or height bonuses. Okay, so they could go up to five. Let’s see if they had affordable housing. Yeah, there’s a few different opportunities to stack density and height bonuses. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Goldberg. Thanks, Chairman. Yeah, that seems like a great place to consider that extra extra level or the extra height.
Unknown Speaker 2:24:36
Jennifer, I’ve already shared my opinion on the project and the application before us, but I did want to dive a little deeper on Commissioner heights concerns. Would you just clarify, I got a little mixed up with the 2021 phase two and 2022. Phase two. Can you confirm what staff what the proper members of staff have reviewed? Did they review the 2021 phase two ESA that identified contaminants and did they
Unknown Speaker 2:25:00
review the 2022 phase two that did not identify contaminants.
Unknown Speaker 2:25:05
So they reviewed the Phase One ESA, from 2020. To that incorporated as an as attachments, I see 2021 phase one and 2021. Phase two, there was a reference within that particular ESA to the phase two, that was done in June of last year. So they would have reviewed that package.
Unknown Speaker 2:25:33
Okay, that was the original attachment. And then that attachment with that attachment, I was trying to scan through it as well.
Unknown Speaker 2:25:41
Did that executive summary identify? Or did those that data confirm that
Unknown Speaker 2:25:47
we reviewed and did not find the contaminants that the first one just revealed?
Unknown Speaker 2:25:55
So based on my recollection, so there is a there’s a very clear statement in the executive summary of the Phase One ESA from last year stating they reviewed the document, they reviewed everything, they did the additional limited phase two and that they did not recommend any additional assessments at this time. Okay. What did we get today, specifically, that our two members or two, like expert members of staff were unable to review in time for this hearing, it would be the full phase, the full limited phase two ESA that had the basically the laboratory results from the groundwater and soil sampling. Okay. So our Ghana expert staff was comfortable approving this with the information that was available before today.
Unknown Speaker 2:26:42
That’s my understanding that identified that there was there was perhaps an error in the previous testing and nothing was identified. That’s my understanding. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 2:26:55
Did you recommend approval of this application? And are they like, kind of did you and staff give the final thumbs up on the ESA and the
Unknown Speaker 2:27:06
dissection this? So we rely on, you know, section? Yeah, we rely on our expert members of the development review committee to identify and address any any potential issues on sites. You know, it’s not just planning that’s on our development review committee looking at these we’ve got our engineers from public works. We have our public safety folks from fire, who do review any of the hazardous material contamination type issues. So we have a broad
Unknown Speaker 2:27:38
range of professional expertise on our development review committee.
Unknown Speaker 2:27:43
And they were comfortable. The primary issue that was raised from an environmental standpoint, was from the possible wetlands issue, and that’s something that the applicant is committed to investigating further. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 2:27:59
This is for you in Jeremy, maybe. Is there a world where we add a condition for the approval of the project,
Unknown Speaker 2:28:09
pending final approval by that those members of staff that are that could not review this update today? Is there a world where we could add a condition like that we get final approval from staff? Again?
Unknown Speaker 2:28:25
I don’t see why not. But I’m going to defer to
Unknown Speaker 2:28:29
my director and the legal counsel.
Unknown Speaker 2:28:32
Hopefully, hopefully, I’m seeing what Jeremy saying. But ultimately, the code does require that we know what environmental risk are and that basically, we don’t want to annex A problem, either. So if staff says, Oh, gee whiz, or some red flag, which we really doubt there will be potentially there, there would have to be some changes. Okay, Glenn, thank you. Let me just understand that a little bit better. Are you suggesting that with or without any
Unknown Speaker 2:29:04
condition by this commission,
Unknown Speaker 2:29:07
the experts will end up reviewing this communications we got today and anything incremental, and
Unknown Speaker 2:29:15
will have the opportunity to give a Whoa, whoa, you know, pump the brakes, or are you suggesting? If this is something that we want to have happen? We should add it as a condition?
Unknown Speaker 2:29:26
I would agree with both, quite frankly, yes, it will get reviewed prior to going to council and find that determination. Ultimately, we have to meet the code. But if it helps the Commission, in fact, I think we worked on wording of the condition,
Unknown Speaker 2:29:46
potentially if you want to.
Unknown Speaker 2:29:50
Thanks, Glen. Yes, I believe we just added a condition on a previous
Unknown Speaker 2:29:56
project to confirm that.
Unknown Speaker 2:29:59
The storage heights
Unknown Speaker 2:30:00
stuck to the six feet
Unknown Speaker 2:30:02
on the fencing that was like, dictated in the code. So I think if you don’t mind, Jennifer, could you share that proposed language for a condition? Sure. And this condition really is reflective of our code language as well. And that is basically, we could suggest a condition that the city would require proof of remediation of any contaminations or documentation that any RECs are no longer in issue as a condition of annexation.
Unknown Speaker 2:30:30
Man, that sounds good. I’ll tell you, it sounds consistent with several conditions that we’ve had in years past where,
Unknown Speaker 2:30:38
and maybe more so during dawn brochettes era, you know, when he was spending more time with us, sometimes we just have a condition be where it was pending final DRC Review Approval or, you know, pending any of you know, acknowledging any concerns or feedback from DRC, or something like that. So this, I wonder if given the kind of
Unknown Speaker 2:31:01
recent information we got and our expert engineers not being able to review it in time for this hearing. I wonder if this would be an appropriate time to add this condition that you suggested, would you read that just one more time? Sure. City will require proof of remediation of any contamination or other documentation that RECs are no longer an issue as a condition of annexation. So that could also be review of this phase two by our
Unknown Speaker 2:31:31
public safety specialist. And if they find that we’re good to go, then we’re good to go. If they see there are some problems, then we would ask the applicant to further investigate. Cool. Another option that I had scribbled down that I dislike more would be the idea of adding some condition that requires a you know, additional ESA done by a third party or something like that. So
Unknown Speaker 2:31:54
I think that the spirit of the condition you outlined meets my goal. Did you have something to say about that? You were touching your mic, you’d like to turn off the Okay, cool.
Unknown Speaker 2:32:05
So it’s a little bit out of character for me to be the one suggesting a condition or discussing a condition.
Unknown Speaker 2:32:14
Very often I find comfort in, you know, what’s presented to us and the review by staff and discussion among our our
Unknown Speaker 2:32:22
team here.
Unknown Speaker 2:32:24
But given the new information, given the concerns from Commissioner height, I wonder what the rest of the commission thinks about adding that condition that basically says, Cool, we get one last look at this, and you got to comply.
Unknown Speaker 2:32:42
Just to jump in here. I mean, that’s not the way I read the condition or heard the condition, I heard the condition as not a review and a final approval of the materials that we’ve performed and had been provided, I heard it as a obligation to go fix contamination without any definition of what the contamination is, and the addressing of any recognized environmental conditions, which we have none right now. So, you know, I’m not sure
Unknown Speaker 2:33:09
you know what the process is, but I don’t think we are in support of that condition as it’s currently read in that manner. We’re totally fine with a review condition of the materials that we’ve provided, and happy to talk with your environmental team, our environmental team, happy to go do sidewalks, whatever we need to do. But I’m very concerned about what that language says in terms of remediating contamination that we don’t believe exists, and addressing recognized environmental conditions that our reports say don’t exist. So does that. Does that make sense?
Unknown Speaker 2:33:45
Jennifer, is it already in the code or in the process in our documents that they would need to address any contaminants or any remediation that is identified? Or that they would need to remediate any issues that come up?
Unknown Speaker 2:33:59
Are they kind of already accepting that as being an applicant here? Correct. And I would I would suggest as
Unknown Speaker 2:34:06
the proof of remediation of contamination, I think it’s or acceptance by staff of documentation.
Unknown Speaker 2:34:15
I don’t want to get into a debate about which test applies and which doesn’t. Again, we have professionals that have do this for a living. And, again, we are very quick to go through, you know, cleanup programs. I mean, we, we don’t want to take the risk any more than you all don’t want to take the risk, I assure you.
Unknown Speaker 2:34:33
And so I’m totally fine with making sure that y’all are comfortable. Again, this is the first that, you know, we heard of it this morning at 11 o’clock that there was environmental questions. We’ve been working on this for a year in terms of applications and getting materials in and so forth. So, again, we’re not hiding anything. We’re more than happy to facilitate discussions or have our team you know, host a workshop or provide a memo or whatever it may be, but very concerned
Unknown Speaker 2:35:00
about, you know, obscure tests and conditions that are very difficult to objectify and determine as complete and complete. How do you how do you resolve a dispute, etc. Sure. Jennifer, my last question,
Unknown Speaker 2:35:14
Would you read it one last time? Sure. I was also going to reference the section of code that talks about I suspect sounds similar to that. So in terms of environmental site assessment of land to be annexed subsection one, a basically requires the owner submit essays that we may require, they have done that.
Unknown Speaker 2:35:38
Subsection B says we may require remediation by the owner of any contaminated property within the annexation. So that is really, the crux here is if our public safety experts review this and say,
Unknown Speaker 2:35:55
Yeah, our questions are answered, that pretty much satisfies that. So you know, we do have some safeguards on our code. And, you know, it could be the condition could very well just be that city staff reviews the fate, the limited phase to accept it.
Unknown Speaker 2:36:14
Okay, which I’m totally comfortable with. Thank you. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 2:36:19
Okay, we go back to the my peers here on the commissioning kind of get their thoughts on
Unknown Speaker 2:36:25
the condition or not condition or how that condition might read.
Unknown Speaker 2:36:30
I guess, Jennifer, I do have one question, given the fact that there are vehicles and stuff currently on this prep that still have to be removed at some point, what’s the protection for the city if something happens during the removal of those vehicles?
Unknown Speaker 2:36:50
So that same section, so 1502 140, subsection D, does allow us
Unknown Speaker 2:37:01
to?
Unknown Speaker 2:37:03
Do we does allow us to require environmental assessments if additional assessments if if they’re deemed necessary. So there is that flexibility in there that does allow us to ask for them. So if the vehicles and materials are removed, and something wild happens,
Unknown Speaker 2:37:22
you know, our staff can say, Yeah, we need some more documentation. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Popkin?
Unknown Speaker 2:37:30
Thank you, chair, you took my first question right out of my mouth. So I appreciate it.
Unknown Speaker 2:37:34
In just to respond to the gut check from my fellow Commissioner Goldberg over there.
Unknown Speaker 2:37:39
I’m not sure I liked the spirit of where you’re going. And I think we need something with a little more teeth, frankly. And the reason is, according to the documentation, here, there’s no reason for them to do any more work. Based on what they have provided back, they recognize no environmental conditions. And so to comply with the condition, I think, drafted by staff.
Unknown Speaker 2:38:01
They just say, this stands the test of time, and it might and so I don’t want to throw it, I don’t want to necessarily say this is not credible, just say to meet the additional condition. I don’t actually see anything coming from that. And so where my thinking is going with this kind of maybe along the same spirit of the chairs, question before is some is that we condition a sidewalk with staff and the applicant after removal, which I think they would do anyway. And it’s just a question of a little bit of coordination with the potential for staff to have the option to actually add a follow up ESA request, if deemed necessary, based on that sidewalk. And certainly the review of this as a recommending body to city council, I’m sure that’ll happen. So that would be that’s kind of where my thinking is that we think more towards the sidewalk after removal, because that would be the only other chance where there would be kind of a definitive point where the site conditions might change. Otherwise, the site will, if it’s contaminated, remains contaminated, whether they develop or not. Well, hopefully they would clean it up if they’re developing. But if they didn’t do anything, it would stay in the current condition that it’s in. And I don’t think any of us want that. So the question is, how do we productively move this forward? Recognizing this perception, and trying to get past that perception into reality of what is the actual site condition. And the most important site condition, I think, for future tenants and for future community members is going to be what is the condition post removal of the equipment, the oil drums, the fluids on site? That’s where my thinking is going.
Unknown Speaker 2:39:36
Jennifer Glenn, I’d love your thoughts. And then frankly, Tyler and team they’re welcome your reactions to that? Sure. So through the chair.
Unknown Speaker 2:39:45
Any future development of this property, the future development review processes, the applicant would be required to go through another pre application meeting where
Unknown Speaker 2:39:54
basically staff members of the DRC would determine what additional assessments are now
Unknown Speaker 2:40:00
Sorry. So it’s an ongoing process. When does what? Sorry, I may miss this when you said it. When does that when does that happen in the process? So we recommend annexation today, city council approves annexation when, when were you talking about? So prior to any application for site plan review or any planning processes, they would go through another pre application. So before submitting a formal application, they would meet with members of the Development Review Committee, who would then take another look of like, okay, we need to see X, Y, and Z. And the code does give us the latitude to request additional environmental assessments if deemed necessary, by the appropriate members of the commission. So you so in theory, this project, we do nothing different today, we approve this with no conditions, it goes to city council, they approve it.
Unknown Speaker 2:40:52
The developers are happy, we don’t have to say any four letter words, we move forward. And then throughout the next stages of the process,
Unknown Speaker 2:41:01
long on staff continue to have the option to basically say, okay, you know, we have a potential flag here, we want you to do this at this at x percent design or next stage of the process might not be that level of detail. But it would be you know, prior to some middle submitting a site plan or, you know, site plan for review, or a plat for review. So we do have that option to ask for, for things that we may deem necessary. Got it.
Unknown Speaker 2:41:30
Glen, anything else you want to add on that?
Unknown Speaker 2:41:34
No, I’m just looking at the the section of the code and it does say we can condition the annexation on remediation, which is not unusual. And in an annexation agreement, which would happen according to hell, Jennifer laid it out. Right. And the condition of Oh, I see it would follow Jennifer’s process of remediation of anything at any point throughout the process that is necessary development to meet the health standard and code standards and safety standards for the plant to use, which I’m sure Tyler and team have done many times before in other areas. So that that would be
Unknown Speaker 2:42:12
a condition that wouldn’t inherently add any additional requirements on the applicant, it would essentially just say, if something comes up, you got to remediate this is that. Am I understanding that correctly? Yeah. Jeremy, is that are we all on the same page? There? Yes.
Unknown Speaker 2:42:27
Okay.
Unknown Speaker 2:42:31
Tyler, how are you thinking of handling? I mean, how is your team with a normal handle a sidewalk anyway, and kind of, especially with the removal of quite a quite a lot of equipment and barrels, at least from the pictures that we’re seeing here. And, frankly, it’s hard to miss when you drive by. So just how do you guys normally handle those types of sites? Yeah, admittedly, this is the first junkyard site that we’ve built on. So this is this is a first for us, but we do have a objective process outlined with our, with our seller partner about what they owe us in terms of, you know, in terms of, you know, noticing them that we’re prepared to close and what what they owe us in terms of a clean side, and, you know, all leases terminated all, you know, occupant property, you know, removed from the property and, you know, clean and,
Unknown Speaker 2:43:15
you know, non hazardous conditions. And so all that’s very clear, that’s all, you know, governed by call it a final sidewalk, before we spend millions of dollars on our property, we’ll obviously walk it, especially in light of the existing circumstances in the plan for removal of all the existing equipment on site. So that’s our process, you know, naturally, like with everything in development, I’m sure there’ll be, you know, curveballs along the way with somebody that takes more time to get out or, you know, you know, a car that just won’t start or won’t move. And so we’ll have to figure all those things out with him and in due course, but this is a first for us. So we feel like we have an objective process outlined with our seller partner. But that’ll happen over the course of a couple months, as we kind of prepare to close on the property. Sure, and you do this poorly once, and it’s going to impact your business line down the road, whether it’s here or elsewhere. So I realized that you have a vested interest in doing this right. And that’s kind of part and parcel of the approach here. I guess just as the last comment, I think we might have a couple options that we can consider if we’re on the fence about how to handle this.
Unknown Speaker 2:44:21
I just want to acknowledge it’s important to make sure that there are no contaminants and it also there’s any perception that they’re contaminants is kind of dispelled
Unknown Speaker 2:44:31
and that’s really important for public trust in wanting to move in and future tenants and leases that might be signed. So I appreciate my fellow Commissioners for going down a lot of these trains of thought. I will yield now to see kind of the pulse of the rest of the commission.
Unknown Speaker 2:44:51
Commissioner height
Unknown Speaker 2:44:54
as I point out for the record, I’m not an environmental engineer. I did stay at a nice hotel last night.
Unknown Speaker 2:45:00
But I am a reformed environmental attorney. And I’ve looked at it 1000s of these types of reports. And these two environmental reports don’t add up their environmental concerns identified a year before this report that says there are no environmental concerns.
Unknown Speaker 2:45:14
There’s a lawyer out of Texas who will pines, that the sampling done
Unknown Speaker 2:45:19
in the face to assessment earlier was done wrong.
Unknown Speaker 2:45:23
I don’t have an expert to tell me that’s correct. I don’t know. I don’t know where this lawyer came to his conclusions or how he came to these conclusions. So for the record, there’s a there’s a conclusion disconnect.
Unknown Speaker 2:45:39
That said, I’m still stuck on the residential issues.
Unknown Speaker 2:45:48
Commissioner flaig,
Unknown Speaker 2:45:50
I tend to agree with a lot of what Mr. Wright said, and I don’t have a problem with residential on it. I worry about there being enough at the end of the day, that the larger development area to the east is affected. But I do have problems with the application, and
Unknown Speaker 2:46:11
I can’t support this.
Unknown Speaker 2:46:21
Commissioner Goldberg,
Unknown Speaker 2:46:24
I remain supportive of the project, I just want to ensure that
Unknown Speaker 2:46:30
our proper engineers have had the time to review the latest information. And I know, we know that they have looked at the previous reports of Commissioner height telling me they don’t match up.
Unknown Speaker 2:46:44
And so I think my goal is just to ensure that staff has the opportunity to give this one last pass before final approval, you know, before it progresses, I don’t need teeth, I don’t need.
Unknown Speaker 2:46:58
I’m not trying to, I respect that staff does their job, and they do their job well. And they’re going to continue to monitor this. You know, as it moves along. I’m not trying to add anything incremental, per se to the sidewalk, it sounds like
Unknown Speaker 2:47:15
staff will continue to do their job properly and be involved to the degree that they need to be. I just feel a little gypped that we had some new information today that staff didn’t get the right members of staff didn’t get to review. And so that’s all I want.
Unknown Speaker 2:47:30
And
Unknown Speaker 2:47:33
I thought that the condition provided by staff, the draft language was easy in line it reinforced what’s in the code already was way more eloquent than anything I would come up with and meets what I’m trying to accomplish, which is one last pass by staff.
Unknown Speaker 2:47:53
I don’t think it’s out to sabotage the applicant. I think
Unknown Speaker 2:47:57
the city has recommended approval, they’re supporting this project and
Unknown Speaker 2:48:03
kind of encouraging us to approve it. So I don’t think this is about setting up the applicant for failure. I don’t think the wording suggests that. So generally, I’m
Unknown Speaker 2:48:16
favorable to the condition that was outlined by Jennifer.
Unknown Speaker 2:48:22
Okay, Jennifer, can you see that condition one more time?
Unknown Speaker 2:48:27
Sure. And I actually would like to offer a revision to that condition.
Unknown Speaker 2:48:34
Something to the a lot along the lines of the Commission recommends approval
Unknown Speaker 2:48:41
to city council pending acceptance of the phase two ESA from 2022 by staff.
Unknown Speaker 2:48:54
I don’t know about anybody else, but I can that that sounds like where I would like to go. It’s no more further testing. But it’s a review of the past testing by city staff. Commissioner Goldberg.
Unknown Speaker 2:49:06
Yep.
Unknown Speaker 2:49:08
Thanks, Jennifer. And if the don’t accept phase two, because they harbor for whatever reason, they decide. They too are unconvinced, then what?
Unknown Speaker 2:49:20
At that point, the annexation agreement could be it. We could address what’s needed as part of the annexation agreement if there are certain things that are identified as far as if public safety wants to see more testing if there are specific concerns if they want to see follow up environmental assessments done as part of cool. So that would be a discussion between staff and the applicant. They’d come up with a menu of solutions and find a mutually agreeable one. Correct. It’s not like we’re
Unknown Speaker 2:49:53
it’s not like if they decline or don’t accept it, then this project is can for a year and they can’t make any progress or they got to come back and
Unknown Speaker 2:50:00
Then restart. We’re just they’re gonna work through a solution with staff. Correct. And we would work through that prior to going to city council obviously. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 2:50:08
I can be supportive of that.
Unknown Speaker 2:50:11
And the off chance that
Unknown Speaker 2:50:14
on respecting the likelihood that there’s members of the commission that won’t agree with me, there’s still more time to discuss it. But for the sake of time in our conversation, I think I’ll go ahead and recommend
Unknown Speaker 2:50:27
conditional approval of the 11386 Rogers road annexation application finding that
Unknown Speaker 2:50:34
pending the acceptance of the phase two ESA as reflected in PCR 2023 dash nine
Unknown Speaker 2:50:44
B.
Unknown Speaker 2:50:49
I will go ahead, and I will second that motion.
Unknown Speaker 2:50:54
Any further comments?
Unknown Speaker 2:50:59
deliberation, Commissioner Lukasz.
Unknown Speaker 2:51:03
Yes, thank you, Chairman. And thank you fellow commissioners for the discussion about the environmental assessment.
Unknown Speaker 2:51:11
I’m not an expert. So it was interesting to hear all the thoughts about it. And I’m usually on the side of caution. So it’s better to be safe than sorry. So I think I’m in favor of this condition.
Unknown Speaker 2:51:30
Commissioner Popkin?
Unknown Speaker 2:51:33
Thank you, Chair. I sure a lot of Commissioner flags and Commissioner heights concerns with this. I think the project, I really want to see the project happen, I want to see it move forward. It’s the discrepancy between the two phase twos that that is still irks in the back of my head, with or without staff review, I still, you have
Unknown Speaker 2:51:53
two different samples, two different tests, and reviews. And I haven’t I’m not an environmental attorney, I do have an environmental policy degree and I work in the Brownfields space for over a decade. And I have reviewed 10s of these, not 1000s. So congrats, Commissioner, hey, you went on that regard.
Unknown Speaker 2:52:12
But it’s this discrepancy? That still bothers me. And if I if I was going to the doctor, and I got one opinion that said one thing and one opinion from another doctor who said the other, I’d get a third opinion. And that’s, and I don’t fully see that coming through with this condition. But I also recognize that staff has a process to handle this. But
Unknown Speaker 2:52:33
I agree with Commissioner Kotch on the side of caution, but I’m not sure I agree with this condition to get there. And so I want to get to saying yes, on this development. And I’m not sure I can with this condition as it currently stands.
Unknown Speaker 2:52:53
Mr. Goldberg?
Unknown Speaker 2:52:55
Thanks, Chairman. Jennifer, would you clarify?
Unknown Speaker 2:53:00
What did you call the team that would review this?
Unknown Speaker 2:53:05
environmental study? It’s members of our public safety group.
Unknown Speaker 2:53:11
Did you say two of them are like environmental engineers or something?
Unknown Speaker 2:53:15
Specialists in hazardous materials?
Unknown Speaker 2:53:21
Amy hennion A, we have one person who reviews our environmental assessments. And she has a background in hazardous materials and handling all of these issues. Cool. She reviewed many of these ratio reviews every ESA that comes in as a development or as part of a development application. Cool. Has she been part of staff for a while? I would have to defer to people who’ve been here longer than me.
Unknown Speaker 2:53:48
I see Don shaking his head. It’s about his tenure. Does he get into the long run?
Unknown Speaker 2:53:54
Second job and one nice.
Unknown Speaker 2:53:59
Is it safe to say that if you’d like just to reiterate what you said was that
Unknown Speaker 2:54:06
this person in this team, if they’re uncomfortable with the gap in the reports will have the opportunity to do one of several things. Maybe it’s a request for a new study. Maybe it’s revisited the study, maybe it’s Request New sampling, maybe it’s
Unknown Speaker 2:54:23
request more information on how we got to the difference between the first and the second one, like I think you identified there could be some solutions. If they’re unsatisfied with the break between the two tests. I would expect that there are Yeah, I guess I kind of see that like going to the third doctor for that third opinion. You know, if I had two opinions that didn’t match, kind of considering that he’s going to get a third opinion to help me. Maybe a specialist we call them. I would. Personally I would consider the our staff reviewer to be that third opinion, frankly. Yeah, me too. So well, I
Unknown Speaker 2:55:00
And, of course, share the concerns that every member on this commission has.
Unknown Speaker 2:55:05
I think I’ll remain I’ll keep my
Unknown Speaker 2:55:08
motion on the table, I guess.
Unknown Speaker 2:55:13
That’s the key metric. Popkin to brief response there. So what the third opinion what that third opinion, at least as described doesn’t do is it’s not another test. Right. It’s not another study as opinion. It’s just a review of the two. It’s basically a very technical and savvy literature review. Sure. Okay. So I mean, ultimately, they can make recommendations. Sure. As you know, following that review, but do you have any sense of how often we miss the question for Don or for Glen as well, but any anyone who wants to chime in here how often going through these processes and hung on is not not shy on its brownfield land? How often this has happened, where he kind of he’d been working through the process and you say, You know what, at this stage, we need another ESA just
Unknown Speaker 2:56:00
welcome back on.
Unknown Speaker 2:56:04
It’s fine. Like is this I mean, is this a one in a million shot that there’s another ESA done? Is this a, you know, 30% of the time? Well, you go back and get an ESA phase one or phase two, depending on what happens along the way.
Unknown Speaker 2:56:17
Tarun, pullin crushed your pumpkin
Unknown Speaker 2:56:24
when asked you to repeat it one more time, because it is late, and I didn’t get much sleep last night, not a problem. Do that one more time? Yes. Nor did I let me try this.
Unknown Speaker 2:56:35
What if when it goes when a project is going through the development process, independent of city council or pnz commission, and you’re running into issues of potential brownfield situations?
Unknown Speaker 2:56:49
I mean, how often is a new ESA requested or supplemental or another phase of an ESA requested as part of that due diligence that staff does? Because it’s just a process that residents don’t have full visibility on? And then frankly, we don’t have full visibility on. So someone who’s in the weeds there? Yeah. So
Unknown Speaker 2:57:08
when we have a phase one that identifies anything that’s of concern that would, or there’s a recommendation within the report that says that a phase two should be done, excuse me, it’s
Unknown Speaker 2:57:23
required, typically by Amy, who is the the woman who does the reviews for us,
Unknown Speaker 2:57:31
that we get those. So then, under the land development code, coughs,
Unknown Speaker 2:57:39
we
Unknown Speaker 2:57:40
have identified that Glenn has the ability to ask for any additional reports that are needed and necessary in order to address the review criteria. So
Unknown Speaker 2:57:51
we have the ability to request those as they are identified and needed. The other thing that we have as which we have done, for example, I think we just did it with von farm is if we need to hire a third party expert, to look at something for the city, impartial. We’re asking them to take a look at this, and give us their professional opinion, we have the ability to do that, that does costs, obviously money for the city to cover that. But we do have that ability to do that. We’ve done it for other projects. And I expect that we may need to do that as we move forward into these areas where we’re going to run into contamination. And I would say challenges, that sometimes we may need a third party to look at it just to either confirm staff’s findings or to confirm the applicants findings or another, you know, report that was given to us. So it it is common that when we identify an issue to your question,
Unknown Speaker 2:59:05
we need a face to we can ask for that we can get that and make that a requirement.
Unknown Speaker 2:59:12
Thank you while you’re still here. I’m trying not to keep you up too much later. How How often in your professional career. Have you seen a situation where there’s a discrepancy between two essays conducted at the same level for the same site? So there was like a meaningful like substantive sticker discrepancy like Sure.
Unknown Speaker 2:59:32
Josh actually might be able to remember this one but when we were looking working with the sandstone reach and bringing in the property that is catty corner to the northwest of the left hand brewery. So Boston Avenue, you have the collateral materials on the south and on the north we brought in at sunset in Boston, the
Unknown Speaker 3:00:00
The parcel there is Bowman identified that the Army Corps had identified there was a dump on that site. And that was in one of their reports. But yet, when the applicant went through and did their due diligence, they came back and said, We cannot find any proof that there was ever anything on that. And then when we went into it, we couldn’t find anything to prove the statement in the Army Corps Report. So,
Unknown Speaker 3:00:30
you know, if you can’t retrace the steps and come up with the same
Unknown Speaker 3:00:36
answer are the same conclusion, then there may have been an error that, you know, as I’m listening tonight, sounds like there could have been an error, human factor,
Unknown Speaker 3:00:49
if you want to give it that. So that’s one example, where we ran into an issue where we had two different items that were talking about the same property. And when the second report was done, did not come up with the same answer.
Unknown Speaker 3:01:06
That’s the best one I got for. Appreciate it. Sure. Tyler, one more question for you. And then I’ll yield.
Unknown Speaker 3:01:14
You’ve heard the discussion here. You can read the room. There are clearly certainly a few folks that are a little bit struggling with just the discrepancy. I think I think everyone thinks that what you’re trying to Well, I would say most people here, most of the commissioners think that the proposal makes sense for the area, checks a lot of the boxes that we want to see here and make sense for lawn lawn, frankly.
Unknown Speaker 3:01:36
I know that your consultants that you trust, and have worked with for years have said there was no concern.
Unknown Speaker 3:01:44
But I want to ask you to put on our hat for a second. And so I want to ask you, how would you recommend
Unknown Speaker 3:01:51
we handle this, you know, I think Don makes a good recommendation of if if there’s the desire or, you know, potential disbelief of our findings that, you know, we certainly stand behind and are very comfortable with as just a massive organization like Cairo. I mean, we don’t just take risks for fun. I mean, we’re the complete opposite of that. We’re scattered around shadow, in most respects,
Unknown Speaker 3:02:16
as Jennifer can attest to in terms of how we just approach risk and details, and trying to make sure that every last thing is mitigated and addressed.
Unknown Speaker 3:02:27
Just how we do business. You know, our consultants can attest to that in terms of how micromanagement oriented we are. And so I get that that’s all anecdotal, and qualitative, so I can appreciate that. And I can appreciate that, you know, perhaps some of the commissioners don’t have, you know, the day to day experience of building these types of projects and encountering these types of reports, and, you know, working through these types of potential issues or perceived issues that, you know, may arise when you see some of these discrepancies. But I think we all can agree that there are different caliber of professionals and different caliber of executions amongst consultants or, you know, just professionals in general, right. And so, you know, Don makes a suggestion of potentially having the city engage of
Unknown Speaker 3:03:13
independent third party report to go to a phase one or phase two, or whatever, would help get y’all comfortable.
Unknown Speaker 3:03:19
You know, admittedly, I think it’s a waste of money, because I feel very confident, exceptionally confident, and what our results have produced, because, again, you know, we didn’t have to go get a phase two done, we didn’t, because our Phase One said, Hey, there’s no recognized environmental conditions, we don’t recommend anything moving forward, we said, let’s just make sure so we put our own, you know, groundwater monitoring samples in the ground, we provided, you know, we provided all those test results, in accordance with state standard to state certified laboratories that came back in a way that said there’s no issues that have contaminants above these regulatory residential levels. And so, you know, that’s, that’s probably the best idea that I’ve heard this evening in terms of how to ultimately provide the abundance of of comfort that, you know, some of the commissioners have raised here is is you know, I think a reasonable option. Appreciate it.
Unknown Speaker 3:04:16
Good. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 3:04:19
I’m very glad you had a phase two because I think you would have been torn to shreds if you didn’t, given the discrepancy in phase one contradicting phase two that was done previously. So I’m glad to see the phase two. I am now confident comfortable
Unknown Speaker 3:04:33
with the condition proposed and with given the discussion and the due diligence that I know our staff will take with this especially given this conversation to just make sure that this is checking the boxes and truly is safe, healthy and in the best interest of Longmont.
Unknown Speaker 3:04:50
I have reasonable confidence in the applicant having just met you all tonight, but you’re right. You didn’t have to do phase two. Very glad you did.
Unknown Speaker 3:05:00
There are two, there are two pathways, either the first one was wrong, or the second one was wrong. And I guess at this point, our hope is that the second one is wrong. But we’re losing trust, trust and verify here. So with this condition, I end this conversation. I trust that staff will verify this as the development proceeds. And I hope that the developers will
Unknown Speaker 3:05:22
do what’s probably in their best interest anyway, and making sure that they don’t run into issues along the way. So I am comfortable getting to yes, at this point.
Unknown Speaker 3:05:30
Yeah, and I’m still comfortable to none of us are really experts on this. I’m going to make an assumption that Amy is more knowledgeable than any of us on this particular topic. And I am perfectly it makes, it’s comfortable for me to hand this back over to her for her to review it. And then if she has anything, she can raise a flag on it, but let her do the review and come up with her own conclusion. So
Unknown Speaker 3:05:59
any more thoughts? Any more questions? Are we ready for a vote? I’m looking through and I think we’re ready for a vote.
Unknown Speaker 3:06:07
Commissioner height? No. Commissioner teta? Yes. Commissioner Goldberg Yes. Chair Poland? Yes. Commissioner flag thing.
Unknown Speaker 3:06:17
Commissioner Kotch? Yes. Commissioner Popkin? Yes.
Unknown Speaker 3:06:23
Chairman that passes, five approvals, one abstention. And one. No.
Unknown Speaker 3:06:31
Thank you. This item will now be forwarded to the city console for action. If you’re unfamiliar with council procedures and attend to appear before city council, please contact the Planning Division for further information at 303-651-8330.
Unknown Speaker 3:06:52
Commissioner flaig
Unknown Speaker 3:06:54
Chair, I needed clarification. I thought we had an amendment a condition that was going to be added. And we did motion it was seconded. There was no vote taken. That would that was what we voted on is 2023 Nine B with the condition.
Unknown Speaker 3:07:13
So somehow I missed when we added the commission voted the condition and voted on it.
Unknown Speaker 3:07:21
Okay, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 3:07:23
I would like to change my vote to know.
Unknown Speaker 3:07:29
So chair polling that still passes five to two. Okay, thank you.
Unknown Speaker 3:07:37
And I’ve read the council city action. So we’re set on that. Commissioner Goldberg.
Unknown Speaker 3:07:45
Thanks, Jerry. I just wanted to make sure. Commissioner flag I just want to just put it on the record just so you understand what the condition was that just passed? It was pending acceptance of the phase two.
Unknown Speaker 3:07:58
ESA, just to be sure that.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:02
Okay.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:04
commissioner, Commissioner flaig.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:07
I want to assure Commissioner Goldberg I was understanding completely. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:13
Okay, we are done with the public hearing items. Next item is final call public invited to be heard.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:25
There’s nobody on the list.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:29
Nobody’s moving forward. So I’ll go ahead and close out final call public invited to be heard items from the Commission.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:38
Commissioner Goldberg.
Unknown Speaker 3:08:44
You don’t have to attend a meeting to approve the minutes. Do you?
Unknown Speaker 3:08:52
Know, I think we generally you can certainly even watch the meeting afterwards. Yeah, I think it’s kind of a weird concept to approve if you’re not there. But technically we are. It’s in our purview to approve. Theoretically, you read them and you’ve watched the last month’s meeting or whatever.
Unknown Speaker 3:09:13
Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 3:09:15
Commissioner Popkin?
Unknown Speaker 3:09:18
Thank you. I just wanted to reflect on the discussion on the last agenda item. And just note that like, I think it’s really important that we all took this seriously. We’re this is one, I’m sure you all have seen this before even I came here, but we’re going to have a lot of brownfield type properties come before us in the next few years. I hope. And hopefully we can get increasingly more confident as we work through that process. And I think it’s increasingly important that we are scrutinizing these types of discussing these types of applicants and really dig into the material. So I appreciate all of my fellow Commissioners engaging in that discussion. Regardless of how the boat shook out on that truly, I thought it was really really constructive
Unknown Speaker 3:09:59
and staff
Unknown Speaker 3:10:00
For the information that they provided in the process and commentary along the way, thank you. I can agree with that.
Unknown Speaker 3:10:07
Items from planning director when Ben Nimmo good.
Unknown Speaker 3:10:12
Just wanted to report what Jennifer mentioned last night, the city council reviewed the sugar factory and steam sub area plan pointed out that the planning commission did recommend approval of that. They did recommend approval. Basically, it was just a study session. So they didn’t give it final approval, but directed us to put it back on consent agenda for approval. So that’ll be happening soon.
Unknown Speaker 3:10:42
As we talked about earlier, council agendas are getting rather full. So it’s, hopefully that will happen in October.
Unknown Speaker 3:10:51
Okay.
Unknown Speaker 3:10:53
And I guess
Unknown Speaker 3:10:56
the next thing is, we are going to have a vacancy on our Planning Commission, which is tough, which, anyhow, there is a process out now where we’re taking on applications, as you know, councils process is it gets reviewed by the board, we did a little different process where we had a subcommittee look at the applicants and actually enter the view them brought it back to the full board. And everybody had input at that point. It’ll probably be in November. But I’m just wondering,
Unknown Speaker 3:11:32
our thinking is now just talking it over with Jane, that we do an online meeting with the full commission and whoever the candidates are.
Unknown Speaker 3:11:43
And make your recommendation virtually versus having a public hearing on it.
Unknown Speaker 3:11:56
I’m sorry.
Unknown Speaker 3:11:59
This gentleman, Mr. Goldberg, is term limited.
Unknown Speaker 3:12:06
There’s a limit to clusters Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 3:12:14
Mr. Goldberg,
Unknown Speaker 3:12:18
not to put you on the spot. Really recall the last discussion after there was kind of that breakout team that interviewed the candidates.
Unknown Speaker 3:12:28
And then came back to the commission. And I feel like we had like a really weird conversation was really uncomfortable. There was people sitting at the days that were considered and whatever. I think what I’m hearing you say is, let’s not do that in public, let’s have a private meeting where we are all interviewing the candidate at the same debt, we’re hearing the discussion, probably you’d lean on someone to leave. And then we’d all come armed with the same information. Would we still do the vote on the record, like we do in years past? I believe we’d still do the vote on the record. But we’d all be privy to that we could do that. remotely. We could actually do it that night. Council does want a recording of the interviews to be transferred to them. Here it’s out in it goes out on YouTube, and it goes out to the world. It wouldn’t necessarily be that if it was set up as like a study session with an action item. You potentially Okay, I have total faith in you and Jean coming up with a solution, but I’m not sure any of the applicants should be sitting or in the room? I would say and that was gonna be my question, given the fact that the alternates very likely are going to be candidates for the position. Would it be just the sitting members than involved on the interview?
Unknown Speaker 3:13:52
Yes.
Unknown Speaker 3:13:54
Yeah, it definitely. Yeah, for sure. That’s great. Call it chairman. And the advantage of having a WebEx meeting is we bring in one candidate at a time.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:06
Yep. Yep. Really smart.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:08
When two quick follow ups.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:11
Did City Council will revisit their decision on Frances street annexation?
Unknown Speaker 3:14:17
Yes, I did. Did they end up falling in line with the pin with the Commission’s recommendation? Yes, they did. Cool. And then when do you anticipate
Unknown Speaker 3:14:32
they didn’t approve it. I don’t remember what the vote was.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:36
Five to two.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:39
We’re just looking for
Unknown Speaker 3:14:41
you know, Jerry.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:44
four to three. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:49
And when do you anticipate bond farm to go to city council?
Unknown Speaker 3:14:54
October 10.
Unknown Speaker 3:14:56
Thank you. That’s actually first reading is coming up next week.
Unknown Speaker 3:15:00
Public hearing will be October 10.
Unknown Speaker 3:15:05
Commissioner Popkin just a brief point of feedback on the interview process last year
Unknown Speaker 3:15:12
for commissioners food for thought, I know you’re all juggling a lot of schedules and timing. My process that I went through was a 15 minute interview with the subcommittee and 10 minutes with counsel. And that that was that was pretty, pretty quick. Just saying there was time for like, one question with city council. So
Unknown Speaker 3:15:31
you know, won’t be a long meeting.
Unknown Speaker 3:15:35
Yeah. Okay. It’s got a it’s got to be quick. All right. Just that felt really, really quick. And, yeah, so that anyway, just that’s out there. And then just just since I’m still getting my bearings on some of these more thorny issues here, when our recommendations go to city council, what’s the protocol like, for the I mean, the Commission attending being present, commissioners speaking, I’m just curious, like, where does that fall into what’s
Unknown Speaker 3:16:08
I want to just clarify that for frankly, everyone’s sake, given what we just went through. So
Unknown Speaker 3:16:16
what’s allowed what’s not allowed what’s recommended? So, I would say that, as the typical lawyer answer depends
Unknown Speaker 3:16:25
annexations a legislative matter. So certainly Planning and Zoning Commission has made this recommendation. I don’t really have any qualms about any individual Commissioner coming up to public comment, public hearing on the annexation matter and making a statement, recognizing they’re making as a private citizen, not as a member, not on behalf of the Commission for annexation. quasi judicial, when it to appeal is a different story, because that does give me a little bit more heartburn if a commissioner was to come and provide some additional input or testimony that might contradict what was made public hearing that could raise concerns of, you know, ex parte communications that have taken place or just concerns of the decision making process. Legislative good, quasi judicial, with an appeal to city council. Not so much.
Unknown Speaker 3:17:21
Any other. Okay. And Glen?
Unknown Speaker 3:17:26
Since next month is National Planning
Unknown Speaker 3:17:32
month, so what it’s called?
Unknown Speaker 3:17:37
Should we be prepared? Maybe October, you are mentioning maybe October 24. We might be invited to Yeah, that proclamation. It’s it’s really up to the mayor. So it’s not really a stamp thing. So we put in a request for a proclamation, we write it. And then they tell us when they’re going to do it. So we just don’t know, at this point.
Unknown Speaker 3:18:01
I would prefer the 24th rather than than the 10th. It would be fine. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 3:18:08
I think that’s appropriate, actually.
Unknown Speaker 3:18:13
My guess is, yeah, that they’ll be avoiding it as well. So, okay, just keep us informed. Because if it is an October 10, there will be before our next meeting. So right and yeah, it’d be great if everybody could come. You get a picture get to pay council, the council. Be great for our outgoing Commissioner.
Unknown Speaker 3:18:35
What can we expect in meetings for October?
Unknown Speaker 3:18:39
I think we’re not seeing anything in October
Unknown Speaker 3:18:43
at this moment. Really? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 3:18:51
Thanksgiving
Unknown Speaker 3:18:54
okay.
Unknown Speaker 3:18:56
But that could change. Okay. Just removing pieces out there. It just keep us informed. Any other items? If not, we are in adjournment. All right. Thank you very much.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai