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Home My WebLink AboutAgenda - Mail Packet - 2/13/2024 - Futures Committee Agenda – Monday, February 12, 2024 1 Futures Committee Agenda Monday, February 12, 2024 4:00-5:30pm REMOTE via Zoom Please click the link below to join the webinar: https://fcgov.zoom.us/j/91533678032 Or One tap mobile: US: +17209289299,,91533678032# or +12532158782,,91533678032# Or Telephone: Dial(for higher quality, dial a number based on your current location): US: +1 720 928 9299 or +1 253 215 8782 or +1 346 248 7799 or +1 312 626 6799 or +1 646 558 8656 Webinar ID: 915 3367 8032 International numbers available: https://fcgov.zoom.us/u/abwdB4CpBR For Technical Assistance please call: 970-221-6505 Call meeting to order 4:00pm- 4:05pm Facilitated by Tricia Canonico Roll Call, Approval of November 20, 2023, Minutes and Overview of Futures Committee Participation: 4:05- 4:15 Facilitated by Caryn Champine Discussion Item 4:15-5:15 Forecasting Population and Employment Nancy Gedeon, Demographer, State Demographers Office • Q&A facilitated by Caryn Champine • Summary provided by Caryn Champine Additional Committee Updates- Facilitated by Caryn Champine Committee Members Councilmember Julie Pignataro Councilmember Melanie Potyondy Councilmember Tricia Canonico Staff Liaison: Caryn Champine, Director Planning, Development and Transportation Staff Support: Melina Dempsey, FCMoves 1 CITY OF FORT COLLINS FUTURES COMMITTEE MEETING Date: November 20, 2023 Location: Zoom Time: 5:00pm-7:00pm Committee Members present: Councilmember Tricia Canonico Councilmember Susan Gutowsky Mayor Pro Tem Emily Francis Additional Council members present: Councilmember Julie Pignataro City Staff: Caryn Champine Presenters: Dr. Ellen Dunham-Jones, Director of the Urban Design Program at Georgia Tech University Additional Staff present: Kelly DiMartino, City Manager’s Office Melina Dempsey, FC Moves Cortney Geary, FC Moves Ginny Sawyer, City Manager’s Office Carrie Daggett City Attorney’s Office Amanda King, CPIO Greg Yeager, Police Services Kristina Vencill, Human Resources Karen Burke, Human Resources Lockie Woods, City Manager’s Office Jacob Castillo, Sustainability Services Area Terri Runyan, City Manager’s Office Claudia Menendez, City Manager’s Office Teresa Roche, Human Resources Meeting called to order at 5:00pm Approval of Minutes: Councilmember Gutowsky moved to approve the August minutes. Councilmember Canonico seconded. Motion passed 2-0. Chairperson Comments: N/A 2 Think Tank Item 4-2023: The 15-Minute City: The Future of Community and Town Centers, Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia, Dr. Ellen Dunham-Jones, Director of the Urban Design Program at Georgia Tech University Section 1: What is Driving the Retrofitting of Suburbia? • More underperforming commercial properties • Climate change • Digital communication and the pandemic • Changing demographics • A shrinking middle class • New market preferences • In combination, these shifts are driving: o Need for more land conservation, mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, and adaptation to severe storms and droughts o Need for more social infrastructure o Preferences for living more environmentally-friendly lifestyles in compact, mixed-use, inclusive neighborhoods • Six urgent challenges the suburbs were not designed for that are being addressed by redeveloping, reinhabiting, and/or regreening aging shopping malls, office parks, and other suburban property types: o Disrupt auto dependence  Walkability and mix of uses • Examples include TIF-funded underground public parking and increasing bike-ability with roundabouts (reduced injuries, reduced idling), multi-use trails, and trail-oriented development  Multi-modal systems and trails  Transit-oriented development  Road diets  Street networks  Parking districts  Treat parking lots as building sites o Improve public health  70-90% of chronic disease can be attributed to the built environment (lack of physical activity leading to obesity, pollution, and stress)  Encourage physical activity (walking, biking, exercising)  Improve access to healthy food and healthcare  Improve air, water, and soil quality  Improve safety from crime, fire, flood, vehicle accidents, and toxic exposures  Reduce the stresses of income inequality  Reduce social isolation  Increase access to parks, trees, and nature o Support an aging population o Leverage social capital for equity  Build social infrastructure, often through re-inhabitation: • Education and job training • Childcare and family planning 3 • Local jobs • Healthy food and healthcare • Affordable transportation  Add/enhance public spaces to build social capital to serve today’s demographics • Regreened actively programmed small parks • Local activation of underused spaces • Diverse activities and uses • Street trees to mitigate inequitable heat indices  Expand affordability for all to stay or move into redeveloped areas • Inclusionary zoning • Zoning to allow missing middle and multi-family • Replacement units • Real estate transaction fees o Compete for jobs  Reinhabit former retail spaces • Incubators for small entrepreneurs • Education for middle-skill, middle-wage labor shortage • Ethnic malls to support immigrant communities and entrepreneurial small businesses  Infill office parks and warehouses • Housing and more diverse uses (especially on-site workforce housing) • Creative office • Light industrial, automated, mixed-use manufacturing o Add water and energy resilience  Conserve energy • Compact and climate-oriented urbanism and buildings: re-use buildings  Energy districts • Micro-grids, waste to energy, CCHP  Decarbonize with renewable sources • Solar, wind, and geothermal  The water-energy nexus: reducing one reduces the other  Water quality • Daylight culverted creeks • Reconstruct wetlands • Cleanse, infiltrate, and slow runoff  Too little water • Capture for reuse • Conserve • Replenish groundwater  Too much water • Green roofs, cisterns, water recycling, harvesting and increased infiltration • Use TDRs to empty floodplains, build stormwater parks 4 Questions and discussion: • Discussion around what is standing in the way of Fort Collins doing more of these types of projects. o Cost of investing in infrastructure that was developed for a certain building pattern o Regulatory barriers including parking requirements, setbacks, density or height restrictions o Important to build the concepts into plans o Use of URA tool as strategically as possible o It is important for the public to own and fund infrastructure o Developers can pay up front and keep a portion of sales tax for repayment o In places where infrastructure is so in need of maintenance, rebuilding things in ways that make more sense is a better use of funds o Changing public works standards and zoning is essential o Developers will go into communities where walkability has already been prioritized • Discussion around whether these types of redevelopment projects are driven by cities, private entities, or partnerships between the two. o 99% of the time it is a partnership as cities will need to work with developers to figure out the infrastructure piece o The city frequently starts with changes in zoning, making a commitment to a new transportation project, or other enhancements to the public realm o In strong markets, developers make seek spot rezoning to create projects that focus on missing middle housing o It is important to change zoning but also to look at development procedures that make logical sense with zoning changes • Discussion about concerns these types of redevelopment projects could have on low-income, disabled, and senior members of the community. o Most communities include a requirement for affordable housing o Project in Washington, D.C. called the Wharf that contains a $6 million penthouse as well as everyday retail shops and apartments for those making 30% AMI o Redevelopment is inherently expensive; however, re-inhabitation is more affordable o Example of a project in Minnesota that is a redevelopment of a dead mall that is now anchored by a senior housing community o Example of a former Days Inn motel that is now a senior living facility and a small office building that was converted into co-housing o Example of a project in Rhode Island that converted a parking lot of a former auto repair building into a cottage court containing 15 units on one acre that maintains the character and scale of the street o Design especially matters when density is increasing and/or affordable housing is being brought into neighborhoods that aren’t used to it • Discussion around funding sources used for the roundabouts in Carmel, Indiana (over 150 traditional intersections were converted). o Improvements were made incrementally and funds likely came from regular transportation funds o Fort Collins has local dollars, a capital expansion fund, federal dollars that get routed through the regional planning organization o Roundabouts function to improve air quality 5 o Due to its extensive bike trail network, Carmel has some of the highest sales of E-bikes in the country with the average age of buyer being over 60 • Discussion around how to get developers to build 25% affordable housing units. o City can require it and if the market is strong and desirable, developers will agree o With that high of a requirement, the city must usually allow for a higher density project o Many buildings across the country are only five stories because that height can be constructed in wood; anything taller requires lower floors to be concrete which is much more expensive and most development projects would not be financially viable with the concrete requirement unless they are ten to fifteen stories o Affordability can also be improved by reducing parking requirements in zoning regulations – a great deal of parking is being built because it is required by code, not by market demand in walkable areas • Discussion about how to alleviate spillover parking onto public streets if not enough parking spaces are provided. o All on-street parking is public o Example of an apartment building in Charlotte, North Carolina that has zero parking and leases are terminated if a car is purchased while living in the building o It is possible to charge for limited parking spaces o Decouple having parking spaces with every unit • Recommended journals and websites. o Public Square | CNU – part of the Congress for the New Urbanism website • Discussion around failed projects and learning from those. o Unrealistic expectations can be an issue o Redevelopment will only be successful for the region as a whole in a strong market with a growing population o Banks are much less likely to fund a redevelopment project in an area with slow or stagnant population growth; if banks are unwilling to fund a project, that is a flag that the public sector should be wary as well o Instances wherein developers try to get too much from the public sector o Instances wherein ‘troll’ developers buy dead malls with a promise of redevelopment but instead just hold onto the property until the city buys them out • Discussion around what the partnership looks like for successful projects. o The public sector needs to know what it wants to see in order to attract the developers who want to participate in those projects • With Fort Collins and Larimer County steadily growing, how can we best balance an increase in affordable housing while staving off gentrification and preserving our natural and historic spaces? o Design is important and designers need to focus on local flora, fauna, economy, and demographics to ensure there are places for everyone o Because most suburban retrofit projects are on sites of mostly dead commercial properties, there is little direct displacement from gentrification o There are many strategies needed to prevent displacement from gentrification o Important to preserve garden apartments 6 Additional Items Reflecting on the past year of Futures – Facilitated by Caryn Champine • February: Topic Exploration • April: Reimagining Public Engagement • June: Portraits of Democracy for the Future • August: The Future of Energy Transitions • November: The Future of Town Centers • Important foundation: to learn more about how to engage in and equip ourselves for tough conversations about the community’s future • Focus and intentions for Futures topics for 2023: o Building a foundation for better conversations about our future o Exploring tools to lead our biggest challenges and opportunities o Deepening our understanding of the future of 15 Minute Cities • What are your biggest learnings from our speakers and topics? o Selection of speakers was great • What are you still curious about? Topics for 2024? o Many options for topics around 15 Minute Cities o Autonomous vehicles o Funding and financing o How to transform a specific area to a 15 Minute City using redevelopment and how long does that effort take o Parking requirements and impacts o Electric vehicles and charging stations o How do we begin to choose where in the city would be a likely prototype for creating what is envisioned as a walkable community o Artificial intelligence o Futures items at CSU – joint conversation o Energy projects on campus o Changing demographics and generational differences • How effective was the meeting format and engagement? o Able to be more intentional with topics given meetings occurring every other month o Remain fully remote for meetings Meeting adjourned by Councilmember Canonico at 6:41 pm 7