HomeMy WebLinkAboutConstituent Letter - Read Before Packet - 9/17/2019 - Email From Nick Francis Re: Pica Statement Regarding Northfield - Agenda Item #8From: John Duval
To: John Duval
Subject: FW: PiCA statement re Northfield
Date: Tuesday, September 17, 2019 4:39:36 PM
rom: Nick Francis <mtglutton@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, August 19, 2019 7:04 AM
To: Josh Birks <JBirks@fcgov.com>
Subject: PiCA statement re Northfield
Josh -
PiCA will be sending the statement below to City Council members this morning. Please feel free to
share with Landmark, as well.
Thanks!
Nick Francis
PiCA Convenor
970.426.6359
Dear City Council Members:
We congratulate Landmark for raising the bar on developments in Fort Collins with their Service Plan for
the Northfield Metro District. It is a solid proposal.
We are excited to see that they include:
15% For Sale Affordable
Housing units and that the rest of their units will be attainable by families making 80-120% AMI
HERS ratings for all units
EV charging stations in
each garage, and
Solar on several buildings
We hope that the Economic Health Office will dig a little deeper on behalf of Council into the cost
estimates presented in the Northfield Service Plan. We have questions - as did the City’s third-party
analyst EPS - about the inclusion of items that do not seem to qualify as public benefits. EPS identified
the clubhouse and pool, reduced density, and extra landscaping as questionable public benefits. To that
list, we would add alley-loaded homes. As EPS argues, features that a developer includes to make a
project more attractive and competitive in the marketplace may not be appropriate for inclusion as a
public benefit. We argue that the items described above fall into that category. Together, they comprise
43% of the budget dedicated to public benefits. The clubhouse and pool alone cost $2M, an amount
roughly equivalent to the project's entire energy efficiency budget, as currently proposed.
After examining the proposed public benefit budget, we hope City Council will ask Landmark to strive to
match what other metro districts - Montava and Waterfield - have proposed by taking the small steps
necessary to:
Be certified by the Department
of Energy’s Zero Energy Ready Home (ZERH) program, thereby ensuring that all units meet the
EPA’s Indoor airPlus standard and the WaterSense hot water distribution standard. Achieving the
DOE’s ZERH standard will also ensure that each unit will be commissioned
and verified by a third-party firm;
Include Energy Recovery
Ventilation systems and a no-more-than 4% duct leakage standard;
Increase the solar installations
to 3kW per unit rather than 12kW per building, or at least maximize available rooftop space on all
buildings, not just offer up to 14 kW of solar - a relatively small amount - on each of the “flats” and
clubhouse buildings.
We wish to note that the developer’s presentation and the staff’s report both compare the average HERS
scores for buildings in this project to the average HERS scores of new and resale homes in the United
States. We want to stress that this is not the appropriate standard to use. The correct standard for
evaluating metro districts should be the marginal cost above what City Code requires.
Along the same lines, it is unclear what the true cost of supplying 240V EV charging stations will be. The
applicant does not mention that City Code requires the stub-out of ½” conduit for EV charging stations in
all multi-family garages, nor do they include the number of charging stations they plan to install, nor the
number of ports at each station. Without those numbers and an estimate of the marginal cost above code,
it is not possible to properly evaluate the total cost of the project’s EV infrastructure program.
Why we must get this right: Northfield is the fifth metro district to come before Council for approval in
the last year. The number of units these five projects will build will house about 45% of all residents
expected to move to Fort Collins between now and 2030. For the City to meet its ambitious climate action
and affordable housing goals, large residential projects must lead the way. Making the City’s expectations
more explicit will help metro district applicants, City staff and the City Council work together to accomplish
these goals.