HomeMy WebLinkAboutMemo - Mail Packet - 9/2/2014 - Memorandum From Wendy Williams Re: Southeast Community ParkAugust 22, 2014
Ms. Kimberly Burnham Sliski
NOCO Law Office
325 East 7th Street
Loveland, Colorado 80537
RE: Southeast Community Park
Dear Ms. Sliski:
The City’s Park Planning staff has been working to resolve the issues raised by your clients
regarding the design of the Southeast Community Park. This message provides design
changes to the park, information requested by your clients, and responses to their questions.
Traffic Study
Sarah Burnett from the City’s Development Review Department provided the following
information to address the questions about the draft traffic report:
Regarding the traffic study for the Southeast Community park, including (1) concerns that the
traffic study would not be forward looking, and not factor in additional traffic from other
residential and non-residential projects; and (2) concerns that traffic counts were done on
Saturdays, not during the week:
• The traffic study for the development review process has not been submitted yet; it will be
submitted with the formal application (called a “Project Development Plan”).
• There are three levels of traffic studies, with the level dependent on the amount of traffic the
development is likely to generate. These levels are:
o Full looks 20 years out (if residential, typically for developments with over 100
homes)
o Intermediate – looks 5 years (if residential, typically for developments from 50-
100 homes)
o Memorandum – looks at the short range (if residential, typically for developments
with less than 50 homes)
• A “scoping” meeting has been held with traffic operations staff and the park applicant where
the scope of the traffic study was determined.
o Because of the amount of traffic expected for a community park, the traffic study
will be a full study.
o Traffic studies look at “peak hour” traffic (basically morning and evening rush
hours during the week, but also some Saturday hours in this case). Staff did not
believe that the park would generate significant traffic during the morning
weekday rush hours, but that evening rush hour data would be important to
include. The hours that were specified by traffic operations were weekdays from
4-6 p.m., and Saturdays from 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
• Traffic studies must consider three factors:
o additional traffic expected to be generated by the development itself, plus
o traffic expected from projects that have been approved but not yet completed,
plus
o an annual increase in regional growth in general, typically 1.5% per year.
• Finally, traffic operations staff recognizes that Kechter serves as a regional connection and a
“backdoor” to Windsor and other locations.
Parking and Parking Lot lights and Screening:
• Neighbors had concerns about the amount of traffic going in and out of the park site because
the original plans purposed two access points along Kechter Rd. They were also concerned
about the possibility of headlight glare from cars at night shining in windows on the homes to
the south of Kechter Rd. from those two access points (please see the attached concept
plan).
o The current Master Plan adjusts the parking lot and access along Kechter Rd. to
address those concerns. We have eliminated one access point entirely and put
that access off of Ziegler Rd. to enter the park to the west.
o With this adjustment an additional 80 parking spots were moved from the Kechter
Rd. side of the park to Ziegler Rd.
o We have also moved the one remaining access point along Kechter Rd. to the
west to line up with the open space that is on the south side of Kechter Rd., thus
eliminating the potential headlight glare into houses.
• Along with the parking lot the question came up about screening for the parking and the
parking lot lights.
o We have included in the current design to have street trees on the north side of
Kechter planted in the detached sidewalk (City Code), as well as adding
additional landscape screening (trees and shrubs) between the back of walk and
the proposed parking lot.
o The area between the back of walk along Kechter Rd. and the parking lot will
also be bermed to help screen the parking lot from Kechter Rd.
• A question was raised at the last meeting about why some trees were missing on the south
detached sidewalk along Kechter Rd. and if they could be planted to help screen the park
from the houses
o The Forestry Department along with Park Planning planted several street trees in
July 2014 that were missing in the south detached sidewalk along the Kechter
Rd.
• Neighbors had a question of how much acreage was designed to be lighted per the total park
acreage. They also wanted to compare that verses the other City Community Parks. Please
see the following:
Park Name Total Park Acreage Total Lighted Acreage % of Park Lighted
Southeast 54 5.9 10.9
Spring Canyon 100 1 1
Fossil Creek 100 6.1 6.1
Rolland Moore 68 12.2 17.9
Edora 65 7.2 11.08
Lee Martinez 90 7.8 8.7
City Park 85 6.5 7.6
Play Area at Radiant Park and at Southeast Park
• A question was asked about enlarging the playground at Radiant Park vs. putting a new
playground at Southeast.
o Radiant Park and Southeast Park are all part of the approved City Parks Policy
Plan and are intended to be complete separate parks. Radiant is intended to
serve the immediate neighborhood, while Southeast is intended to serve a
broader area. A large playground is a very significant element in all City
community parks and one is needed in the Southeast Park. A similar
arrangement exists at Spring Canyon Community Park and the adjacent
Cottonwood Glen Neighborhood Park, which both have playgrounds.
• A question was asked about why the 5-12 year old play area was not immediately adjacent to
the 2-5 year old play area at Radiant Park and if those could be redone.
o Radiant Park went through an open house public process just as Southeast has
and the comments from neighbors at the time were positive about separating the
two play areas and not having them immediately adjacent to one another. We
believe this arrangement is working well.
• A question was asked about why the Radiant Park 5-12 year old play area was so close to
Kechter Rd. and if it could be moved farther away.
o The 5-12 play area meets and falls within the national playground safety
guidelines for distances away from parking areas and roads. The public process
was positive on where the 5-12 play area was placed, as mentioned in the
previous question. We believe this play area location is appropriate.
Turf Field Lights
The Park Planning staff is considering the possibility of not lighting the Southeast Park turf
fields. We need to complete the overall park design before finalizing the decision on the turf field
lights. We hope we have addressed the concerns raised by your clients and provided them with
the information and responses they requested. Please let us know if your clients have any
remaining concerns with the design of the Southeast Park.
Sincerely,
Craig M. Kisling