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HomeMy WebLinkAboutBuilding Review Board - Minutes - 09/27/1990BUILDING REVIEW BOARD Minutes September 27, 1990 - 9:15 a.m. - Council Chambers MEMBERS PRESENT: Chris Allison Harry Cornell Dennis Sinnett Charles Cotterman Michael Sutton MEMBERS ABSENT: Doug Johnson Vincent Guerrie STAFF PRESENT: Felix Lee Paul Eckman Debbie Zeigler The minutes of the August 30, 1990 approved. meeting were unanimously Russell N. Debruine, Commercial Construction submitted an applica- tion for a Class C-01 license/certificate. Boardmember Sinnett made a motion to approve Mr. Debruine and Commercial Construction for a Class C-01 license/certificate. The motion was seconded by Boardmember Sutton. Motion carried unanimously. Michael Henry, A -A Constructors is applying for the Class D and E license/certificate. Boardmember Sinnett abstained from partici- pation and voting on this applicant due to a possible conflict of interest. Boardmember Allison asked Mr. Henry about his residen- tial experience. Mr. Henry stated the only residential work he has done is a three story apartment house that he was assistant superintendent on. All of his experience is commercial. Mr. Cotterman asked why he didn't apply for a commercial license. Mr. Henry said he didn't have the money to back large commercial projects and by obtaining the Class E license, he could stay active in commercial by doing tenant finish work. Boardmember Allison asked if he had ever owned and operated his own business. Mr. Henry said no and added he has enrolled in the Construction Management course at CSU and has two years of credits to obtain before he receives his degree. Boardmember Cotterman asked what Mr. Henry's immediate purpose was in getting a license. Mr. Henry said if he were licensed he could bid jobs legally. Boardmember Allison asked if the applicant had any experience in bidding work. He responded no, he has only bid change orders in the field. Boardmember Cotterman made a motion to approve Mr. Henry for a Class D and E license/certificate. The motion was seconded by Boardmember Cornell. Yeas: Sutton, Allison, Cotterman, Cornell. Nays: None. BRB Minutes September 27, 1990 Page 2 Tim Von Tersch, Lifestyle Homes was present at the meeting at the Board's request. The Board had looked at Mr. Von Tersch Is file at the August meeting and had several questions to ask him. Boardme- mber Cotterman asked Mr. Von Tersch if he is a mechanic. Mr. Von Tersch said he has been a carpenter since 1966, but did help a friend run the Aamco in town from June 1989 to June 1990. Mr. Von Tersch stated he went to work for Lifestyle Homes in Greeley in June 1990 building custom homes and they would like to expand into Fort Collins. Mr. Cotterman questioned Mr. Von Tersch about operating an Aamco business without being a transmission mechanic. Mr. Von Tersch said he handled the employees, the book keeping and generally took care of the business and indicated he knows nothing about transmissions. Mr. Von Tersch said his construction exper- ience includes a 20 x 25 foot family room addition, homes in Windsor, a 864 square foot brick home, an 1800 square foot home in Greeley and a 2800 square foot home for himself that Gerald Lutz sent in a reference for. He stated he has three custom homes under construction now and three ready to start. Debbie confirmed for the Board that Lifestyle Homes will be the license holder and Tim will be the certificate holder. Boardmember Cornell made a motion to approve Mr. Von Tersch for a Class D license/ certifi- cate. The motion was seconded by Boardmember Sinnett. The motion carried unanimously. The Board requested two additional references from Richard W. Garhart, Choice City Builders at the August meeting, one being from G. Richard Dunn of the CSU staff. Mr. Garhart appeared with a letter from Mr. Dunn but stated the two additional letters had been sent by the references, but had not yet reached the appli- cant. Mr. Garhart passed the test with a score of 93%. The Board agreed to issue Mr. Garhart the license/certificate as soon as staff receives the letters. Code Appeal Case #90-02 -Affected Property: Fort Ram Village 2nd Filing, W. Elizabeth & Constitution Owner: Topanga Enterprises - Ron Gray Appellant: Vaught -Frye Architects Request: Request that Fort Ram Village 2nd Filing, consisting of 138 units, and being the third and final phase of the 356 unit multi -family project, specifically oriented to CSU students, be granted a variance to the City of Fort Collins Accessible Housing Guidelines (revised 3/86), with 9 designated accessible housing units instead of 19. Four would be one bedroom units and five three bedroom units. Combined with the already built First and Second Phases the 356 unit project would thus provide a total of twelve one bedrooms and thirteen three bedroom accessible units. BRB Minutes September 27, 1990 Page 3 Frank Vaught and Tony Hughes represented the owner Ron Gray at the meeting. Frank Vaught stated it was impractical to comply with the Guidelines because the location to the university did not make it feasible for the disabled to commute to classes; he cited the hardship of cost and site changes and said accessible units are less attractive and harder to rent. Mr. Vaught had statistics from Rose Kreston, Director of Disabled Student Services at CSU stating .25% of the enrollment at CSU are mobility impaired and .05% are confined to wheelchairs. He said they have found most of the students that are handicapped prefer to live on campus in the residence halls because of the conven- ience in location or at least in areas that are more convenient to campus than this property. Mr. Vaught said of the twenty-four accessible units available, none have been rented by the handi- capped students and a few requests have been made to the manager of Fort Ram Village but at this point none have rented the units. Mr. Vaught said it has been Mr. Gray's experience at similar projects he has built in other cities that the disabled community are not interested in these units. He said these are not apart- ments, but are bedrooms that are rented out, fully furnished, and have communal living areas and kitchens. Mr. Vaught said his firm did additional research with the Disabled Resource Services, Ms. Karen Hutchison who is the Assistant Director, provided them with other statistics. Eighteen percent of the population surveyed responded with some type of disability. Nine percent of the eighteen percent had wheel chairs. Twenty percent needed architectural modification, such as larger door- ways, ramps, etc. He felt the most important statistic was out of the total city population about 10t have some sort of disability. Those disabilities are categorized by the survey as upper mobility and lower mobility, visual, hearing, developmental and hidden. Upper and lower mobility percentages add up to about 3.7%. Accord- ing to Mr. Vaught, Karen Hutchison's opinion is that about 5% of the total population can be classified as mobility impaired. Based on this figure, Mr. Vaught said the proposed 138 units at 5% would need about 7 accessible units. Their request is to provide 9 units - 4 one bedroom units and 5 three bedroom units. He reques- ted the Building Review Board grant this variance. Mr. Cotterman asked Mr. Vaught what has happened to two bedroom units. Mr. Vaught said two bedroom units do not occur on the main floor. There are one and three bedroom units on the main floor that can be made accessible. There are 44 main floor units out of the 138 units. • 0 BRB Minutes September 27, 1990 Page 4 Mr. Vaught said the owner didn't want a three story project so they opted for berms which create a garden level. Aesthetically they are very pleasant but they do create some problems for accessibility. Mr. Sutton asked if there is any effort to hold the accessible units back and see if there is any interest in them, or if there is any effort to advertise the accessible units. Mr. Vaught said the project has been met with such overwhelming success, they have a waiting list of students already on the list for the third phase. At this point, Mr. Vaught said they have not advertised the units. Mr. Cotterman asked if the square footage of an accessible unit is the same as a non -accessible unit. Mr. Vaught said there is no difference in square footage but the accessible unit costs more to put in place because of the design. Boardmember Sutton asked Felix how the 1:7 ratio was established. Felix said it was State law and our guidelines merely reiterated the ratio. City Attorney Paul Eckman said the statute provides for no handicap units for the first seven and essentially one for every seven units thereafter. He also read from the statute regarding granting of variances. "You (the Board) may grant exceptions to or modify any particular standard or specification when it is determined it is impractical; and would create an unusual hardship or would unreasonably complicate construction, alteration or repair." Boardmember Cotterman asked Mr. Eckman to define practi- cal. Mr. Eckman responded that the statute does not give a definition and feels it is a broad term that could apply not only to construction but also to demand in terms of leasability. Arne Andersen, Vice Chairman for the Commission on Disability, spoke against the variance. Mr. Andersen suggested that if there are 16 accessible units already built without any difficulty, they should therefore be able to build the number of units the State statute requires. Mr. Andersen pointed out the accessible units must not be unattractive or there wouldn't be a waiting list for the units. He asked if the units were rented to the general public or only CSU students. No one had an answer to that. He wanted to know if the units were advertised and questioned whether the disabled students preferred to live on campus or were not provided with another option. Mr. Vaught said there is no adver- tising on the project. Mr. Andersen had information from Disabled Resource Services that listed the number of multi -family units in Fort Collins at 14,743. Mr. Andersen stated there are other varying statistics which indicate 8,192 is the total number of apartments listed. According to Mr. Andersen, DRS surveyed BRB Minutes September 27, 1990 Page 5 apartment complexes in Fort Collins and listed 185 accessible units available. Using the lower number of 8,192 it represents about 2% as accessible. Mr. Andersen stated if the project is open to the public then the senior population needs to be counted in the statistics which is about 13 - 15%, and 85% of these people can be considered disabled. Boardmember Cotterman asked if the disabled are looking for apartments? Mr. Andersen read a note from Nancy Jackson, the Director of Disabled Resource Services, which stated they are continually trying to find apartments for disabled people. Mr. Andersen closed with the statement that the disabled popula- tion deserve to have choices about where they live in a community. Boardmember Allison said even though there are only 2% accessible housing units available, as stated by Mr. Andersen, these figures include all apartments that have been built in Fort Collins to date and the law hasn't been in effect very long. Mr. Allison said in the past they (the Board) have viewed these requests on a per project basis, weighing hardships individually and most of the projects that have come before BRB have been exempted from the 1:7 ratio. Boardmember Sutton felt the senior population was taken into the numbers of the survey that was done. He said he appreciates the idea that the disabled population may not know about the units that are available and would hope management would make an effort to advertise them. He felt the project would be taken up with entirely CSU students and they are the population BRB should be looking at. Boardmember Cotterman asked how many total accessible units there will be in the entire project, pointing out the documentation provided says 25 total units. Mr. Vaught said that is correct and stated the first phase of construction consisted of 106 units, 8 of which were accessible (6 one bedrooms and 2 three bedrooms). The second phase consisted of 112 units, 8 of which were accessi- ble (2 one bedroom and six three bedrooms). The third phase is 138 units, 9 of which are proposed to be accessible (4 one bedrooms and 5 three bedrooms). There would be a total of 12 one bedroom accessible units, 13 three bedroom units for a total of 25 units, housing 38 students. Mr. Vaught stated with the total population of the project at 800 students, there would be 5% of the project accessible. Mr. Cotterman thought that number was very low. Mr. Vaught pointed out their statistics indicate only eleven CSU students are in wheelchairs, possibly 40 using crutch- es, canes or walkers and none of them live in this project. BRB Minutes September 27, 1990 Page 6 Boardmember Michael Sutton made a motion to grant the variance. Boardmember Sinnett amended the motion stating the appellant has shown it is impractical because of the building design and the lack of demand and the hardship is the construction problems that would be created. Mr. Sinnett said all of these are reasons to grant the variance. The motion was seconded by Boardmember Cotterman stating the requirements are impractical and that the request is acceptable. Yeas: Sutton, Allison, Cotterman, Sinnett. Nays: None. Boardmember Cornell abstained from voting and discussion due to a possible conflict of interest. Motion carried unanimously. Other Business Nominations for Vice Chairman due to the passing away of Tony Bontz. Boardmember Cotterman made a motion to nominate Doug Johnson. The motion was seconded by Boardmember Sinnett. The motion carried unanimously. Respectfully submitted, Chris Allison, Chairman Felix Le', taff Liaison