HomeMy WebLinkAboutRIVER MODERN - PDP - PDP150005 - MINUTES/NOTES - APPEAL TO CITY COUNCILADMINISTRATIVE HEARING
CITY OF FORT COLLINS
Held Thursday, June 25, 2015
Conference Rooms A-D, 281 North College Avenue
Fort Collins, Colorado
In the Matter of:
River Modern, 900 East Stuart Street
PDP #15005
ADMINISTRATIVE HEARING OFFICER:
Marcus A. McAskin
STAFF MEMBERS PRESENT:
Seth Lorson, City Planner
Kelly Kimple, Environmental Planner
Joe Olson, Traffic Engineer
Mark Rigasa, Development Review Engineer
Wes Lamarque, Stormwater Engineer
Paul Eckman, Deputy City Attorney
2
1 ADMINISTRATIVE HEARING OFFICER MARCUS MCASKIN: Alright, well good
2 evening everybody, we’ll go ahead and get started. My name is Marcus McAskin, I’m a land use
3 attorney in Denver, Colorado; I’ve been selected as the Hearing Officer for the application
4 tonight. This is the River Modern development, 900 East Stuart in Fort Collins; it’s the PDP, or
5 Project Development Plan, number 15005. Just to give you a little bit of an overview of how the
6 hearing will go tonight…and I believe there’s a board up there that gives you kind of an
7 overview of the process, but I’m going to open this up and allow staff to give an overview of the
8 proposed project and then I’m going to turn it over to the applicant, let the applicant talk about
9 the proposal…any details that perhaps were not included in the staff overview. At that point, if
10 there’s any…you know…questions following the applicant’s presentation…you know…staff has
11 the opportunity to question the applicant. I will then open it up for public hearing, and obviously
12 we’re going to have some public comment tonight. I thank you all for being here and being
13 willing to come to the hearing and comment on the proposal. If you would like to speak and
14 have your comments entered as part of the record, I ask that you come up to this table and sign in
15 on that sheet so that we have the correct spelling of you name and your address. The purpose of
16 that is twofold, one so I can get your name correct in the decision, and the second is that, if you
17 are in attendance tonight, you will receive a written copy of my decision mailed to you by the
18 Planning Department.
19 So, with that, we’ll go ahead and get started. My understanding of this proposal is that
20 it’s an infill development proposal on a relatively narrow lot on the north side of Stuart for, I
21 believe, 30 single-family attached units, and also an existing single-family house will be used as
22 the new site for the Waldorf School. The site is zoned LMN, or low-density mixed-use
23 neighborhood, and both of those land uses, both the single-family attached and a childcare center
24 are allowed as a use by right, or are permitted within that zone district subject to administrative
25 review, or a Type I review, which is what we’re doing this evening. So, with that I think I’ll turn
26 it over to staff. One other comment on the public hearing…I try to respect everybody’s time, my
27 time, your time, staff’s time, when we have a big crowd like this. So, my general rule of thumb
28 is I give speakers three minutes…that’s kind of my typical rule. I usually allow a lot of leeway
29 there; if you’re making good points and I think that they’re valuable to the record, I’m going to
30 let you go beyond three minutes. However, if we get later in the evening and I think that those
31 comments are repetitive or are…you know…you’re testifying to facts that I’ve already taken
32 down in my notes, I’m going to ask that you shorten up the comments so that we can give
33 everybody here a fair opportunity to speak and to address both me and potentially ask questions
34 of the applicant this evening. So, with that, I’ll turn it over to Seth Lorson with the City’s
35 Planning Department. And, Seth I don’t know if you want to also introduce other members of
36 staff that may be here this evening. I know that we probably have some folks from
37 environmental and traffic that are here to answer specific questions, and if you want to introduce
38 those folks now, that would be great.
3
1 MR. SETH LORSON: Thank you Mr. McAskin. Again, my name is Seth Lorson, I’m
2 the City Planner who ushered this project through the public process. Some City staff that’s here
3 to assist with questions today are: Kelly Kimple is an Environmental Planner, Joe Olson, Traffic
4 Engineer, Mark Rigasa is a Development Review Engineer, and Wes Lamarque is a Stormwater
5 Engineer; they’re here to answer questions of their expertise. My presentation is going to be
6 relatively limited to a little bit about the site and then kind of speaking about the process. I’m
7 not going to spend barely any time on the proposal itself; I really feel that that is the applicant’s
8 responsibility to have their…to present and propose their project.
9 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: Could you speak a little louder please?
10 MR. LORSON: I sure can.
11 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you.
12 MR. LORSON: So this image up here on the screen is the zoning map that shows the
13 river…you can see the floodplain there, that’s the purple and blue, and then the yellow indicates
14 that it’s the low-density mixed-use neighborhood, or LMN zone district. It…the single-family
15 attached, or the two-family dwelling units, better known as duplexes, is permitted in the LMN
16 zone district with review and approval by a Type I, or Administrative Hearing, which is what
17 we’re at this evening. The proposal is for a child care center, which is going to go into the
18 existing house and thirty units of two-family dwellings…it would be fifteen duplexes.
19 Now, just a little bit about the process; it started back in November of last year. We’ve
20 had two neighborhood meetings, and we had neighborhood meetings not because they were
21 required, because they’re actually not required, but because of the concerns that we were hearing
22 from the neighborhood. We heard…we’ll go into that too. So, we heard a lot of concerns, so we
had two different neighborhood meetings on December 18
th
, and then one on April 1
st
23 . We had
three different staff reviews. The first two on March 25
th
and May 6
th
24 were both formal staff
25 reviews, and the last one was an informal one where we didn’t actually have a meeting but we
did go through a review and we provided comments to the applicant on June 1
st
26 . And then today
27 is the Administrative Public Hearing.
28 So during the staff review…it’s been, for lack of a better word, a challenge, I think on
29 both sides to determine this project’s compatibility with the existing neighborhood, it’s
30 compliance with the Land Use Code…I really feel that the images on the screen here are
31 indicative of the challenge that we have had with reviewing this. I sat down with the project
32 architect for a three hour meeting just to determine how to measure height and how to speak to
33 the maximum height in which they were…they’re proposing. So, a number of things we did
34 with the building heights and the…is we asked them to be more compatible with the adjacent
35 neighborhood as well as with the river corridor. So, the unit on the left, you can see is unit A-1.
36 The top one was the initial submittal and that was the unit…was one of the units that would be
37 down along Spring Creek. After some work with the Land Use Code and trying to comply with
4
1 the compatibility standards of the natural area, you can see in the lower left corner how the
2 building had come down in height with some assistance of grading up around its edges. The
3 image on the right is unit B-1 which is one of the units that’s internal to the site. Initially it
4 was…was 39 feet tall, two and a half inches, and we found that that wasn’t meeting the Land
5 Use Code. And so you can see in the bottom right, it’s been lowered to 35 feet, 11 inches. And
6 there are some…staff really did a thorough job of enforcing the height, because you can see how
7 this does have a little bit of an awkward look to it in terms of…it used to come up like it does in
8 the higher picture, but that wasn’t meeting the absolute maximum requirement in height, so we,
9 as staff, asked them to meet that requirement and not exceed the maximum height, so they had to
10 cut off half of the top there so as to not exceed that maximum height. This is really just
11 indicative of the challenge that this project’s review has gone through in…with determining
12 compatibility and meeting the numerical standards of the project. This was really kind of
13 emphasized by our work and engagement with the community.
14 I’ve met with a number of the people here in the audience beyond the two neighborhood
15 meetings we had; I’ve met with them on the side and sat down and listened to their concerns,
16 which are really expressed up here. We have nine comment letters in the record, and they’re all
17 in opposition to the project. We’ve had a site visit. So, as you can see, the concerns are really
18 about density…kind of the nature of the site is that it’s on the river…it’s on the creek, on Spring
19 Creek, so there’s concerns about floodplain and flooding and runoff into the adjacent properties,
20 one of the properties to the west, which is Brookhaven, sits lower than this property so there’s
21 some concerns about the compatibility between those two properties and the runoff that could
22 possibly go from one property to the next. I’ve spoken to compatibility about the existing
23 neighborhood, and you know that really leads into the building heights as well. Parking has been
24 a concern in terms of spillover into…onto Stuart, into the neighborhoods. Traffic and queuing
25 for the child care center have both been expressed as concerns. Green space is something that
26 we heard about…is that the units are of a size that there is not really a space for being outdoor in
27 your…on your lot for barbecuing and those kind of typical things that you see with dwellings
28 and in houses. Privacy in terms of kind of looking over into your neighbors’ yards…those kind
29 of things have been expressed as concerns. Building height, I already went into that. Views…I
30 don’t mean to keep talking about Brookhaven, but Brookhaven, as it sits lower, were expressing
31 concerns about the sun coming into their light….or into their properties, and you know looking
32 out now into a development as opposed to horses in the pasture, and then the shading from those
33 properties, so views and shading kind of go hand-in-hand. We heard some stuff about safety; in
34 terms of can emergency access get into the site and circulate in the site. And then as cars come
35 and go from the property, just as the general impact…with that conflict with pedestrians, is there
36 adequate sight lines. So those are the general concerns that we heard from the neighborhood in
37 the neighborhood meetings as well as the public comments.
38 A couple other things I would like to address are just the modification of standards that
39 are requested. The first modification is requesting to reduce the front setbacks of the buildings
5
1 from 15 feet to 9 to 10 feet in respective areas. Staff felt that this was a really good idea; what it
2 does is it pulls the buildings further away from the adjacent properties, away from their property
3 lines. On the slide here it’s noted that in the first diagram…it’s really difficult to tell the
4 difference between these…but in the first diagram, the edge of the building would be about 33
5 feet from the property line, when with the modification it would move to 39 feet from the
6 property line, which would help to relieve some of those concerns that we heard from the
7 neighbors, as well as that additional space adds room for another two vehicles per garage space
8 in their driveway. So that would also help with the spillover effect and adequate parking.
9 The second modification was to allow a portion of the street-like private drive to not have
10 the detached sidewalk or the on-street parking. Now, it’s kind of hard to tell here, but this area
11 shows the existing structure there which is so close to the curb line that you couldn’t detach a
12 sidewalk in that place, so staff supports the modification for that so you don’t have to demolish a
13 building. And then the on-street parking in this area, as you can imagine, the circulation coming
14 in and out of the site with parking right here would give congestion and conflict and sight line
15 issues, so staff was supporting that as well.
16 Now, we discovered this today, so I have to apologize to the applicant. But we were on-
17 site the other day and there was a couple Red Tailed Hawks flying around there and we
18 recommend an additional condition of approval to this…to this project as it reads up here. It
19 says the applicant shall conduct a survey, subject to the review and approval by the City’s
20 environmental planner, for active Red Tail or Swainson’s Hawks nests on the subject property
21 and adjoining properties prior to construction. If Red Tailed or Swainson’s Hawks are
22 determined to be nesting on the property or adjoining properties, the developer shall implement a
23 temporary limit of development of four hundred…this should read four hundred and fifty…and
24 that’s my fault…four hundred and fifty as the Land Use Code reads…feet radius from active
nests during the period of February 15
th
through July 15
th
25 of the first year of construction as per
26 Section 3.4.1(N)(5)(c) of the Land Use Code.
27 Now staff finds that the proposed development complies with the requirements of the
28 Land Use Code…Article II, Article III, including the two modifications of standard, and the
29 alternative compliance request which I didn’t go into in this presentation, but is in the staff
30 report, and Article IV, the LMN zone district. There is also one additional…one additional
31 condition of approval…that the applicant cooperate with the neighbors on determining the fence
32 height between the properties. And that’s all I have.
33 MR. MCASKIN: What’s the maximum fence height? Six feet?
34 MR. LORSON: Six feet, yeah. And I believe the condition reads between four and six
35 feet.
36 MR. MCASKIN: Okay, and let me just ask another question that I had in reviewing the
37 staff report...I noticed that you refer to these in a lot of parts of the staff report as two-family
6
1 dwellings. And when I look at the plat, the proposed plat that’s been submitted, each of the units
2 would be on an individual lot that’s been proposed. So I’m just wondering, for…maybe it’s just
3 so that I understand…are they…under the Code are they considered two-family dwellings, which
4 is a dwelling containing two dwelling units, or are they single-family attached, which is a single-
5 family dwelling attached to one or more dwellings or buildings…each dwelling located on its
6 own separate lot.
7 MR. LORSON: Well, they’re both permitted through the same administrative review
8 process.
9 MR. MCASKIN: Agreed.
10 MR. LORSON: I think that we would have to look at the definition of them to know if
11 the platting of them differentiates those two. And if I’m incorrect in calling them two-family
12 dwellings instead of single-family attached dwellings, then I would like the record to reflect that.
13 MR. MCASKIN: Thank you for the overview. At this point, I’ll turn it over to the
14 applicant, and if you would introduce yourself and maybe…I’m assuming that these folks are
15 part of the applicant team, maybe you want to introduce those folks for me as well.
16 MR. MARK GOLDBERG: I will as the latter part of my remarks, thank you; thank you
17 Seth. Good evening, my name is Mark Goldberg of Goldberg Properties, and along with my
18 partner Kyle Henderson who’s sitting to my left, and our team that we’ll introduce shortly, we’re
19 here to present the River Modern project before you and all of you who are in attendance this
20 evening. Kyle and I have been involved in the community building business for over fifty years
21 as the profession of real estate developers. Our practice has been in a variety of real estate
22 projects ranging from retail, residential, senior housing, and office. We’re also partnering with a
23 local builder, FR Development, who’s here today, and FR is known throughout the Fort Collins
24 community and is currently developing in Old Town North. Kyle and I are both Colorado
25 natives; our roots are statewide and several projects in Northern Colorado. Kyle attended CSU
26 and has lived in Fort Collins…had lived in Fort Collins and had his business here. I went to a
27 little college in Grand Junction that I won’t talk about too much…since it’s out of favor here.
28 We were asked at one of our neighborhood meetings why we were undertaking the
29 project; certainly a reasonable question that deserves a cogent answer. When Kyle introduced
30 me to this project, it had all the attributes that we had been seeking: urban infill, building on
31 existing infrastructure, access to open space, and proximity to community biking and walking
32 trails, transportation, nearby shopping, as well as zoning that fit the correct development scenario
33 that we intended to take on, that is supported by the Land Use Code. These and other attributes
34 such as topography that would not be substantially manipulated, addressed our own sensibilities
35 of reasonable development that have been refined over the years as demand of sustainable and
36 environmental forward-looking real estate development have reached the everyday
37 consciousness of communities, citizens and professionals associated with community building.
7
1 As Seth mentioned, a part of our project is the Waldorf School, and Kyle will make some
2 comments about how that fits into our project.
3 MR. KYLE HENDERSON: I’ve been working with Riversong Waldorf School since
4 2006, and am friends with a couple of the Boardmembers, and that’s how we got involved in this
5 project originally. One of the Boardmembers knew the seller of the land and knew that…had a
6 relationship with the school since the school is currently two houses down from the site. And
7 through that process got to know the seller, got to know…build a relationship, and they were
8 trying to figure out, how do they come up with a permanent home, because they were currently
9 leasing and that wasn’t a sustainable solution. So, I’ve been trying since 2006 to try and find a
10 home for Riversong, and eventually this seemed like the perfect opportunity; to be able to not
11 only provide a great home for Riversong, but also do a nice infill development. And, at the same
12 time be able to gift the home to Riversong as a non-profit so they’re able to have a sustainable
13 future. So we’re happy that we’ve been able to meet that requirement for Riversong and partner
14 with them on this project as well.
15 MR. GOLDBERG: You know, our aspirations of the project and the design of the project
16 meets those of the City of Fort Collins as set forth in the primary vision and values statement of
17 the City of Fort Collins, City Plan, the City of Fort Collins comprehensive plan that was revised
18 more recently in 2010. City Plan not only articulates the community’s values through key
19 principles to innovate, sustain and connect, but provides the backbone for the City of Fort
20 Collins’ principal planning document that we will review this evening in our presentation: the
21 Land Use Code. City Plan has been a dynamic tool over the years and has responded to growth,
22 demographic shifts, environmental consciousness, technology, and how these affect and shape
23 people who want to live, work and play. The City of Fort Collins, as is well known, sets some of
24 the highest standards, and the community vigilance to these standards has made it a world-class
25 city and one of the best places to live in our nation, as we’ve all read in articles over the last
26 several years. City Plan recognizes that development growth should be focused within well-
27 defined growth management areas and encourages infill development as the most efficient use of
28 the public infrastructure. The emphasis on infill and the redevelopment using the existing
29 infrastructure captures the values embodied in energy resources that will reduce the carbon
30 footprint. Earlier visions of City Plan and the most recent revision envision a community with a
31 wide variety of housing types, such as duplexes, two-family dwellings, or single-family attached
32 dwellings, so that people from all income levels have choices of quality affordable housing in
33 diverse neighborhoods throughout the community.
34 A key theme, component, of the on-going growth and evolution of the community is the
35 focus on compact development patterns. There are many policies in City Plan that are aligned
36 with our approach to the River Modern project that will be covered in our presentation. The
37 Community Neighborhood and Livability section of City Plan includes these which will certainly
38 reflect our aspirations: the addition of new dwelling on vacant land and other undeveloped
39 parcels surrounded by existing residential neighborhoods, seek compatibility with
8
1 neighborhoods, while compatibility does not mean uniformity, encourage a variety of housing
2 types and locations, maximize land for residential development that thereby positively influences
3 housing affordability. The River Modern project, as stated in the staff report, meets the
4 standards of the Land Use Code but with two minor modifications that we will go over later.
5 The process to reach compliance with the land use plan included neighborhood meetings, of
6 which there were two, and Seth mentioned that, several meetings and discussions with staff that
7 resulted in revisions of both and clarity to our design, but frankly also made the plan a better
8 plan. We appreciate the professionalism and dedication of Seth and his colleagues on the Fort
9 Collins City staff; they have demonstrated to not only us, but those in attendance in the
10 neighborhood, for the process. Thanks Seth.
11 Nothing…notwithstanding the riverfront project meets the many standards of the Land
12 Use Code and the vision and principles of the City of Fort Collins as set forth in City Plan, we
13 realize that we have not been able to fully please some of those who live nearby. This outcome
14 is something we have made every effort to overcome and several changes to the plan. We have
15 attempted to meet directly with a family by the name of the Oesterle’s, who are here this evening
16 to address their concerns…expect that you will hear from them and others later. But,
17 unfortunately our attempts to meet with this family have been rebuffed. No doubt, River Modern
18 represents change from the one home, one horse or two horse pasture that has been there for
19 many years, and even long before Brookhaven and the other surrounding communities had taken
20 place. Change is always difficult but we firmly believe River Modern will enhance the existing
21 neighborhood, bringing vibrancy associated with new state-of-the-art housing that attracts both
22 young families and folks such as me looking for the more contemporary, diverse urban
23 environments with great amenities and access to open space and trails.
24 We have engaged a terrific team that I will introduce that have partnered with Kyle and I,
25 that are with us today, on the River Modern project. These professionals are all from Fort
26 Collins, and we felt that as members of the Fort Collins community, they would be best to
27 interpret the goals that their community has since this is the place that they have chosen to work,
28 live, raise their children, and they all embrace what Fort Collins is. Let me introduce our team:
29 Mr. Roger Sherman, along with his colleague Mollie Simpson, of the planning firm BHA, sitting
30 to my left, our legal counsel has been Lucia Liley, a long-time attorney with the City of Fort
31 Collins and the law firm Liley, Rogers and Martel, Mr. Justin Larson and Mr. Jeff Hansen of the
32 architectural firm VFLA, Michael Oberlander of the civil design firm Interwest Consulting
33 Group, Mr. Greg Fisher of Greg Fisher Architects, and Mr. Joe Henderson, Sustainable Traffic
34 Solutions, our traffic engineer. We’re here to address any questions that you and others may
35 have, and it is our hope that you will find our application in compliance with the Land Use Code,
36 and we seek your approval. And with that, I’ll introduce Roger who will get into the details of
37 our plan.
38 MR. ROGER SHERMAN: Again, I’m Roger Sherman; I’m with BHA Design here in
39 Fort Collins. I’m a landscape architect and land planner. And…I’ll try not to repeat too much of
9
1 what was said; we can always come back to things if we need to. So…obviously, you all care
2 about this part of our city, and it’s a really great part of our city, Spring Creek flows right
3 through it, it’s close enough to downtown but still far enough away, and similar to CSU, there’s
4 so much going on this area. And, it’s kind of a little slice of romance too with the horses in the
5 field today, so I can see there’s an emotional connection that people around the site have to this
6 place, and that’s always difficult.
7 But, you know, the…I just want to walk through…I think most of you know exactly
8 where it is, but this is South Lemay Avenue, just to orient you, and East Stuart Street. Indian
9 Hills Park is here, Spring Creek we’ve highlighted in blue, and then the Spring Creek Trail
10 highlighted in yellow, and then Spring Meadows condos is here, Brookhaven, a few other newer
11 developments to the north, and then primarily a lot of single-family around us in addition to
12 those newer developments. Most of the area on the north side of the street surrounding our
13 property is also zoned LMN, and then there are MMN, Neighborhood Commercial, RL, and RL
14 to the south of us as well. We’ve talked about…we can come back to this if we want, but I do
15 want to state that we do feel that the River Modern development embodies a lot of the
16 philosophies and ideas that are carried forth in the City Plan as well as the LMN zone district.
17 Now we can come back to this if you like.
18 Kind of looking back at this process, we started…I think our first meeting, when I met a
19 lot of you, was in mid-December…tried to get in right before Christmas before everybody got
20 off on vacations and things, and this was the plan that we shared with you at that time. And,
21 actually, there’s a lot of similarities, but there’s also a lot of differences. And, as Seth
22 mentioned, there were a lot of concerns that were raised by folks, and we’ve taken a lot of steps
23 to try and mitigate some of those concerns. Just a couple things…some of the biggest
24 changes…Cherokee Drive was kind of off-set, not centered within the site. And what that did,
25 was we were trying to create a nice, big greenbelt connection all the way through back to the trail
26 on this side of the street, but the net effect that that had was that it shortened up the driveways on
27 the west side of the development and pushed these homes closer to Brookhaven. And so we
28 heard that concern and we’ve shifted that street over to center it within the property, which
29 pulled these units…allowed us to pull these units away, as Seth mentioned earlier. We also
30 increased parking in those driveways, which Seth talked about earlier as well.
31 Go back here one slide…one of the biggest differences is that, at that time, we had a
32 street here and an alley, and all of the garages on these northern units facing Spring Creek, and
33 we heard a lot of concerns about that as well, so we actually removed this alley, reoriented these
34 units so the garages are facing inward towards our development and the fronts of the homes are
35 now facing Spring Creek. There are other differences too, but in the interest of time, we’ll keep
36 moving here.
37 The City Code has required setbacks and a lot of other requirements, but focusing on just
38 kind of the perimeter, on how our setbacks related to the requirements. Stuart Street requires a
10
1 minimum 15 foot front setback, side yards 5 feet, and rear yards are 8 feet. And then…and just
2 in general, we either meet or exceed those standards by a great deal. The only spot where we
3 actually…two of these units…two of these four units on Stuart are at 15 and the other two are at
4 16 and a half. But then kind of winding our way around the property, we’re at 39 feet here,
5 we’re 14 feet on lot one, next to the Oesterle’s home, a little over 20 feet in this area next to lot
6 15, over 20 feet near lot 22, and then again 39 feet, and then we’re obviously not changing the
7 setback at the child care center; that’ll remain as it is today. So, just wanted to emphasize
8 what…we’ve really tried to be sensitive to the people around us by pushing those units further
9 into our site. We are compliant with all these requirements; the minimum net density is three
10 dwelling units per acre in LMN and the max is nine, and the maximum building height is two
11 and a half stories, Seth touched on that a little bit. We are…our density is 7.63 dwelling units
12 per acre, both gross and net. We do comply with the two and a half story requirement and our
13 units will range from about 1,800 square feet to about 2,000 square feet and the price will be
14 around the $400s. The…well we can come back to these things if you have specific questions.
15 As we talk about compatibility with…of densities, we looked at all of the…at least the
16 more recent developments that are either multi-family…that are surrounding us. And Spring
17 Meadows is at about 6.43 dwelling units per acre. Depending on how you calculate this, when
18 this was initially developed, it included Mallard’s Nest Natural Area, and at that time it would
19 have calculated the density at 5.35, but this is now a Natural Area and if you were to build
20 what’s here today, that would be 7.69 dwelling units per acre on this site. And then 7.86 and
21 6.2s and we’re at 7.63, so we feel like we’re kind of in a good spot there relative to the
22 surroundings.
23 Parking…we have the requirements for the residential piece is that there are two parking
24 spaces required for each three-bedroom unit, and each of these units is a three-bedroom home.
25 And so our required parking is 60 spaces, so we have that covered in our garages. We also have
26 an additional 21 spaces on Cherokee Drive and Watercourse Way, and then six more for the
27 child care facility, and so we’ve got 81 spaces that are allowed to be counted by Code, and then
28 if you count the additional 48 spaces in the driveway that aren’t allowed to be counted by Code,
29 we have 129 parking spaces for the residences and six for the child care, as I mentioned, which is
30 compliant with Code as well.
31 Right now…we talked a lot about fences and I think we’re getting closer; I feel like we’re
32 getting closer to something that everybody is happy with. So what we’re talking about is four to
33 six foot fences on both the west and east sides of the property and then changing to six feet
34 adjacent to the child care center, which is required by Code. We would have a four foot fence
35 around the front yard of the child care, and then a four foot fence on the east side of the
36 playground and then six foot fence on the north and west sides of the playground. And this is
37 generally what they would look like, and again, we’re willing to work with the neighboring
38 property owners on the exact height, the openness or solid character of the fence on a case-by-
11
1 case basis so that we can, you know, create a better situation, or the best situation for each of you
2 based on your specific conditions.
3 This is zooming in on the north end of the property, so here’s Spring Creek and those
4 north eight units…we’re required to provide a 100 foot buffer along Spring Creek, and that’s
5 what this light green area represents. In addition to that, we’re also providing another 4,500
6 square feet of open space, and so the two together total up to about 44,450 square feet, and that
7 represents about 28% of our total site area. So, it’s a great resource not only for the residents
8 here, but also for the creek and for others using the trails throughout this open space.
9 MR. MCASKIN: Roger, what’s the approximate acreage of that buffer…the 100 foot
10 buffer.
11 MR. SHERMAN: It is a little less than an acre.
12 MR. MCASKIN: Thanks.
13 MR. SHERMAN: Sure. There were some concerns raised early too that our development
14 looked too rigid as compared to the curvature of Spring Creek and that it wasn’t responding to
15 Spring Creek, so we’ve taken some time to try and address that as well; in fact, maybe that
16 previous slide helps illustrate that a little bit better. The…so you can see the creek, the 100 foot
17 buffer, and the homes…we have kind of reduced their setbacks. You can kind of see…these are
18 the few units that don’t allow parking in their driveways, and that was all to respond to this…pull
19 those homes a little bit further away from the creek to get more of a softer edge along Spring
20 Creek; and so this was trying to represent that. This yellow dashed line represents the closest
21 kind of…either structure or parking lot or something like that. So you can kind of see how the
22 buffer changes in relationship to the creek, and when we get to our site…you know, the Spring
23 Meadows buildings are much closer and then we dip back and the Brookhaven buildings are
24 much closer, but they are also responding to the layout of the creek. So, I think we fit nicely into
25 the…kind of the lay of the land and the relationship to the creek.
26 Another great thing that we talked about in that first slide was that…today there’s not
27 much access to Spring Creek Trail on the south side…from this part of the world. And so, you
28 can get on Spring Creek Trail from Lemay, from Stover…and there’s kind of a back door access
29 through Brookhaven that Brookhaven doesn’t like people to know about. And so, what we’ve
30 talked about doing is adding a public trail through our development connecting to both Spring
31 Creek Trail and then also extending a trail over to Spring Meadows that will allow them to get
32 access to the trail directly. And so, I think it’s a great neighborhood benefit. It’s a benefit for
33 this development, for the entire neighborhood to be able to get safely and in a nice setting to the
34 trail. With that, I’m going to turn it over to Lucia Liley.
12
1 MS. LUCIA LILEY: Mr. McAskin, my name is Lucia Liley, 300 South Howes Street,
2 Fort Collins, representing the developer. I want to address the request for alternative compliance
3 and the two modification requests.
4 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: Could you speak louder please?
5 MS. LILEY: I will, sorry.
6 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m sorry.
7 MS. LILEY: No, that’s okay, I will do that. Let me scoot back…no, I can speak much
8 louder. So, I think at every infill project I have been involved in, we have heard comments…I
9 have heard comments, that the use of these tools, the alternative compliance and modifications,
10 are somehow inappropriate…that they mean that the project doesn’t work with the site, that
11 we’re not compliant with the Code. And I want to suggest that that’s…it’s the reverse situation,
12 that the Land Use Code specifically permits these tools recognizing and acknowledging that
13 individual developments vary. There are different challenges and that there are different ways of
14 complying, meeting the purposes and the high standards of the Code, but in a somewhat different
15 way. This is particularly true for infill developments where you’re building…putting a
16 development in a built environment that might have been developed under different Code
17 requirements, different setbacks, different styles, and the challenge is to work to mitigate the
18 impacts of this development as an infill development on that built environment. And as you will
19 see as we go through these individual requests, the modifications arise not because the project
20 cannot do what the Code strictly requires, but in an effort to make a better project and to better
21 mitigate neighborhood concerns.
22 Now, the alternative compliance, which we’re going to start with, is different than a
23 modification in that specific sections of the Land Use Code state that alternative compliance can
24 be used. In other words, recognizing that there are a lot of different ways to meet the purpose of
25 that particular requirement, and solar is one of those. So, if we look at the Land Use Code
26 standard, it says that 65% of the lots must conform to the definition of a solar-oriented lot in
27 order to preserve potential for solar energy usage. The applicant is requesting approval of an
28 alternative plan with less than 65% of the lots meeting the technical solar-oriented definition, but
29 protecting solar access for 70% of those lots. So, if we look at the next slide…why do we need
30 to ask for alternative compliance? And here’s the reason…this property has a north-south
31 orientation as you can see, from Stuart heading up to Spring Creek. That limits east-west streets.
32 Now, we have lots that are oriented to the east and west that meet the solar-oriented definition;
33 there are 12 of those and they are noted on this slide. We also have another 9 lots that are
34 oriented on the north-south streets that don’t meet that technical definition, but because they’re
35 using south-facing roof planes, they’re suitable for solar collectors. And the south-facing roof
36 planes are shown on all the elevations which are part of the record.
13
1 So, the standard for approval of alternative compliance is that the alternative plan
2 accomplishes the purpose of solar access equally or better than a plan that complies. The
3 purpose of the standard is as stated, to encourage solar systems and to preserve the right for solar
4 access. So in this particular case, a plan that would comply would have 20 lots that would meet
5 the technical solar-oriented definition of the Land Use Code. The alternate plan, which we’re
6 showing, will again have 12 lots that meet that definition, but another 9 lots that, because of the
7 south-facing roof plane, are suitable for solar collectors. The end result of all of that is that we
8 will have a total of 21 lots with solar access, or 70% of the lots, which meet the purpose of the
9 standard better than the plan that would comply. Another advantage of this particular alternative
10 compliance plan, that keeping the north-south oriented street helps preserve the existing natural
11 topography and it doesn’t require significant regrading of the site. In addition, the north-south
12 orientation promotes better neighborhood connectivity and non-vehicular access to the trail with
13 the sidewalks and trail connections that have been provided. The last comment on alternative
14 compliance is this: the Code requires that a specific finding be made with regard to this kind of a
15 request, so we would ask the Hearing Officer, in the analysis, if it is found that this complies
16 with the requirements for alternative compliance, that a specific finding along the lines of what’s
17 shown here be provided as part of the decision.
18 Let’s move then to the two requested modifications. Unlike the alternative compliance,
19 modifications can be requested for any applicable standard, as long as you can meet the grounds
20 for them, and there are four different grounds that allow you to use a modification; they range
21 from being equal to or better than to meeting some sort of city-wide need, being minimal and not
22 significant changes, or topography. You only need to comply with one of those four grounds.
23 So let’s move to the first request which has to do with residential setbacks. Actually,
24 Roger, let’s go back one more. So the Land Use Code standard is this: that every residential
25 building needs to have a 15 foot minimum setback. The applicant’s request in the modification
26 is that 9 units have setbacks of 9 feet versus 15, and another 9 units have setbacks of 10.5 feet
27 versus 15. Twelve, I would add, would have the full 15 foot…would be unaffected by this
28 modification request. All of the units that we’re talking about reducing that minimum front
29 setback are the units on the interior…facing the interior Cherokee street-like private drive. Now,
30 note again, this is…this is showing the project if it were to comply with the 15 foot setback, so
31 this is a fully compliant plan; we could do that plan. What we’re proposing is the next plan, with
32 the modification, which would show the…which would show the reduced setbacks along the
33 interior street, Cherokee…so you see the lots that are reduced to 9 feet and the lots that are
34 reduced to 10.5, and the impact of that is that it increases the rear setback, so the setbacks on the
35 east and west of those lots, giving a greater distance between those buildings and adjacent
36 neighborhood buildings.
37 If we look at the standards for approval, then, we believe that we meet two of the four
38 standards; we only need to meet one, but we think we meet it on two different grounds. The first
39 one is that we believe the modified plan promotes the purpose of the standard equally well or
14
1 better than a plan that complies. The purpose of the standard, here, is to promote safety.
2 Generally, greater setbacks from the street help with pedestrian-vehicular traffic. Second
3 purpose is to promote pedestrian-oriented and visually interesting streetscapes. We believe we
4 meet this because the proposed modification does not increase the risk of pedestrian-vehicle
5 conflicts. This is because the reduced setback is on an internal, private street where the buildings
6 front. Vehicular access to the driveways and garages is on the rear of the buildings, so there will
7 be relatively little vehicular traffic on this street and not a safety risk in reducing somewhat the
8 setbacks from the buildings. In addition, it continues to maintain the positive pedestrian
9 experience and streetscape as the slides that Roger showed previously demonstrate.
10 We also believe that this modified plan would meet the grounds that it is a nominal and
11 inconsequential change in the context of the development plan as a whole, and that it continues
12 to advance the purposes of the Land Use Code. This only affects units interior to the project
13 along the private street. Again, limited impact to vehicular traffic; the vehicles are going to
14 access from the driveway garages on the rear of the lots. It continues to allow important Land
15 Use Code purposes, innovative quality design, infill, housing variety, and sensitivity to existing
16 neighborhoods by reducing those rear yard setbacks…or increasing, I’m sorry…the rear yard
17 setbacks.
18 The last standard…every modification has to be shown to not create a detriment to the
19 public good, and we’ve listed some of the things that we think help demonstrate that, that it
20 continues to provide good and adequate vehicular and pedestrian circulation, it helps to address
21 privacy concerns of the neighbors by adding 6 feet on the east-west setback areas, it helps
22 address parking concerns of the neighbors because it allows for additional driveway parking, 18
23 more spaces, and it provides better privacy for the outdoor spaces that residents of the project
24 will use.
25 So let’s move to the second and last modification. This has to do with sidewalk and
26 parking. The standard is that street-like private drives, so that would be the interior Cherokee
27 Drive street, has to have on-street parking and detached sidewalks. The applicant’s request is
28 that for a stretch of Cherokee Drive, adjacent to the child care center, the sidewalk be attached,
29 not detached, and that there be no on-street parking on that limited section of Cherokee Drive. If
30 we look at the slide, you will see the area in red that we’re talking about that will have an
31 attached sidewalk and where there will not be parking. That is 82 feet, starts and Stuart then
32 heads up to the playground area, and there will be no on-street parking in that area as well. Note
33 that to the west, there will be a fully detached sidewalk in the same area there that we’re talking
34 about, so there will be a detached on the other side. Now the Land Use Code standard that we
35 believe…we believe here again we meet two. The first one is that the modified plan meets the
36 standard equally well or better than. The purpose of the standard, again, is safe access. Here,
37 there is no negative impact to overall transportation safety. This is a small infill property and
38 this is a small stretch of one road. Project access is not impaired; the sidewalk is not eliminated
39 on that side, it’s simply attached, not detached, and we have a fully detached on the other side.
15
1 The attached sidewalk, we feel, is just as safe here since there are no driveways accessing
2 directly to this section at all. And, finally, we think in fact vehicular-pedestrian conflicts will be
3 reduced; since there is no parking, there won’t be people going to and from parked cars and you
4 reduce the potential for that conflict.
5 The…we also think that this modification meets the grounds that it is a nominal and
6 inconsequential modification in the context of the development plan as a whole and continues to
7 advance the purposes of the Land Use Code. This stretch, the 82 feet, affects 9% of the project’s
8 sidewalks, out of a total of 913. The other 91%, or 831 feet, of sidewalks are all detached and
9 fully compliant. It continues to preserve direct connections to Stuart Street, the Spring Creek
10 Trail, and the adjacent neighborhood. With regard to the parking, you would lose approximately
11 six to eight on-street parking spaces with this change, but this project provides 21 more spaces
12 than is required by the Land Use Code already, so it more than makes up for that deficit. And
13 that’s not counting the additional 48, I think, driveway spaces that have now been added. This
14 continues to advance the Land Use Code purposes; it does not impact the improved design
15 quality, character or infill nature of the project.
16 With regard to the overall standard, is there a detriment to the public good with the
17 granting of this modification? We would argue to the contrary, that this continues to provide
18 adequate safe and direct access, it addresses setback concerns of the neighbors; there’s no on-
19 street parking…no on-street parking allows a narrower street and shifts the buildings away from
20 the Oesterle’s property and there’s an increased setback on the west side of lot one as a result of
21 this change. It also allows the retention of the existing garage to be used for future classroom
22 space for the child care center and it allows a larger front play yard for the child care center.
23 And with that, I’m going to turn it over to Justin Larson, the project architect.
24 MR. JUSTIN LARSON: Justin Larson, Vaught Frye Larson Architects; I’ll be the
25 architect of record. Jeff Hansen is the project manager that’s been tirelessly…
26 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: We can’t hear you.
27 MR. LARSON: I’ll also bump up my voice, is that better? Okay. We have been working
28 on projects within a few blocks for probably the past few years of…both infill new construction
29 as well as several different remodels, all within a block of this site. So, when we were asked to
30 take a look, we were pretty excited because this area is an interesting mix of ‘30’s farm homes,
31 ‘60’s mid-century modern, as well as ‘70’s and ‘80’s and up to today of…larger housing
32 development. But, the architecture character is, I would say, eclectic, and what we’ve looked at
33 on this site is, how can we be sensitive, as Seth has talked about, and really find a way to kind of
34 carry some of the character of Stuart and still have a project with its own kind of tie as we make
35 the connection down to Spring Creek.
36 So, we’ll start on…we’ll start on Stuart and so we’re looking westerly, and you know,
37 picking up…again…a project that’s about today….
16
1 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: You lost your loud voice.
2 MR. LARSON: This is the challenge…I will try to boast myself here. So…looking
3 westerly, the character along Stuart…this is actually Oesterle’s just to the west…and so along
4 Stuart we have a mix of ‘30’s and ‘80’s and into today of architecture, but how do we bring
5 modern architectural elements and still carry through some of the historic nature, scale, and
6 character? However, as we turn, is an opportunity to really start to bring an identity as we make
7 connection down to Spring Creek. So, still picking up gable and traditional elements that you
8 see along Stuart, but then trying to pull in some of the other architectural character that you have
9 of mid-century modern that’s tied back up Cherokee; so really knitting the neighborhood
10 together. This is looking westerly on Cherokee drive…and then down at the south end looking
11 back north…and that this becomes a pedestrian spine connection so really brings access right off
12 of Cherokee down…as Roger mentioned. And then this is…on the alley connection where we
13 have the…this is at the end of Cherokee, walking right around the corner…these are the garage
14 that back up to the internal side of our development, so that as we move through…this is the
15 access from the east that’ll have trail…so you know, discussion of if that’s gated or not gated to
16 make easy access but provide security and control for adjacent neighbors. And then as we get
17 down to Spring Creek…so here’s adjacent to the east…and that’s an actual photo that’s then
18 knitted with our model…it’s always a challenge when we’re in the digital world to try to keep
19 the character realistic to what you’re seeing…so we’re right on the trail and you can see, kind of,
20 building height and massing…the scale, the breakdown between roof planes trying to
21 keep…avoiding some of the adjacent buildings have kind of longer roof lines that can exaggerate
22 the scale of a building, so intentionally giving more articulation both in roof lines, windows and
23 massing.
24 And then as we…so this is…as Seth kind of talked about, we have gone through a
25 numerous kind of iterations and understanding of what really fits, and the image above is our
26 first PDP submittal; it was back when it was snowing…you can see that the snow has melted. So
27 the image below is where we’re at today. The…you can see how the whole character of the
28 buildings have been reduced in scale and…as well as more kind of roof definition, window
29 material clarification, to really start to enhance…and again, here is…here’s our proposed project
30 and how it’s set back, again, from the…in relation to where adjacent properties are. And then,
31 last image, our neighbors to the west and neighbors…and if I actually extended this over, again,
32 you saw in the last photo, the project, again…are actually pulled a little bit more forward than we
33 are, but we’re hunkered back and then you can start to see the trail connection…that spine that’ll
34 pull back through our development as well as making connection for adjacent neighbors.
35 MR. SHERMAN: Alright, Roger again…the last component of the project…but not least,
36 is the Riversong Waldorf School site. And they mentioned that they’re gifting this home to the
37 school, which….by the way, the existing school, if people don’t know, is right here. And the
38 City owns the building and the City would like them to vacate as soon as they can and,
17
1 fortunately, this partnership with Kyle and Mark worked out well so that they’re new home
2 wouldn’t be too far away from their existing home.
3 Just a little bit of how their operation works…they’re open from 8:00 to 5:30 Monday
4 through Friday; they have, in the short term, envision two classrooms…having about 28 children
5 total. And then long term, maybe converting the garage into a third classroom and that would
6 bring them up to 42 children. And the way the drop off works is…in the morning…it’s
7 concentrated between 8:10 and 8:40, and then at night it’s spread out over a little longer period
8 of time…between 4:00 and 5:30. The way we…so today there’s just…there’s almost no parking
9 at their existing facility, and there’s a small little loop driveway. And I think this new site will
10 handle traffic much better, and the way that will happen is that…that they’ll enter off of Stuart,
11 on Cherokee, and they’ll proceed around through our private drive to the north of the building,
12 which by the way, that accesses those parking spaces on the north side of the project as well.
13 And then it will progress down the east side and there’s a drop-off right in this area for the child
14 care center and then a kind of primary entrance for students and parents is on the northeast
15 corner of the building. There will also be an entrance off of the south, which you’ll see in some
16 of the images that we’ll show earlier…or in the next slides… and a little bike parking and then
17 their playground would be on the north side of the home, and then a little play garden, maybe a
18 vegetable garden, that they’ll use as part of their curriculum. So that’s the general arrangement
19 of the site; this is the existing home, which I’m sure most of you are familiar with.
20 These are the elevations that the architect, Greg Fisher, by the way, who’s here if you
21 have questions…can answer any questions you have…but I’m pretty excited about the direction
22 it’s going; I think it’s really going to have new life and really fit the character of the Waldorf
23 philosophy. So I think that’s a pretty fun piece here, and three-dimensionally it’s even more
24 dynamic I think. They’re adding to the front porches…you can see, this is the
25 playground…eventually over time, you know, they’re a non-profit so this vision will kind of take
26 shape over a little while, but this is what their aspirations are…will lead to eventually. With that,
27 that’s the end of our presentation. So thank you for sitting through all of that, and I’ll turn it
28 back over to Marcus.
29 MR. MCASKIN: Thank you Roger. Seth, I don’t know at this point if you have any
30 specific questions of the applicant or if it’s appropriate to maybe go ahead and hear from the all
31 folks that are in attendance at this poing.
32 MR. LORSON: I do not.
33 MR. MCASKIN: Okay. Well, as I mentioned earlier, if you would like to comment on
34 the development proposal, I ask that you come up and sign in on the sheet with your name and
35 your address, and again, I’m not going to strictly enforce time limits unless I think that the…you
36 know…what you’re talking about is repetitive and another speaker has already addressed similar
18
1 concerns. Again…so…you know…somebody needs to lead it off, so…whoever….okay. Is this
2 a good slide to have up there Max…
3 MR. MAX OESTERLE: That’s fine for now, thank you. First of all, I’d like to make one
4 request, that the public have the same time that the applicant had, because, in the long run, we
5 have to live with this…we want equal time.
6 MR. MCASKIN: Well, I think when we add it up, you’re going to have more time.
7 What’s that?
8 MR. OESTERLE: I cannot hear you; I’m about deaf.
9 MR. MCASKIN: If everybody out there is going to comment tonight, I think
10 cumulatively you guys are going to have more time than the applicant.
11 MR. OESTERLE: Okay. I’ve got to start here. Okay…I’m Max Oesterle; my property is
12 on…that would be the southwest corner. The statement I have states…my wife and I have lived
13 next to development 181, also known as River Modern. My concern is that this development, as
14 proposed, will actually be built, leaving us with two options: having to live with it or moving
15 away. We do not want this development in our neighborhood; it is too dense, too tall, and out of
16 character in the design with the surrounding homes. This whole development process has been
17 extremely stressful for both of us. Previous developments that have come into our neighborhood
18 have caused little or no concern for us; they have been in character with the rest of the
19 neighborhood and have allowed us to maintain complete privacy. This development is different;
20 decks from three units would be looking over our yard from a height of 24 feet. This is a
21 violation of LUC 3.5.1(d)…privacy considerations. While the proposed units along East Stuart,
22 next to our house have been somewhat modified in the front for height, back units have not.
23 We do not want drainage on our property. Elevations showing building one show
24 drainage directly into our property; see attached A3…front elevation. We have many more
25 concerns which have been stated in previous meetings regarding increased traffic, flooding
26 issues along Spring Creek. Traffic Operations stated, incorrectly, that the day care center would
27 not increase traffic flow along East Stuart because the day care is making a lateral move. The
28 fact is, someone else will be moving into their existing building, increasing traffic by an
29 unknown amount. Flooding issues are also of major importance because five people drowned
30 just down the street from us in the Spring Creek flood of 1997. Other people in our
31 neighborhood have already sold their homes and left the area because of increased traffic and
32 noise as well as getting wind of this development. This should not happen. We are submitting
33 an open letter with a list of signatures of property owners in this area who do not want this
34 development. These are only property owners; there’s several renters that we did not get
35 signatures from. I’m also submitting pictures of the height of the building compared to my
36 house and Brookhaven which is directly to my north. Also, I had the front elevation along Stuart
37 Street, which is not at all consistent with the buildings that are there…not even the school
19
1 building. They’re not…they’re a lot higher. Also, I did not have a chance to look at a cross-
2 section of the buildings; I would like to know why do you need 12 foot 8 inches per story?
3 MR. MCASKIN: Okay, we’ll come back to that…are you done?
4 MR. LORSON: Mr. Oesterle, if you would like to leave…
5 MR. OESTERLE: I would like to comment more if there’s time later. I’m done.
6 MR. MCASKIN: If you want to submit those to me, I can make sure that those are part of
7 the record.
8 MR. OESTERLE: These are the signatures, this is my statement, and these are the
9 pictures.
10 MR. MCASKIN: Okay thank you.
11 MS. MEG PARMER: I have questions and also a comment. My name is Meg and I live
12 right…
13 MR. MCASKIN: Okay, and have you already signed in?
14 MS. PARMER: Nope…I’ll do it know. Is there a pen here? May I use that one, thank
15 you. Thanks. Either one? My comments, or questions, are…there are trees along the northerly
16 part running north-south of your development that are adjacent to our fence; they’re big trees.
17 What’s going to happen with them?
18 MR. SHERMAN: Can I answer now, or…should we answer questions…
19 MR. MCASKIN: I think you can answer now.
20 MR. SHERMAN: Okay. Well, in this area right now, we’re showing one of those trees
21 remaining.
22 MS. PARMER: Okay.
23 MR. SHERMAN: There was a tree assessment report that was done by Jordan Tree
24 Company, and the City Forester agrees with their findings, that several of those trees…for
25 various reasons, some are hollow, some are in various stages of stress and bad health. And so
26 this on tree is the one that…
27 MS. PARMER: Is decent?
28 MR. SHERMAN: Is decent…we’re saving it.
20
1 MS. PARMER: I mean to me, they’re kind of a danger actually…so that was my inquiry.
2 The other thing is, do I understand from what Mrs. Liley said, that the setback from the west, our
3 property…your buildings are going a little bit farther east?
4 MR. SHERMAN: Are you in this building or…
5 MS. PARMER: I’m right behind Max; I’m the first one there. That’s me…yeah.
6 MR. SHERMAN: Okay, so, yes, Code would normally require this front setback from the
7 front lot line to the front of the façade to be 15 feet.
8 MS. PARMER: Okay.
9 MR. SHERMAN: In order to pull our homes a little bit farther away from your homes,
10 we’ve moved them to nine feet…so they’re six feet further away than Code requires them to be
11 from your property. So, we’re kind of sacrificing a little bit of our front yard to give you some
12 distance and also to try and address that parking concern.
13 MS. PARMER: Okay, thank you. The other thing is…I…at the last meeting that we had
14 at, I guess it was Lakewood Church…since we’re snug together quite a bit there…and I can’t
15 remember who was talking, but said, you know, we’re open to either a four foot or a six foot
16 fence…okay…I had commented that I prefer a four foot fence, if that makes a difference.
17 Whether you go up and down along the way, I don’t care. I don’t want to be…like have my
18 neighbors, okay, we’ve got a fence; we want nothing to do with you, I’m over here and we’re
19 good and well blocked; I don’t care for that sort of thing. I agree with many of the things that
20 Max said, you know, because it cuts off the light particularly to my place. And I’m already
21 down, and I have this great retaining wall that is in many respects like a prison, but my yard is
22 very beautiful. The other thing I want to comment…and is your name Greg or? Greg?
23 MR. SHERMAN: I’m Roger.
24 MS. PARMER: Roger…okay Roger, I’m sorry. The bicycle path that comes along there,
25 and I patrol the bicycle path for the City of Fort Collins and other areas actually, but the bicycle
26 path that goes into Brookhaven, it goes onto private property. Your comment about we try to
27 make it known that it’s not there…not true…there is a path, in fact it’s an invite; somebody took
28 down our privacy fence and put it over in your property. Who or what or why, I’m not sure.
29 But, we have a certain liability because all these people are coming off the path; all along the
30 path, the new homes all have ingress and egress getting off the path from a particular
31 neighborhood and I know that you’re doing that too. So, yeah, we don’t want people coming in
32 because this is our private thing and we have a responsibility. So, sometimes I can hardly get
33 onto the path; there are so many dogs, bikes and people and carts coming through there. Other
34 times it’s not. And we particularly enjoy the kids from the neighborhood; they come through
35 there and they’re well-behaved and are off the way. But, no, we’re not…that’s my property right
21
1 there I think , yeah…we’re not saying…we’re not trying to hide it; it’s very obvious from
2 everyone. People treat it like a regular exit or on-ramp so…yeah….and that’s the reason,
3 because it’s private and we have to pay. Okay, thank you.
4 MS. LINDA VROOMAN: Linda Vrooman and my name is already on the list for
5 mailings, do you still need it?
6 MR. MCASKIN: Please, thank you.
7 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can we get a copy of the hearing results even
8 if we don’t speak? Is that possible?
9 MR. MCASKIN: What I would suggest is that if you don’t speak, and you’re interested
10 in receiving a copy of the written decision, then go ahead and sign in on this list so that we have
11 your address and that when the Planning Department, Community Development, does go ahead
12 and mail that out, you’ll be sure to be receiving it.
13 MS. VROOMAN: I wrote some of these comments to you because I didn’t think we were
14 going to make it back in time, but we did. I want to start with saying, my husband and I support
15 infill and we don’t hate the style of houses…we wouldn’t buy it, but we don’t hate it. It’s too
16 dense. I wrote that I thought it looked from the air like a storage unit project instead of homes
17 that people are going to live in, and to bring up $400,000 price in the same sentence with
18 affordability is almost insulting. There are flood concerns every day in the news for months;
19 there’s been houses that don’t have flood insurance because they didn’t have to, it wasn’t
20 required, they’d never flooded before…things are changing. You need to take those four units
21 along the edge of it out, maybe create some green space in the other units that would be left.
22 The traffic flow is one-way in, one-way out into Stuart, which is increasingly busy and
23 has become a parking lot, a linear parking lot from College almost up to where this development
24 is, thanks to The Summit at College and Stuart. And we live on Cheyenne, so we right now go
25 out onto Stuart right across from where the school is located now. Rarely is it a problem unless
26 you are trying to access at the time of the traffic going in and out. And then you have to be
27 careful because there’s also a street that accesses the Spring Meadows condos, so you have that
28 traffic right off of Prospect. Also, do you have…have you had a tour of the project in person to
29 see what it really looks like?
30 MR. MCASKIN: I have not had a tour; I did drive past the site this afternoon on the way
31 up here and I believe I must have parked my car in the Brookhaven condos, whether that was
32 permitted or not, I’m not sure. But then I did actually walk along the bridge past the open space
33 and probably up past Pinnacle Townhomes to view the site from the north looking south. So I
34 have been there. I usually like to familiarize myself with the site.
22
1 MS. VROOMAN: Right, I was hoping that you had. The Cherokee is going to feed right
2 into Indian Hills, which is single-family development, and there is no way you can keep it out. I
3 mean it’s going to grossly change the way the traffic patterns are where we live. And that’s it,
4 thank you.
5 MR. MCASKIN: Thank you.
6 MS. KENDRA BARTLEY: Want me to sign in first? So I don’t forget… Okay, so I will
7 try to keep my comments as brief as possible. I have several points that I would like to make.
8 The first thing I want to do is to kind of expand to the bigger picture here of what we’re talking
9 about. Throughout the discussions this evening…can you hear me okay? I don’t have a very
10 good voice, what can I do about that? Turn to the side perhaps, because my voice…I could have
11 been a teacher if I could have made my voice carry, so instead I was a guidance counselor.
12 Anyway, so from the bigger picture, those of us who are here understand that the City of Fort
13 Collins is endowed with two incredible treasures and those treasures are the riparian corridors of
14 the Spring Creek area as well as the corridors of the Poudre River area, right? That just happens
15 to be the very special natural endowments of our city that we all love and enjoy very, very much.
16 And it’s certainly our responsibility as the residents of Fort Collins to make sure that those areas
17 are protected from people who want to make a big, fat buck who, you know…the whole, you
18 know…understandable conflict between what the people of the city really need and want versus
19 what a short-term developer who manages to get ahold of a patch of property, really wants.
20 Okay, so we’re talking about that kind of an issue and it has not really come up here in terms of
21 this understanding of Spring Creek being special. So, I kind of…I don’t like the fact that the
22 entire discussion so far has been about this being an ordinary patch of urban infill development
23 that needs to follow a million little rules and regulations and maybe we can tweak them a little
24 this way or that way, when in fact what we’re talking about is impact on the treasures of the city
25 of Fort Collins, okay? So, I want to make that point.
26 These natural corridors, in this case, goes from Horsetooth Reservoir out to Poudre River,
27 and it is the corridor for wildlife and all kinds of wonderful things as well as our beautiful and
28 beloved path which is full of the people, the residents of Fort Collins, that she said she couldn’t
29 even get on there to turn onto it because there’s so much traffic on it. The whole city is enjoying
30 this very special treasure.
31 MR. MCASKIN: I liked it so much, I might move here.
32 MS. BARTLEY: Yeah, exactly…so that’s what we thought too. So let’s expand our
33 point of view; this is not your ordinary patch of urban infill. This is something very special and
34 unique and to be protected as a treasure of our city; it’s like core to what Fort Collins is. I was
35 born in Fort Collins and I need to point out that our…Mr….is it Goldberg…is not from Fort
36 Collins. And, so I hope that…I’m concerned that people who are not from Fort Collins don’t
23
1 really understand this important point. So, you’ve got to live here to understand how we live and
2 what’s important to us, okay?
3 The other thing is, if you think about it, $400,000 a piece, as someone else has said, those
4 are not mixed-use. This is…we’re talking about luxury units. You know, if you’re going to
5 buy…in this part of the world, if you’re going to buy a duplex for $400,000, you’re talking about
6 a luxury unit; it’s not going to help with, you know, mixed-use development or low-income
7 housing or anything like that. It’s not going to happen, not at $400,000 a pop, and we also need
8 to keep in mind that they will be getting $12 million from their 30 units, right? So there’s a lot
9 of motivation there, to make this work for the developers, okay? So, okay, I want to come back
10 to the Red Tailed Hawk because at least they finally found a species…
11 MR. MCASKIN: And, mam, just so that I have it in my notes, what is your name?
12 MS. BARTLEY: My name is Kendra Bartley.
13 MR. MCASKIN: Kendra, thank you.
14 MS. BARTLEY: Okay.
15 MR. MCASKIN: And I’m going to…and again, just…not because I don’t value more
16 comments from you, it’s just that there’s a lot of folks out there that I think want to.
17 MS. BARTLEY: So I’ll try to whip through these quickly, okay. Well I won’t go into the
18 beaver and the deer and the great herons and all these things that we see on the property, and
19 now we have Red Tailed Hawks. Instead I’m going to move on to something specific: the water
20 quality pond, okay? I think that’s a euphemism. I believe it’s a flood-control retention pond; it’s
21 not a pond folks, it’s a gigantic hole dug right next to the river, totally disrupting the entire
22 natural environment that is not on the side of the 100 foot back-up. It’s right dead center in the
23 middle of our natural area, and it’s not going to have lovely water in it; it’s going to be…you
24 know…it’s going to be one of these bit holes that they use in case there’s a flood to catch the
25 water. There’s two other ones of these in the city already; they are both terribly ugly. I think it’s
26 something new that they‘ve decided they needed. One is behind the Hilton hotel and the other
27 one is at the Streamside property there…yeah, yeah. So it’s interesting that we haven’t seen that
28 actually drawn into the plans and just, we have these words, water quality pond. So I’d like to
29 see that in there and I’d like everybody to understand it’s like a great big pit, a deep hole, that’s
30 going to take out our natural area where the deer and the wildlife and all of us are on our bikes
31 and everything. That’s what they’re talking about doing as far as I know.
32 MR. MCASKIN: You’re at five minutes, 30 seconds; I’ll give you 30 more seconds.
33 MS. BARTLEY: Alright, emotional connection trivializes it a little bit, you know, horses,
34 meadow, you know, all that sort of thing. It’s not the horses in the meadow, it’s the creek and
35 this riparian corridor that we’re talking about…emotional connection trivializes the importance
24
1 of this natural asset to our city. And so, I think…we want to make sure, you know, it looks like
2 it’s going to be all asphalt, concrete and tall buildings…pave paradise, put up a parking
3 lot…we’ve seen this happen, and I think Fort Collins…we can do better. We can do better; we
4 have a very special city and we just need to be paying attention, and I think the City of Fort
5 Collins wants to do this right, and they need to feel the wind in the sails from all of us in order to
6 know that their job is to project our treasures.
7 MR. STEFAN GESSLER: So, I’m Stefan Gessler; I live in Brookhaven on the west side,
8 and I’m happy to welcome the new neighbors but I do have a small concern, and that goes back
9 to the elevation difference between the proposed site and my property. I think you had a
10 wonderful picture there to illustrate that. Yeah so…if I may…so explain to me how you’re
11 going to sort of mitigate the elevation difference between the property and Brookhaven. I mean,
12 from my perception, I’m not looking at a 36 foot high building, I’m looking at anywhere
13 between a 42 to 45 foot high building. So, maybe you can help explain how you’re going to
14 mitigate that. It just looks much, much larger from my perception. So, maybe you can elaborate
15 on that.
16 MR. SHERMAN: We have details that we could address…
17 MR. MCASKIN: I think that that’s probably going to be a common concern that we hear,
18 so maybe we…maybe at the end of the public comment, you can address that.
19 MR. GESSLER: That’d be great. I mean, as long as you are aware that it’s really going
20 to look awkward to have a 45 foot high building in front of us, even though it’s technically only
21 36, from our perception it’s going to look higher.
22 MR. SHERMAN: Understood. And we have camera shots from practically your
23 backyard; we did not go into your yard, but…so we’ll share that in a moment, but it’s a good
24 question.
25 MR. GESSLER: Okay, thank you very much.
26 MR. MCASKIN: Thank you Mr. Gessler. Anyone else?
27 MS. BECKY PRAMSMA: My name is Becky Pramsma and I am the director of
28 Riversong Waldorf School. I just wanted to come up and say that we are, obviously, in favor of
29 River Modern being developed. We’ve been in the neighborhood for nine years. We are part of
30 it, but more so, that neighborhood is a part of us. Our curriculum is based on being able to go to
31 Indian Hills Park, being able to go to the willow tree on Spring Creek Trail. You know, the
32 neighbors know us. We walk by…the kids love to greet all the people as they’re walking by.
33 My 84 year-old aunt lives in Indian Hills Circle and she always says she loves to drive by and
34 see the kids happy, running around and playing. You know, we’re a big part of the
35 neighborhood. Not only that, but we are outgrowing our space, like they said, you know, it’s
25
1 kind of mutual. We need to be out of there, City of Fort Collins is ready for something else to
2 happen with that building. So, we have to move. We have to decide what else is going to
3 happen and how we’re going to make that work.
4 We don’t want to leave this neighborhood, you know, like I said. It’s us, it’s who
5 Riversong Waldorf is; we want to be able to continue to stay in this neighborhood and grow our
6 roots right where we are and continue to be able to offer care and education to young children.
7 This will not only give us the opportunity to grow those roots, but also to expand the amount of
8 kids we can care for. Currently we have 18 children on a waiting list and we can’t accommodate
9 them, so this is 18 children, 18 families that have to find alternative care because we don’t have
10 the space; we’ve just outgrown our little school. So this will give us the opportunity to, like they
11 said, build that third classroom which will allow space for 15 more children. You know, and
12 they have been gracious enough to give us, free and clear…we’re a little, small non-profit
13 preschool. We could not afford this. We thought about trying to figure out how we could get the
14 house and the land, because with the Waldorf philosophy, that would be fabulous to have all of
15 that. We can’t afford it; it’s just not within our means. So, the fact that they have come along
16 and are able to give us this house and some land around it to have our playground and our
17 gardens for these children has been an amazing blessing for us. No other developer, I would
18 imagine, would not [sic] be so gracious; it’s a huge offering for them and we would love to be
19 able to accept it and be able to finally, you know, like I said, put down our roots and be the
20 Riversong Waldorf School that we’ve always dreamed we can be. We’ve moved around a lot
21 since we started many years ago and we’re finally ready to kind of keep our place in Fort Collins
22 and we feel that this is our best opportunity with not really any budget. Since we are a non-
23 profit, this is our best opportunity to be able to do this and continue to serve the families of Fort
24 Collins, so thank you.
25 MS. LORETTA DAWES: I’m not going to take up much of your time. I’m Laurie
26 Dawes; I, like Stefan and you know…have the grade difference. But, I took pictures which I
27 turned in about…was it end of April when we had those four, five, six days of rain, and I took
28 pictures of the flooding down where those four duplexes are, and I turned those in. And I hope
29 that you would pay attention to those. I just visited my great-granddaughter, first one, in Golden,
30 Colorado, and I thought, how in the world are they going to protect those children down there?
31 You know that floods…what are they going to do with that? Are they going to build another
32 fence, you know…I’m really concerned about the flooding. And those duplexes are going to
33 be…have children in there. I mean, that’s scary. So, that’s…I’ll sign my name.
34 MR. MCASKIN: Thank you, and congratulations, I guess on…
35 MS. DAWES: Yes, thank you, yes…the first…yeah.
36 MR. LORSON: Your pictures are part of the record.
37 MS. DAWES: Are they? I appreciate that, thank you.
26
1 MR. MCASKIN: I have seen them.
2 MS. DAWES: Okay, I appreciate that, a little snap and shoot…I mean…if you can read
3 that…thank you.
4 MS. ERIKA ASHAUER: Hello, I am Erika Ashauer, I am a boardmember of Riversong
5 School and I’m also here to present a statement from someone that is also a boardmember, a
6 parent of Riversong, and he is in the neighborhood but he is out of town and couldn’t attend.
7 So, dear committee members and associated parties, the development of 900 East Stuart
8 as proposed is a complicated issue for many community and neighborhood members. This is no
9 different for me, as I am a neighborhood member and a school supporter and boardmember as
10 well as an advocate for open space and improved density. Many conflicting interests come to
11 light. Ultimately, I respect and support the intentions of the new land owners and their
12 development. The developer’s proposal is thoughtful and progressive. It’s inclusions of the
13 community in the process is to be commended and it’s support in keeping Riversong Waldorf
14 School in our neighborhood is nothing short of a blessing. In a time when positive and fair
15 compromises are few and far between, the option for development presented is one I fully
16 support. Sincerely, Matthew Gibbs.
17 And then I would like to add, as a parent who currently goes to the 906 Stuart Street,
18 parking is awful in that building. Like, the drop-off loop is really awkward; I’m glad we’re kind
19 of getting moving. And, we purposely…we were very grateful for the drop-off loop because we
20 will have our own contained space of dropping off our kids and hopefully having those six…we
21 have no parking right now. People park within the loop, they have to back out of the loop if a
22 child is taking too long to drop off and it’s just…I feel like it’s much more of a hazard having it
23 as it is now. So, this drop-off loop that will let people park, stay in our own confined space
24 outside of the…off Cherokee and Stuart is, I think, a huge relief. Also, like Becky said, we have
25 an 18 family wait list right now, and that to me just speaks volumes for what we’re providing our
26 community. So, that’s it.
27 MR. MCASKIN: Is that a copy of…?
28 MS. ASHAUER: Yeah, you may have it. Also, I wanted to say that this lot is for sale.
29 No matter how you slice it, someone is going to buy it. And I don’t know of an individual…no
30 individual put in an offer to just keep it as is. No one just, you know…they were all developers
31 that are, you know, they do that to make a profit obviously.
32 MS. RHONDA NOLAN: Let me sign in. Hi, I’m Rhonda Nolan, and I’m a homeowner
33 and serve on the board of Springmeadows Condominiums. When we first met at one of the
34 meetings, our initial concern is about the flood water that would come down and hit the corner
35 units at the end. During the ’97 flood, it’s my understanding that the water didn’t reach our
36 building, but it came pretty darn close. So, that’s our…that’s our…yeah….so, that is a big
27
1 concern for our neighborhood. I just wanted to make sure that we had a voice about the runoff
2 and how that flood water is really going to affect our property in that area. Thank you.
3 MS. LYNNE ADAMS MORGAN: My name is Lynne Adams Morgan; I’m the owner of
4 the property, and this is the first meeting I’ve been able to attend due to health reasons. But,
5 my…I moved in to that home in 1953 and it was three years old and my family has owned it this
6 entire time. It’s been a wonderful spot to live, and through the years we’ve seen a lot of changes
7 in that area, and seen all the condos go up on one side and the apartments go up on the other side,
8 and realized, you know, at some point, the property would change and expected it to go into
9 housing. I just want to say, I’m so pleased…
10 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can you speak up, we can’t hear…
11 MS. MORGAN: Sure…I’m so pleased that Riversong School is interested in the property
12 to use, because the school is a wonderful addition to the community and…my father died in 1979
13 and my mother lived there until her death in 2011, and I have lived on the property about 24
14 years of my life, and lived in Fort Collins and been over there all the time. And, I
15 know…pardon?
16 MR. MCASKIN: I’ve heard that there’s either one horse or two horses on the property…I
17 saw one, so which is it?
18 MS. MORGAN: The other one…well now there’s actually two, but one’s a little one so
19 you probably didn’t see it with the grass, I don’t know, I just had it mowed. And of course I
20 know that the horses and the pasture have all been enjoyed by the neighbors. Along with that
21 comes, you know, well-meaning people that decide the horses are underfed or overfed and they
22 like to feed them and stuff. But, I just want to say, I think this is a wonderful situation for the
23 property. As far as the floodplain…in all that time, I know where the City has now drawn the
24 floodplain…water has never come up that high. It’s been increasingly going north…the
25 floodplain area drawn. But, I mean, in all that time, the…it’s not quite as extreme as what I’ve
26 been hearing tonight.
27 And, my mother donated about a little under ¾ of an acre for the bike path to the City so
28 that the bike path could go through. And I know she loved seeing the kids out all the
29 time…everybody I think in the community has enjoyed having the school there and seeing the
30 little kids go down the street. As far as the price of the buildings, I just see that as a wonderful
31 improvement to the community because that’ll only increase, you know, value of the area around
32 it. It think that’s good and I’m sure that they will sell. I understand that everyone, you know,
33 wouldn’t be able to, you know, buy them, but I think…I don’t see anything wrong with that. I’m
34 very impressed with the applicant’s team. They have really tried to make it into something that I
35 feel the community could be very proud of. So I just wanted to weigh in on that.
36 MR. MCASKIN: Thank you.
28
1 MR. DEVIN FERREY: So I’ve never had a problem with my voice not carrying…so
2 hopefully it will tonight. Alright, so hi everybody. My name is Devin Ferrey and I’m the
3 president of FR development, and as Mark alluded to, will be the builder partner on this project.
4 And I wanted to introduce ourselves; we haven’t introduced ourselves in previous meetings. So,
5 I guess very briefly about FR…my business partner, Andrew, and myself were both Colorado
6 people. I did grow up in Fort Collins; I grew up riding the Spring Creek Trail. Andrew and I
7 both went to CSU and when we graduated we started our business, and since then we’ve been
8 involved in a variety of successful residential projects. And, I wrote some things down, so we
9 can go that way…
10 You know, our most recent successful project that Mark mentioned actually, is Old Town
11 North, just right up the road from us here. And Old Town North, when we came into it, was a
12 completely failed subdivision. There were about 50 or 60 homeowners living there and then
13 another 100 empty lots. And when we came in, we were quite literally building absolutely next
14 door to people, and we learned very quickly, and that knowledge has stuck with us, on how to be
15 good neighbors as builders. And, we just wanted to share that with you; we do have infill
16 experience, we know what it takes, we work very closely with the community around us. There
17 is no $12 million bucks to be made; if there was, that would really be something. Yeah…that’s
18 easy math…
19 But in all seriousness, we’re very excited to be a part of the project. Like I said, I mean it
20 doesn’t get more Fort Collins than us. I mean our office is over in Old Town; we care a great
21 deal about this community and we think this is a great community. I mean this is really going to
22 be a great use for this site, and we’re looking very forward to being a part of it and we’re looking
23 forward to working with the community, even that who detest us…and that’s the name of our
24 business. So, I just wanted to introduce myself, I won’t take any more of your time. Thank you.
25 MR. ROEBERT SPRINGER: My name is Bob Springer, I live in Indian Hills. So, I’m
26 five or six blocks away, we live on Seminole. As a result of that, I travel on Stuart Street every
27 day, twice, three times. And so I have a pretty good sense of the way the street is now, and it’s a
28 busy street. It’s so busy that the City puts traffic monitors there about twice a week…I mean the
29 cars that take pictures of people who are speeding. Today I drove by and there’s a patrol car
30 there. There are bicycles on both sides every minute of every day…that’s the way it is now.
31 And I take it from all these promotional speeches and the colorful slides, that the City and the
32 developer, their presentation says that this is not going to have any impact on traffic on Stuart,
33 and I think that’s absurd.
34 MS. ELIZABETH SPRINGER: I’m Elizabeth Springer, my husband just spoke. My
35 concern…the traffic is a concern, but the streets. When we met in January, people talked a lot
36 about that main street going in, and then around and behind the garages. And there was a lot of
37 concern that there wasn’t enough space for parking, for guests that you might have, for an
38 ambulance, fire engines, that sort of thing. They were talking about putting in some kind of
29
1 brick thing on that road; I don’t know what that was about. When we moved here 15 years ago,
2 we lived for several years in Indian Hills Village, which is about half a mile west and on the
3 south side of the street and instead of a rectangle, it goes in kind of a circle, and they were tall,
4 narrow duplexes, not as lavish as these I guess. We had…there were gardens and things. But, it
5 was very, very tight access. Very, very narrow alley that went along the back to get cars in and
6 out. Particularly where there was ice. So that’s a big concern, having lived in that kind of an
7 infill development, that the streets are too narrow.
8 The other thing I don’t see…and maybe I’m not quite understanding the parking, but that
9 circle…I love the preschool but you don’t just roll a preschooler out of the car and then drive on.
10 You have to take them in, tell the teacher something, and I think that they need parking where
11 parents, you know, go in and spend five minutes. Maybe if they eliminated…I know you don’t
12 want to do this…but if you eliminated a couple, if you didn’t cram them in quite so tight. The
13 other question I have about the parking is…you say that there are two parking places behind each
14 duplex, behind your garage, so if I have some friends over or if I have some workmen come to
15 my house if I want to, you know, remodel or something, do they have to walk through my garage
16 and then into my house? Or is there…I don’t know how much space there is between the duplex
17 units, but I don’t want to be limited to maybe two cars could park out there. That was a concern
18 of you too at the last meeting.
19 MR. SHERMAN: I can answer that one really quickly. There are 21 on-street parking
20 spaces in front of the units on the street, and then there are 48 more driveway parking spaces, and
21 then 60 garage spaces. So, visitors can park here, your close friends will know where your
22 garage is, can also drive back around to your garage and park in your driveway…so there are a
23 few different options. But, those…I wanted to make clear that those are not the only parking
24 spaces. There are 21 more spaces on Cherokee and Watercourse Way, and six more behind the
25 child care…
26 MS. SPRINGER: Oh there are some behind the child care?
27 MR. SHERMAN: This is a shared use after business hours; the residents and their friends
28 will also be able to use these spaces while the child care is closed. Oh sure…actually this is a
29 really common issue with schools, safety of drop off.
30 MS. SPRINGER: I would think so.
31 MR. SHERMAN: It’s intentionally kept to one lane so that cars cannot be passing cars
32 because there are risks to the children in those circumstances. The…there is one small pocket
33 where one car can fit on this drive through lane, so for deliveries for example, or something like
34 that. There is a spot where a car could pull out of that main pass-through lane. But, in the
35 mornings, that’ll probably be necked down to a single lane so that as people are queuing, they
36 have to stay there and wait for the cars in front of them to drop their kids off and leave; that’s
37 very intentional.
30
1 MS. SPRINGER: Okay, thank you.
2 MS. PAM OESTERLE: I’m Pam Oesterle, my husband spoke earlier. I’m not going to
3 go through everything because some of these issues have already been addressed, and also at the
4 previous meetings, and I’m sure those are on record…you’ll be looking at those. With all due
5 respect to you sir, have you ever met Mr. Goldberg or Mr. Henderson before?
6 MR. MCASKIN: I have not.
7 MS. OESTERLE: Okay, thank you. A couple things before I actually get into it…we
8 were told by the City of Fort Collins that a new survey would be needed to establish the fact, to
9 make sure that the northern most units are not in the floodplain. Has that been done? Yeah,
10 that’s what we were told, that another survey would be needed to make sure…
11 MR. LORSON: I’m not aware of what you’re talking about.
12 MS. OESTERLE: Okay, maybe that was with Cameron, when we were speaking with
13 Cameron…to make sure that the northern most units are not, indeed, in the floodplain. Okay,
14 and then basements in the northern units…the soils report…there are basements, is that correct
15 Roger?
16 MR. SHERMAN: There are, yes.
17 MS. OESTERLE: The soil report recommended that there be no basements in those units,
18 because of the water table.
19 MR. SHERMAN: Right, and I can address that too if you’d like.
20 MS. OESTERLE: Go ahead, yeah.
21 MR. SHERMAN: I can address both of those. The…so the soils report is based on
22 current topography and the way that these units are being built, is there basement levels are just
23 two or three feet into the existing gradient. Normally a basement would be dug nine feet into it,
24 or more into the existing grade. But because of the way we’re grading this site, it only extends
25 two to three feet into the existing sub-grade. So we’re not…it recommended that you not do
26 basements that extend down below that flood elevation, and we’re not. So I think we’re…that’s
27 the way we’ve addressed it, and we’re also mounding…I think we showed you in one of those
28 architectural slides, that…towards the end here…that we are regrading on the north side of those
29 units much like Brookhaven and Spring Meadows have done to kind of elevate those. So this is
30 about existing grade, so we have basements sitting on existing grade. What we’re now doing, is
31 that elevation hasn’t changed. What we’re doing is we’re pushing up the ground around those so
32 the basements are fully buried. And they were walk-out basements in that previous scheme. So
33 that’s how we’ve addressed that concern about the ground water and flood elevations rather than
34 digging deeper into the soil.
31
1 MS. OESTERLE: Okay. I have here the City of Fort Collins definition of compatibility,
2 and for time sake, I’m not going to read the whole thing, but I’ll read the last sentence.
3 Compatibility refers to the sensitivity of development proposals in maintaining the character of
4 an existing development. And I’ll touch on a few of these: we are very concerned about the
5 height of these buildings; we believe they are not at all compatible with the surrounding area. As
6 we’ve stated before, residents in Brookhaven will be looking out at units that will be towering
7 over them. Architecture…this is an older, established neighborhood. The ultra-modern
8 architecture proposed is completely out of character with the surrounding neighborhood.
9 We have issues with lighting…it’s shown on the plans just every few feet. Currently
10 there’s no lighting along our property line, which is more desirable. And I’ll just interject
11 something here that’s not on my paper…they were talking about the drives that go to the…Roger
12 can you bring that back? The drive that go to the garages on our side…yeah, but more so on
13 the…yeah…so we will be having traffic going all along our property line constantly, continually.
14 View…we will walk out of our front door to a wall of buildings from East Stuart all the way
15 down to the buffer zone on Spring Creek. The view we have of Spring Creek will be completely
16 obstructed. We can stand in our back yard and look down at Spring Creek. Privacy…for the
17 past 45 years, we have been able to sit on our patio in complete privacy. No other homes in the
18 area overlook our backyard and we do not look down into other people’s yards. All sense of
19 privacy would be lost if these two and a half story units with their overhead balconies were to be
20 built. Now the balconies on these units are up at like a third story height, and even if you push
21 them back, you’re saying you’re pushing everything more into the center, it would give a few
22 more feet, and I know you’ve done that for our consideration, but because of the height of these
23 buildings, that is not going to make any difference; that will not make any difference. People
24 will still be up on their balconies, barbequing, looking down into our yard and into our windows.
25 Green areas…other homes in the neighborhood have yards and surrounding green areas;
26 the proposed development has none. We are holding the City to their own definition of
27 compatibility; it is our opinion that this development is not compatible with the character of the
28 existing neighborhood.
29 For the past 45 years, realtors and developers have told us that the vacant lot located at
30 900 East Stuart is too narrow for development. Only because of multiple variance requests and
31 modifications is this extremely tight site being considered for development. Even the developer
32 in his reports defines it as, quote, tight. The initial conceptual review agenda stated they were
33 exploring options of constructing 18 to 20 single-family homes on mostly vacant lot, existing
34 home expected to remain. Instead of requesting to build something that is feasible,
35 complimentary to the neighborhood, and acceptable to the neighbors, this developer has chosen
36 to push this to the very limits. The plans now show, along with the existing home being turned
37 into a day care center, 30 single-family units, which are too tall, packed into a very tight space,
38 and with no room for any type of green area. This development would stick out like a sore
39 thumb as one drives down Stuart Street.
32
1 We talked about privacy, I cited some Land Use Codes there…we also believe that this
2 area is not safe. There is one entrance into the development, and we talked at length with the
3 Fire Marshal about this…if that road were to be blocked for any reason, there would be no access
4 to the northern units, none. The emergency vehicles cannot get down those side areas. There is
5 one access and that is a major concern. And I know we were told by the City, well you can’t just
6 take particular instances, but in the Colorado Springs fire, when we had our High Park fire, there
7 were developments like this that burned to the ground because they could not access the back
8 units.
9 We believe we should have a right to voice our opinion as to what we want to do not
10 want next door to us. This is our city and our neighborhood. This overly dense development
11 will change our investment in our property and will affect our lives long after the developer has
12 made his profit and gone home to his own city. While it appears that the City has granted every
13 variance and modification request, that does not mean that this development is appropriate for
14 this neighborhood. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. And I have
15 several things in our packet that we will just give to you that you can look through.
16 MR. MCASKIN: Are these materials that you’ve previously submitted?
17 MS. OESTERLE: No.
18 MR. MCASKIN: Okay, then please do…
19 MS. OESTERLE: Okay. Thank you.
20 (**Secretary’s note: There was a brief undecipherable conversation at this point in the
21 meeting.)
22 MR. GERALD BARTLEY: When I visualize what it would be like walking by this
23 development, it almost is like scary. It’s like some castle or something sticking up above
24 anything else, so it’s kind of like…kind of a shocking vision compared…especially compared to
25 what’s there now. The other thing is, we keep talking about the traffic patterns, and surely the
26 City of Fort Collins has studied the traffic impact. We’re talking 60 to 80 cars…now do these
27 cars never move? They just park them and they walk…I mean it’s like…people live there.
28 They’re going to be coming and going, so where are all these cars…they’re going to be driving
29 down Stuart. I mean there’s no other way to get in there. So, how…does the City take that into
30 consideration with their traffic studies on Stuart? I mean surely there’s an impact, and I haven’t
31 seen…nobody’s talked about what that impact is and how the City is going to deal with that. I
32 mean, it certainly has to be an issue…we’re talking lots of cars and somebody’s going to be
33 driving some of them sometimes.
34 MR. MCASKIN: Yeah, and I think once the public comment portion of the hearing is
35 complete…I mean, obviously traffic is a major issue that we’re hearing about tonight, so my
33
1 understanding is there was a traffic impact analysis that has been completed and perhaps we can
2 ask the applicant’s traffic engineer to comment, or Mr. Olson from the City who’s reviewed it, to
3 comment. So we can do that after…
4 MR. BARTLEY: I’m surprised we have to wait. I would think that was information that
5 the public should know ahead of time because it impacts this hearing and it impacts people’s…I
6 mean we’re talking about theoretical things…we want something concrete…
7 MR. MCASKIN: Sure, but those traffic reports are all public record…
8 MR. BARTLEY: You mean I could have found this out ahead of time? Well, I’ll talk to
9 you…
10 MR. LORSON: It’s all on-line.
11 MR. SHEN GRUBER: Is it my turn now? Can you go back to the slide of the
12 development please? Shen Gruber…Shen…S…H…E…N…Gruber…G…R…U…B…E…R.
13 My presentation was more than three hours, but I cut it down to 30 minutes, and now I’ve
14 got 3 minutes so I’m freaking. Anyway, I live at 902 East Stuart Street. This is me right here,
15 and this is my ¾ acre property. I remember when I…in 2007, when I was considering buying
16 this property and I went and knocked on the door with my realtor, and Nancy Adams, who
17 owned this house and lived there for 60 some years…I told her I wanted to buy the property and
18 build a house here, she slammed the door in my face. Anyway…she fought me all the way.
19 The problem with the development as I see it is it’s too dense; it’s not just too dense
20 across the land, it’s too dense vertically. And, I’d like a list of all the modifications, variances,
21 and elevations if this thing is approved, and remind the City of those when I go for another
22 building permit or something sometime, because they don’t grant those kinds of variances to me,
23 I’m too small. Anyway, so I’ll keep it very brief. This is …very briefly…other people have
24 spoken on…I don’t disagree with anything they’ve said; I’d like to reiterate it if anything. But
25 very briefly, there’s a development at the end of Stuart Street near College and the City didn’t
26 plan for enough parking, so they put up 47…47 of these signs along three blocks, and I just don’t
27 want that in front of my house please. And they painted the curbs red and all that. Okay, enough
28 of that.
29 So, Max, who we’ve met several times who lives on the west side of this
30 development…I’m on the east…he and I got together and we thought that we would run around
31 and actually try to do some pictures and create a fair representation of what the height of these
32 buildings is really going to look like. You started of….could you go to his third slide if you
33 don’t mind? It was the one of the elevation of the buildings. And, Seth, please help me here. I
34 was under the impression that the maximum height permissible and allowed, and they were
35 going for, was 31 feet, 8 inches. But you said 39 feet and then you said it was moved down to
34
1 35. It was the one you had of the elevations…yes, that one. You said 39 feet and then things
2 were moved down to 35?
3 MR. LORSON: I’ll wait until you’re done to answer your question.
4 MR. GRUBER: And the reason it’s permanent is because we went around…I guess if
5 you could just drop that one it’d be great…we went around, Max had an aluminum pole, and
6 believe me, it’s hard to find something 31 feet, 8 inches tall, and this is 31 feet, not 35 or 39; I
7 mean, that’s a huge difference. That’s the house directly across the street. We played to fancy
8 photo tricks of photo shops or whatever…I used this phone at this height or this height…I can
9 use the screen, I can see it. I stood quite a distance back. I’m in Stuart Street, in the middle of
10 the street, risking my life for you guys. This is what…this is 31 feet, 8 inches, and this is an
11 existing home right across the street. I just find that hard to believe it’s compatible. So, next
12 picture please…next slide. This is another house…going around the neighborhood…we hit like
13 ten homes. This is another house and, again, Max is standing right next to the house. You can
14 see, if you look at the end of the splash block there, he’s right up against the house. No tricks,
15 I’m in the street, I think it’s too tall. Next house down…you can draw your own conclusions.
16 This one is not a one-story home, this is a tri-plex…there’s a level, a level, and a level, so
17 it’s…it’s not three stories or two stories, it’s a tri-plex, considered one and a half stories. The
18 next house down…these are not selective; we didn’t skip the tall houses. We just went from
19 Max’s house over to his neighbor, across the street, down the street, back, and we just did a little
20 circle, just the immediate…I think it speaks for itself. Again…
21 MR. MCASKIN: Mr. Gruber, how many more pictures do you have…
22 MR. GRUBER: Just a couple, and they’re not all just houses…
23 MR. MCASKIN: I understand that the height is a concern…you are at about five minutes
24 right now.
25 MR. GRUBER: Sure, I’m speeding up. Waldorf School…this is the house right next to
26 me…
27 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: …Spring Creek Meadows?
28 MR. GRUBER: I’m getting there; I’ve got those…those are the interesting ones. This is
29 the house that will become the school, the Waldorf School…still quite a bit taller. We can skip
30 these…just stick those on the ground. Okay, the interesting ones…this is Spring Meadows; this
31 is the townhomes on the east. I’m standing about 80 feet out; he’s not right up against the
32 building, it does slope uphill a little…pretty bloody tall I think. Another angle…I’ll skip some of
33 these because we don’t have time, but I want to submit them…making a pile.
34 Okay, this one…this is the other side…not that one, that’s Spring Meadows. This is the
35 townhomes on the west, and we’re about halfway up the property. This is not near the ones that
35
1 are sunk down further in the ground. I’m standing…the picture is a little deceiving…I’m
2 standing about a hundred feet out and I’m holding the camera like this. You know, if you get
3 down lower, the pole will look taller. I didn’t want to do that; I wanted to be as accurate as
4 possible. This picture, I’m standing about 150 feet from Max. I’m more than halfway out across
5 the property. And, that’s it for pictures.
6 So, again, I’d really like to know what the actual height is, if it’s taller than the 31 feet, 8
7 that I’ve presented. You mentioned the solar panels, or a possibility of putting those on top of
8 the homes. Is that going to make them taller? You know usually, if you have a moderately flat
9 roof, you angle your panels a little bit. Is that going to add more height? And that’s it for my
10 comments.
11 MR. MCASKIN: Thank you Mr. Gruber.
12 (**Secretary’s note: There was a brief undecipherable conversation at this point in the
13 meeting.)
14 MS. KATHLEEN QUINN: Good evening…actually I had not planned on speaking this
15 evening because I’ve spoken previously…
16 MR. MCASKIN: Mam, could I just get your name?
17 MS. QUINN: I’m sorry, my name is Kathleen Quinn.
18 MR. MCASKIN: Thank you.
19 MS. QUINN: I, unlike everyone else here, do not live on Stuart Street; however, I do live
20 on Prospect Street. And I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Prospect Street. Prospect…Prospect
21 Street that I live on is directly behind Stuart Street. Prospect Street is an extremely busy street.
22 It can take me anywhere from zero to five minutes to get out of my driveway.
23 Unknown to myself or my neighbors, a development went up right across from Life Point
24 Church, and it’s on Ellis Street. Now, if anyone wants to see what a two and a half story
25 complex looks like, of 20 homes, go look through there and tell me what you think. It’s dark,
26 it’s dreary…my eleven year-old granddaughter walked in there with myself and my daughter and
27 she said, can we leave, this is depressing. That’s from an eleven year-old kid. I have walked
28 past there and they sit there looking at part of their garage, their neighbor’s garage, and the
29 neighbor’s garage across the street. Now why anyone would spend $400,000 to live in an area
30 like Fort Collins to look at three garages is beyond me. And, what they have is flat-top roofs,
31 which you should not have a flat-top roof because your snow and your rain, obviously, are going
32 to weight…they’re going to ruin your roof. But that’s where they go to sit, so they can see the
33 mountains, because when you’re down there, you’re looking at your neighbor’s garage. They’re
34 very unattractive looking; I don’t know who the developer is…they are very unattractive. And
35 they are not that far from the floodplain also. And I have been living up here for five years and I
36
1 have walked through there, and I don’t care what anybody says, those streets do flood. And the
2 path…someone built a home which must put over half a million dollars…well, when the
3 mosquitos come out in the summer, I’m sure they’re not going to be too happy with their
4 property.
5 Besides that, on Prospect Road, the other side of College, we’re building a stadium.
6 We’re also building student homes. Where is all of this traffic going to go? In order to avoid the
7 increase on Prospect, I have started going around Stuart. And I’ve never had a problem, used to
8 go around the corner, get right on, and go the back roads down. Now, I go there and I sit and I
9 sit, and it’s dawned on me, I’m having traffic on Stuart, so I can imagine the traffic these people
10 are having. So, my question is, when they build these new homes…which, and I’ve already feel
11 the issue is it’s entirely too dense and it’s a safety issue…they cannot get vehicles in and out of
12 there for emergencies. So now, when you build the stadium, and you build all of this student
13 housing on Prospect, where are all of those cars going to go when they can’t keep going down
14 Prospect? Well, they’re going to overflow to all of these other streets. And, as the young lady
15 just said, Windsong [sic] wants to take in…they have a waiting list of 18 students. That’s fine,
16 but then you’re bringing your car registry up to about 90 cars. So, that’s all I have to say, and
17 thank you. Thank you.
18 MR. MCASKIN: At this point, let me get a…just a show of hands out there of how many
19 other folks would like to comment tonight. I’m just trying to gage timing. How many other
20 folks would like to speak tonight? Well, is there anybody else that would like to come up and
21 comment at this point?
22 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have more comments…
23 MR. MCASKIN: No, that’s okay.
24 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: Well I would just like Roger to respond to
25 this lady in regard to the pond and how is that….
26 MR. MCASKIN: We’re going to have responses to a lot of the issues that were raised.
27 But, at this point what I’d like to do, if there’s nobody else that would like to come up and sign
28 up, what I’d like to do is close the public comment portion of the hearing. The hearing will
29 remain open; we’ll take a short break. I think there’s some major issues that have been raised,
30 including obviously traffic, the privacy concerns with the grade difference, drainage issues
31 related to the grade difference or not, some floodplain concerns, and also emergency access.
32 And what I’d like to do is take a ten minute break, come back, allow the applicant the
33 opportunity to address the issues as they’ve heard them during the public comment, and then also
34 allow staff and, as Seth mentioned earlier, there’s members of the staff team here, like Mr. Olson
35 who has reviewed the traffic study, that can comment. Give them the opportunity, both the
36 applicant and the staff, to address these concerns, and that’s what we’ll do after the break. So, at
37
1 this point, why don’t we…it is 7:57; we’ll take a break, we’ll come back about 8:10 or so. We’ll
2 give everybody about a ten minute break okay? Thank you.
3 (**Secretary’s note: There was a brief break at this point in the meeting.)
4 MR. MCASKIN: Okay, so we’re a little bit past the 8:10 mark, but I’m going to go ahead
5 and get the meeting called back to order here, and we will continue with the public hearing at
6 this point. Thank you all; I didn’t have a wine glass. So, at this point, I’m going to allow the
7 applicant an opportunity to…I guess summarize what they’ve heard as the main issues and then
8 try to address those, and then we’ll give staff an equal opportunity to do the same, to try to
9 answer the questions and concerns that have been raised.
10 MR. GOLDBERG: Well, what we’re going to do is start out with Mike Oberlander,
11 who’s going to talk about drainage and traffic and some of those issues, and then we’ll just kind
12 of go down the list of things we heard…with various members of our team.
13 MR. MCASKIN: Great, thank you.
14 MR. MIKE OBERLANDER: Alright, so I’m Mike Oberlander, I’m with Interwest
15 Consulting Group and I’ve done the civil engineering design that was submitted with the PDP, as
16 well as the drainage report. And we have the City staff who reviewed all of that is here as
17 well…they can discuss that too.
18 I wanted to start discussing the floodplain…so you have my plans, I’m assuming? So
19 sheet six is specifically a floodplain exhibit; sheet four is a grading plan of the whole site. So,
20 the floodplain…Spring Creek slopes from west to east. The floodplain elevations are a 49 56 to
21 55. So 56 to 55 is where the water is modeled to be. Our back lot line, the north lot line of the
22 eight units up by Spring Creek…the units themselves are between 7 and 18 feet south of the
23 floodplain line, and that back lot line elevation varies from a 64 on the west to a 61 on the east,
24 so, between 8 and 6 feet above the floodplain elevation is where the soil at the lot line will be.
25 The basements, because in that very first elevation that we showed the difference between the
26 first and the second submittal, we had walk-out basements…well, those basements, at that time,
27 had to be above the floodplain. We didn’t change that elevation, so the basements are
28 actually…the floor of the basements actually above the floodplain but there’s no connection,
29 they’ll be completely underground. Just another note that Watercourse Way on the south side is
30 about the same elevations as that back lot line, so well above the floodplain. We are in the flood
31 fringe, we are not doing any work in the flood way, which is defined by FEMA, or defined for
32 FEMA by the City.
33 I’ll speak just a little bit about the water quality pond. Because of the floodplain
34 configuration here, and Lucia can correct me if I’m wrong…in the buffer, in the 100-foot buffer,
35 trails and ponds are allowed. This is just a water quality pond. It’s not a very large volume; it’s
36 just to try to clean that water before it enters the channel. It is in-sized in the bank so, at most,
38
1 it’s three foot of excavation, and partially because the bottom of it still has to be higher than the
2 Spring Creek, and because of those ground water…the ground water testing. So, it’s got four to
3 one slopes or less, and it’s landscaped per City standard, correct? So it will, for the most part,
4 look like a depression. I don’t think it will be visible from the trail.
5 MR. GOLDBERG: Mike could you talk a little bit about water quality, how that might
6 relate to water being shed from the existing site?
7 MR. OBERLANDER: Yeah, so today, the entire site, for the most part, just sheets into
8 Spring Creek. Once you add pavements, that water speeds up somewhat…
9 MR. MCASKIN: So nothing is currently draining to the east or the west, for the most part
10 it’s draining north?
11 MR. OBERLANDER: There’s a slight bit of water draining from the property on our east
12 into us…a minor amount that we’re just going to take down our lot line and it will get to the
13 water quality pond. On the west, right in that same area that right now my grading plan is
14 showing that there is that side lot…is draining on to your property. My survey shows that that
15 area currently drains onto the property to the west. We’ve got the 14 foot of setback, and I will
16 with any further design, I’ll grade a swale in there to drain it straight south into Stuart.
17 MR. GOLDBERG: So water from our site goes into the water quality pond before it goes
18 into Spring Creek?
19 MR. OBERLANDER: Before Spring Creek, yes.
20 MR. GOLDBERG: And how are we cleaning that water?
21 MR. OBERLANDER: The water in the water quality pond is designed to be…it’s for
22 your everyday thunderstorm, half inch of rain, not the three inches of rain that’s a 100-year
23 storm. It’s to capture that water for between 24 and 48 hours, let any sediments filter out. In
24 addition, we have kind of lined the site with the pervious pavers that the City of Fort Collins now
25 requires, so we’re kind of doubling-up on our water quality. The pavers will first treat the water,
26 it will drop into the pavers into a small pipe that will also drain into the water quality pond.
27 MR. GOLDBERG: How does that compare to water say shedding through manure and
28 other fertilizers that might be going on the grass…
29 MR. OBERLANDER: Those are the same…yeah…those are the same things that you
30 would…
31 MR. GOLDBERG: Same today…the existing…
32 MR. OBERLANDER: Yeah, the existing condition is…we will probably have cleaner
33 water coming off in the same storm with the water quality pond and the pavers.
39
1 I wanted to speak to the proposed grading. First of all that we will get that lot one
2 regraded, redesigned to drain straight south into Stuart Street, which won’t be any difficulty
3 because of the extra setback there that we have. And then, generally the alleys that are running
4 down that east and west property line were designed to be between six inches and a foot below
5 the property line elevation, so that everything from the property line very easily just drops right
6 into our site and nothing…nothing on those alleys is going away from us. Now, we have to…it
7 was a priority for us to keep the north end of the site elevated above the floodplain, so there’s
8 only so much we can drop. We couldn’t drop the site next to that retaining wall on the west and
9 have an equal retaining wall on our side, because we’d never catch up and get back to Stuart. It
10 would be impossible. Or the garage of the child care would be hanging out in the air. So, so for
11 the most part, if you look at the grading plan and compare existing, proposed…for the most part
12 the grades of the streets and alleys are usually about a foot lower than the existing grades out
13 there. It would be very difficult to push it much lower or frankly to push it much higher because
14 then we’d be spilling that drainage out. And that is more than anybody wanted to know about
15 drainage and grading.
16 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can I make a comment on that…on drainage?
17 MR. MCASKIN: I mean, at this point, really, I’m allowing the applicant the opportunity
18 to respond to the questions and then I’m going to give City staff the opportunity to respond.
19 MR. OBERLANDER: And I think if there’s anything I missed, Wes can…who reviewed
20 the drainage and grading, can comment on that. I’m going to speak to the emergency access and
21 then…
22 MR. SHERMAN: I just want to add one more thing. The water quality pond is shown on
23 our plans and labeled and that will be landscaped with…I know it’s hard to see from there, sorry,
24 I should have highlighted it…but it’s right here; it’s narrow and linear and it follows our path.
25 It’s only three to four feet deep; it will be planted with a mixture of upland and wetland seed and
26 it will be…all of the landscape in this area is native Colorado plantings. We’re going to, though,
27 try and stay out of the flood way with any disturbance so that we don’t create any erosion, or
28 additional erosion problems within the flood way. But then everything in this area will be native
29 planting scheme.
30 MR. OBERLANDER: And that’s all for that upper…to keep the nature…
31 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: Will it be dirt or will it be full of water? Will
32 it just be dirt or will it be full of water?
33 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: Don’t answer…just don’t…
34 MR. OBERLANDER: Alright, so the emergency access…on the plat you’ll see that the
35 emergency access is just down the main spine with a hammerhead platted for…this was…this
40
1 particular turn specifically was designed for the City...for PFA’s ladder truck, which is the
2 biggest vehicle they have. We worked closely with PFA to come up with a good plan for this to
3 be able to get in and out. During that same study, their smaller trucks, their regular engines,
4 actually can make it all the way around all of these corners. We tried to make these corners a
5 little wider, specifically for garbage trucks, delivery trucks, whatever you might see down there.
6 And then we do have a second point of access that’s actually…one of our variances was to get
7 this closer access because we wanted the drop-off…but it is…it would be if there was a car
8 accident here and a fire here, there would be a second lane on this side.
9 MR. MCASKIN: Let me ask staff…so, I think you said that this has gone through three
10 rounds of review with the City? Has PFA commented on all three of the site plans and has the
11 access changed in any way based on PFA’s input?
12 UNIDENTIFIED STAFF MEMBER: Yes, it has changed. The original submittal we had
13 some different configuration of this intersection; it had what we call curb bulges; you know the
14 corners bump out a little bit, and so we removed those to widen up the radiuses of this
15 intersection. We also restricted the parking within 30 feet of that intersection so that the fire
16 trucks could make that turn as well. Were there any others?
17 MR. OBERLANDER: No, it was really just the turn-around, and, yeah, we worked
18 closely with them to make sure this works for their purposes.
19 UNIDENTIFIED STAFF MEMBER: And they have supported this configuration too…
20 MR. OBERLANDER: And then from a Code standpoint, again if I’m reading something
21 wrong, Lucia will correct me. My calc is that this is a 440 long drive, and the longest dead end
22 allowed in town is 660, per the Code. That would be your longest cul-de-sac that’s allowed
23 without some other back door or way into the street. So we’re certainly not in a position where
24 we want to have the…have the fire truck have to loop. If we were 800 feet, I think PFA’s
25 approach would be different, but at 440, it’s manageable and within the Code.
26 MR. LORSON: If I may follow-up on that…the City of Fort Collins never moves a
27 project forward to a public hearing without emergency services giving their grace to move
28 forward. We would never, ever take a project forward unless PFA says they can manage
29 emergency services to the site. It’s critical services to a development and we will never move
30 forward without it.
31 MR. OBERLANDER: And since we’re talking about drives and traffic, we’re going to
32 have Joe come up and talk about his traffic study.
33 MR. SHERMAN: Let me just add one more thing. There was a comment about the
34 streets being too narrow, and this was actually based on the City’s local residential street
35 standard, Cherokee Drive is…and so it’s the type of street you’ll see all over the City in that
41
1 regard. The only difference being this stretch where we’ve eliminated the on-street parking so
2 the travel lanes are actually even wider in this stretch than they are in this stretch. So I just
3 wanted to address the narrow streets comment as well.
4 MR. MCASKIN: And will any portion of the streets be public?
5 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: None.
6 MR. MCASKIN: Just Stuart Street?
7 MR. OBERLANDER: They’re public access easements.
8 MS. LILEY: Yes, they have a public access easement over all of them…
9 MR. OBERLANDER: But they won’t be City-maintained.
10 MS. LILEY: Privately maintained….
11 MR. MCASKIN: Privately maintained…HOA district…what’s…?
12 MS. LILEY: HOA.
13 MR. MCASKIN: HOA.
14 MR. JOE HENDERSON: Hello, my name is Joe Henderson; I’m with Sustainable Traffic
15 Solutions. I completed the traffic study based on the City’s requirements for a traffic study for
16 this type of development. I might add that the City’s…City of Fort Collins traffic study
17 requirements are much more rigorous in other similar communities. And the study was accepted
18 by the City as well.
19 We collected traffic counts in February of this year down here on Stuart Street and we
20 collected peak hour counts, so we collected counts in the morning, counts in the evening. And
21 average…average density of vehicles in the morning and evening was about 7 or 8 vehicles per
22 minute. So, this a collector street, a minor collector street, and a minor collector street balances
23 the need for access and moving vehicles. And so a minor collector implies that we’re not going
24 to have much traffic, and we don’t. The proposed traffic, when we add the traffic from this
25 development on top, will have average number of vehicles per minute between 8 and 9 during
26 the peak hours. So, we increase about one vehicle per minute during that time.
27 Standards that people…traffic engineers use to assess traffic impacts at intersections are
28 called level of service, and they grade from A to F, and A is great like in school and F is bad like
29 in school. And the City’s minimum requirement for a stop-controlled intersection like Stuart is
30 level of service E. And so that means there’s going to be some delay at this approach if it’s bad,
31 and that’s not…for a stop-controlled intersection, that’s not unusual. Once we add this
32 development on, this is going to work at level of service B during the peak hours, so it’s going to
42
1 operate very acceptably. So, with those densities of traffic that I mentioned, there’s going to be
2 plenty of opportunities for people to turn onto Stuart Street from the side street. I guess those are
3 the main issues that I heard mentioned…
4 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: Joe, could you just explain peak
5 hour, what that means, and non-peak?
6 MR. HENDERSON: So, in a community like Fort Collins, like other communities, we
7 have a peak hour…the morning and the evening peak when people are driving to work, driving
8 to school, and so that’s why, based on the City standards, we collected the counts during the
9 morning and evening peak hours because during the other times of the day the traffic is a lot
10 lower than it is during the peak hours.
11 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: And Joe could you also talk about
12 the child care center and when you looked at that compared to…how that would work compared
13 to how it currently works?
14 MR. HENDERSON: Sure…well the Waldorf center now…the Waldorf School has this
15 little driveway right here and so there’s not a lot of room to drop kids off and pick kids up. And
16 so there’s a lot of traffic…a lot of people parking on the street with that. So, the way the
17 circulation is set up now is that parents will enter here, loop around and drop their kids off.
18 We’ll use this as an outbound driveway only. And so we’ll have room to queue vehicles up
19 along here, plus using all these parking spaces here, to get cars off the street and allow parents to
20 drop off their kids. And…does that answer your question?
21 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: Yeah, and the other thing I think we
22 brought up earlier, but just to reiterate, is the shared parking agreement that is going on between
23 the school and the child care center and the neighborhood so that that way there’s shared parking
24 also during off hours when the school is not in session. So that’ll help with that piece as well.
25 Thanks Joe.
26 MR. HENDERSON: Thanks.
27 MR. SHERMAN: Joe, was there anything you’d like to add? Oh, staff’s afterwards,
28 okay, I’m sorry.
29 MR. LARSON: For site, I’ll jump through a couple images, but I want to say that we
30 fully modeled…so as we talked about civil…so civil developed their grading plan, everything, in
31 full 3D model. We import that into our software that is a full 3D model that is showing the
32 character both of the existing site and adjacent…and I apologize that I didn’t mention that
33 earlier, you know…a comment was made if this was, you know, a Photoshop exercise, but all
34 this has been…the site topography both existing and proposed is modeled right to the flood line
35 and everything as discussed, as well as all the building elevations. So when we worked with
43
1 Seth, as we go through…and we’ll show some images and cuts, but recognize that each of those
2 building envelope forms are tied specific to each lot and each grade point of like the sidewalk,
3 the step coming up. So all that is engineered, both site-grading as well as architecture…question
4 on floor heights, you know, building heights, all those pieces have…there’s a reason for each
5 one. So, let me run through…
6 And then I’m going to have Jeff jump into some of this because he is the technical guru
7 that can get through…we’ll come back to solar…this is one of the first images…so, I’ll try to
8 stay on a linear line here for you guys. I’m going to show you a few images of the section cuts
9 through, but just to set the stage…this is a comment we’ve heard several times, of if you’re on
10 the property to the west, and again I think the…in a perfect world we’d set the site down as low
11 as we could. If we had the opportunity to push it in more and still get drainage and tie-in just
12 based on…the site to the east of us is actually up-stream. We didn’t have some of the same
13 grading issue benefits that that had, which is kind of funny, but so the big challenge of looking at
14 elevations and sections which we will pull up, is the difference between looking at something
15 and a flat elevation from 100 feet away, or looking at it in perspective as we experience any
16 project from day to day. So this shot is a perspective of standing at a 5 foot 6 eye height, which
17 would be mine…in a backyard looking at what would be…these are existing structure, and then
18 proposed. And the reason is we’ve talked about really pulling that proposed back both on east
19 and west, is that recedes the height of the building. So, this is the actual view of physically, you
20 know, this grade is shot, this grade is shot, and our heights of each structure have been vetted all
21 the way down. So I mean, this is the physical view of that camera looking on site…
22 MR. JEFF HANSEN: And just to be clear, that’s the retaining wall…
23 MR. LARSON: Yeah, this is the existing retaining wall from the west property.
24 MR. HANSEN: Also a note in there, we’ve talked about working with individual
25 neighbors on fence height. You can see, I mean, we haven’t talked with everybody so we don’t
26 know which height fence you want out your back door, but this…that also illustrates how that
27 fence height will vary and the effect it might have on what you’d see out your back door.
28 MR. LARSON: And with the model…if a neighbor is trying to understand, well, what
29 would a four foot high fence look like versus a six foot high fence and what does that change
30 from my view line, as well as shadow lines, so we can show both of those.
31 MR. GOLDBERG: So these are views that Megan and her guests arguably may have in
32 the former slide right?
33 MR. LARSON: Yes, yes. So…Jeff, do you want to talk to like this site section at the
34 creek and then we’ll go up the street…so here’s…which is actually fantastic. This is the…this is
35 the water quality…
44
1 MR. HANSEN: Yep, that section is going right through the water quality pond. It gives
2 you an idea how much of a depression you’re looking at.
3 MR. LARSON: So you can see, this is actually…this is the creek, grade change, this is
4 the water quality pond, and then grade change coming up to the northern most building,
5 Watercourse, and then the street section coming up. And the next slide we can follow that street
6 section up.
7 MR. HANSEN: And we keep calling that a water quality pond and it implies that it’s full
8 of water. It’s really to hold water when there’s a whole bunch of rain, and it slows it down a
9 little bit before it goes into the creek.
10 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: For the most part it’s grasses that….
11 MR. HANSEN: Yeah, it’s going to be a field of grass. These are sections…the top two
12 are going down Cherokee, one looking west and one looking east.
13 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: This is looking west, this is looking
14 east.
15 MR. HANSEN: Gives you a sense of how the buildings…how we’re really trying to
16 respond to the existing topography.
17 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: And you can see, whether you’re
18 in…both sides of the street, which will have…the benefit of this grade change is that we get a
19 great articulation between each entry. Every building has front porch entry step, but it’s going to
20 shift between floor plates as you’re moving down. So you’re actually…you’re actually at a
21 different height than your neighbor consistently all the way along, it’s one of the benefits. So,
22 you know, this unit is at this height, this unit’s at this height, this is back up, this is back down,
23 and it terraces the whole…all the way along.
24 MR. HANSEN: This section also gives you a…lets you feel the open space that the
25 circulation in the site creates. And really…and it’s…and our buffer to the creek is actually so
26 big that in most of these it just wasn’t practical to get it to fit…to get all the way to the trail…it
27 wasn’t practical to, you know, if I stretch the image that far, the houses are so small that you
28 can’t see any of the detail in them. Yeah, you can keep going.
29 These are going…if you look at the diagram on the bottom right…you can see where
30 these views are cut. That top one is going right through…I tried to capture the Spring Meadows
31 buildings, you can see those. I’m looking at the very top image…the Spring Meadows condos.
32 And the Brookhaven on the left; you see that retaining wall we’re cutting through.
33 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: That’s a great…up top.
45
1 MR. HANSEN: And you can see how we’ve really tried to pull the site down to make the
2 buildings seem as short as possible.
3 MR. LARSON: This retaining wall remains existing; we’ve got a planter bed…then the
4 alley drive…which you can actually see how that one foot…some areas more and some areas
5 less…then it drops down.
6 MR. HANSEN: And it’s…you know when we’re trying to minimize the footprint of the
7 buildings, obviously they get taller. We’re going to two and a half stories, which is permitted by
8 Code…or by the Land Use Code…and you know, rather than having a level line, we’re trying to
9 create a nice, smooth transition in the building heights from going left to right.
10 MR. LARSON: And I think the other articulation on that one and a half story is that, you
11 know, when we’re…all the property that’s adjacent to neighbors, we’ve kept that two story line
12 down. The part we’re excited about is the interior of the project, which you’re welcome to walk
13 down and go to Spring Creek…that we went to the two and a half story for kind of the height and
14 connection amongst neighbors that we think is appealing…whether…everybody is available to
15 their own opinion. But we intentionally have kept everything at a two-story or less adjacent the
16 neighboring property.
17 MR. HANSEN: I think another thing to note also would be, when you look at the interior
18 elevations versus the interior facing elevations versus the out-facing elevations….go back a
19 slide…you know, we are…we’re trying to promote this modern, contemporary look to the
20 project, but also be sensitive to the neighbors. The interior portion is where we’re really taken
21 the architectural license to make a statement. The out-facing, still fitting in with the same
22 building, trying to have some forms that relate to the more traditional architecture around the
23 perimeter.
24 MR. LARSON: Right…which might segue into compatibility unless there’s anything
25 else I should hit on for…
26 So, the…and Lucia, do you want to just touch on the definition, high-level view of
27 compatibility?
28 MS. LILEY: Yes, I mean, I think the Code recognizes two things: that compatibility is
29 not same as, and secondly that it depends upon whether there’s an established character within
30 the adjacent neighborhood. If there is, there are different standards. If there’s no established one
31 kind of architecture, nature or character, then the Code requires something different but high
32 quality, and I think from that maybe you can walk through….
33 MR. LARSON: And this is Streamside across the way…there is…at each property point
34 that we touch, there would be a different architectural character that comes out from traditional,
46
1 kind of your ‘30’s and ‘50’s farm houses to, you know, mid-‘70’s, ‘80’s architecture that’s, you
2 know, their take on a two and a half story. But…you’ve got…
3 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: Where’s that slide taken from?
4 MR. LARSON: This is taken from our property looking…about mid-property looking
5 directly east…
6 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: Toward Mr. Gruber’s property?
7 MR. LARSON: I’m an Airstream owner as well…so, beyond the Airstreams, you can see
8 the ‘70’s two and a half story version, and these are…each moment in time…and I think, you
9 know, some people may love that and some people may hate it. A hundred years from now, it’ll
10 be, you know, another historic project that we’ll be saving.
11 So, if we go back up…the, you know, and so as we come back this way…so that is, from
12 compatibility, the definition in the City Code, is if we’re in an area that everything is built
13 between, you know, 1910 and 1930, you have got a set language that the City says, show me
14 how you’re adapting to that specific architecture. At this location, literally each property line is
15 fronting a different architectural character. So, we looked at it as an opportunity, really, is how
16 do you take that compatibility and, from the perimeter, knit everybody together. And so, you
17 know, you’re…we’ve got two stories, two and a half stories, and we’ve purposely hunkered
18 these lower on all of our perimeter edges as well as, you know, we’ve eliminated flat roofs,
19 we’ve eliminated parapet walls…elements that you’ll see in the interior of the site are
20 intentionally removed from the exterior and adjoining context purposely to tie to roof lines,
21 gables, adjoining roof forms, even though they’re a mixed bag, we’ve intentionally tied the
22 architecture to tie with those varied elements.
23 And then as we get, you know, so that’s again our exterior views looking from public
24 way. And then this is adjacent, and then this is walking…again, that…as I mentioned, that
25 lower…so this is actually an interior, but I can go to the outside…
26 So, here’s an adjacent neighbor, but all of this…this is a similar view, our garage view
27 along the alleyways have that lowered two story, not two and a half story, that you’ll see as you
28 get interior to the site. And then, you know, mix of materials of stone, lap siding that’s tied with
29 other adjacent properties, and stucco. So the mix of materials are also pulled in from adjacent
30 properties.
31 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: One thing I’d like to add…when
32 we’re talking about the building height…I don’t think we’ve addresses…when the Code talks
33 about two and a half stories, they’re not meaning that that half…if you have, let’s say a generous
34 house, ten foot ceiling height, you know, per story, it doesn’t mean that your…that top story has
35 a five foot ceiling height that’s not useable. It’s talking more about the mass of building. Does it
47
1 have…that top floor is only taking up half of the mass of the building. And that’s why, in these
2 buildings…look two stories tall on one side and they appear to be three stories tall on the other
3 side…at the upper most level, that three story…that third floor level is only taking up half of the
4 building.
5 MR. LARSON: If you have a one and a half story house, your half story isn’t just, you
6 know, four foot tall and you walk around your half story like this…you know, ideally we’ve got
7 roof slopes and changes, but it’s a useable…a certain amount of that half story is a useable…you
8 can stand straight up inside it.
9 The…anything else on the…
10 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: Do you want to talk about how you
11 addresses, specifically, compatibility on Stuart next to the Oesterle’s and the attention you paid
12 to that?
13 MR. LARSON: This is a…nearly a one and a half story exterior adjacent, steps to a two
14 story as we move into the project. So, we’re making it…intentionally to transition…and it’s the
15 benefit sometimes, you know, we work on infill projects that we have, you know, one
16 building…the benefit of this project is we actually have, you know, the ability to transition as we
17 move along the street edge. So we go from one story, two story, two story, and then turn back
18 interior to the site.
19 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: Also I’d like to note on this, you
20 know, on the interior of the site, the front of the buildings have a lot of, you know, roof steep,
21 single pitch roofs, trying to have a more contemporary feel. This elevation facing Stuart that are
22 all more traditional gables, lower slopes, front porches…especially this one on the left side has a
23 lot more generous front porch than anything else you’d find…just trying to create a more
24 traditional…
25 MR. LARSON: And this is a large front porch, another front porch, and then a stoop, and
26 then this one’s got a front porch as you come in.
27 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: So compatibility doesn’t necessarily
28 mean, you know….
29 MR. LARSON: Correct…it’s sensitivity of scale and massing in an area that has an open
30 architectural character…that you’re sensitive to that…the adjacent buildings. But if you don’t
31 have a certain specific style to relate to, then how are you being sensitive to the kind of multitude
32 of different architectural elements in the area.
33 And then I think…I don’t know if you want me to jump into…kind of touch on how we
34 stepped back from the riparian…
48
1 So, the….I think the coming both from a riparian standpoint as well as any wildlife along
2 the river corridor is enormously important. And this project happens to be set back more than
3 the adjacent properties and actually allowing more open space that will be…and I
4 believe…we’re farther back than the fence of the horses…is that correct? We’re actually
5 repairing some of that area?
6 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: No I think the horses can go…but
7 you can see the north most point of Brookhaven’s buildings and the northern most point of
8 Spring Meadows, and we’re set back a significant distance from those.
9 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: The creek is…
10 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: Right, right, and so we’re responding
11 to the creek, just similarly to yours…the neighbors.
12 MR. MCASKIN: I do have a question…I know we’ve kind of talked about flooding a
13 little bit, but did either of these buildings flood in the last flood in ’97?
14 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: I believe the Spring Meadows side, they were
15 ready to evacuate that building right there…yeah.
16 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: In the 1997 flood, there was a building that is
17 west of Lemay along the creek, but access by Prospect that was flooded. And in the rain in
18 September of 2013, they almost got water in again. If they had released water from the dam,
19 they would have been flooded again.
20 MR. MCASKIN: Okay, thanks.
21 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: But just for the record, I think the ’97 flood
22 was a 500 year event, as I recall?
23 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: The 100 year events are happening every day.
24 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: Did you want to touch on density
25 really quick?
26 MR. LARSON: Sure, and I’ll back up a little bit. I think there might be…Pam you
27 mentioned that at concept review we had talked about having 10 to…I think 10 to 12 or 10 to 18
28 units, something like that. There was a concept review before ours by a different person on this
29 same site, and maybe that’s what you’re referring to, but we’ve always…I think the least number
30 of units we’ve had is 28 ever on a plan, and I think we went up to 30 after we kind of rearranged
31 the site a little bit. So we didn’t go from 10 to 30; I think we went from 28 to 30.
32 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: And you can imagine, if someone’s
33 looking at this property based on the adjacent neighbors, they’re going to look and say, you
49
1 know, to the design team, they’re at 7.86, Code is between 3 and 9…but, you know, we want to
2 be in scale and context of our adjacent, but we also want to utilize the property and have this nice
3 fit. So, anybody that looks at this… and there’s a dozen ways, from an architectural standpoint,
4 that you could develop it, and one would be four-plexes with parking lots. And that might have a
5 less…that might have a different feel to somebody than what we’ve proposed. The density…but
6 from a comment of …that it seems too dense…is we’re actually providing more green space and
7 more, I think, daylighting opportunities than some of the adjacent projects. But, that’s my
8 perspective…but you could put in…you could take, you know, four-plexes that have, you know,
9 you’re in a…and that becomes the other type of unit that’s shared property line…attached single-
10 family. The…we did a project…some of the challenge was that with attached, like five-plex,
11 six-plex, is you get windows just out of the front and back and you don’t get daylighting
12 opportunities through mid-sections of the dwelling. And our goal is always that, if it’s daylight
13 outside, you should never have to turn a light on any room in your house.
14 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: I think one of the key points is that
15 we’re within the Code…
16 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: And we’re similar to the uses around
17 us.
18 MR. MCASKIN: Speaking of density, I do have…I do have a question…and this is best
19 directed at you. When I’m looking at the Code on the calculation for the gross residential
20 density and the net residential density, if I’m looking at 3.8, 18(b), when you’re calculating net
21 residential density, it talks about…you reduce or you subtract from the gross acreage land
22 containing natural features or features that are to be protected from development. I’m assuming
23 that that is referring to that 100-foot buffer. And so I’m a little bit confused on how the gross
24 density and the net density, per your calculations, are coming out the same. I mean it seems like
25 the net density should be higher. And I’m just wondering if you could talk about why that
26 wasn’t backed out…or should it be backed out, I guess, in calculating…
27 MR. SHERMAN: Yeah, we had these conversations early on…
28 MR. LORSON: Let me address this if that’s okay…I don’t know anything about his
29 calculations necessarily, but I really only addressed the gross density, because in the LMN
30 section of the Land Use Code, 4.5(d)(1) is the density part, the maximum is 9 dwelling units per
31 gross acre. In all the conversations we’ve had, I’m guessing that maximum density was the only
32 concern and not minimum density. So, therefore, I only really looked at the gross density. Sure,
33 I looked at net, but it didn’t matter, because in the Code the only part that applies to this
34 development in terms of net density is for the minimum required density on the site. That’s of
35 no concern because everyone wants them to have less density, so maximum density is the only
36 concern, thus the staff report only addresses gross density.
50
1 MR. MCASKIN: Right, and that’s what is shown on this slide...get the
2 comparison…neighborhoods…gross density.
3 MR. SHERMAN: It’s consistent the way it’s calculated. Correct, yeah, if you netted out
4 this almost one acre out of ours, this would go up. If you netted out all of this out of theirs, theirs
5 would be probably twice as high. So I mean, it would happen to everyone. Net all of this out of
6 theirs…this…so it would…all of the numbers would go up.
7 MR. MCASKIN: Okay, I guess at this point…I don’t know if…if Seth, if you or if any
8 members of City staff have specific comments or questions of the applicant at this point.
9 MR. LORSON: So I would ask that Joe Olson or Wes Lamarque only come up and
10 comment if you have something to refute from what Mike had said, or if you have something to
11 add, or if you feel like there’s some sort of a sense of clarification. Contracting engineers,
12 they’re professional engineers, work very closely with City engineers when we talk about traffic
13 studies and we talk about drainage requirements…so I welcome you guys up to come speak to
14 these issues, but I don’t think that we need to speak to them unless there’s a need to.
15 Does anyone in the public feel compelled to hear from the City engineers as well? Is that
16 a yes?
17 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: Please yes, I want to hear the storm drain
18 people talk about the…the pit that they’re going to have…the water quality pit. You said they
19 were here tonight right? Thank you.
20 MR. WES LAMARQUE: Sure, yeah I can address that. Yeah, that is a water quality
21 pond, and what that’s doing is treating the water on site. And actually, pond is a bad name for
22 that. It’s actually a water quality basin we now call these. And what they do is they actually fill
23 up with water in these small storms, they drain within 24 hours, and then they’re back to, you
24 know, to the dry state. About three years ago now, we did adopt detention pond landscaping
25 standards, and these standards require these ponds to be landscaped appropriately…yeah, basins,
26 thanks…see, I’m not used to that yet. But, so these basins have to be landscaped appropriately,
27 but also they have to be shaped and sized to kind of mimic a natural feature; so they can’t just be
28 holes in the ground. So they do have varying slopes, you know, kind of undulating edges, and so
29 what we do is just make sure that’s being met. And, this pond is, like they said, three to four feet
30 deep. So it will definitely be a depression, but it won’t be a pit, and the slopes will be graded to
31 where they will be more of a natural looking slope. And then, after this hearing, if the project
32 goes forward, then we will make sure in our more final compliance round, that these are detailed
33 enough so they’re built per plan. And we’ll make sure that there’s enough detail in the plans that
34 it does get built how we envision.
35 And then this pond here, this is next to a natural feature so this landscaping appropriately
36 refers to more natural, native plantings. You know, different neighborhoods might require…you
51
1 know they might want bluegrass you know, and maybe a double use type pond where it’s a park
2 and a pond, or a basin. So, this one here though has to meet the natural area features which is
3 native grasses and native plantings.
4 MR. GRUBER: Will there be a drainage easement from my property?
5 MR. LAMARQUE: Will there be a drainage easement for your property?
6 MR. GRUBER: Right.
7 MR. LAMARQUE: They’re required to take any drainage that currently drains onto
8 them, so they won’t need a drainage easement on your property, but they have to allow your
9 drainage to go on their property.
10 MR. GRUBER: Well, Glen Schlueter had said that he was looking at…because my
11 property does the same thing, flows to the creek, it kind of creates a trap…Nancy Adams next
12 door, that’s how she kept me from building on mine, she refused the drainage easement, and
13 Glen said that wasn’t really kind of fair in the context of the Code and so they were going to…
14 MR. LAMARQUE: Right so, in this case, they’ll have to, in the future allow what’s
15 existing drainage onto their site. So if you increase it, you would have to detain those flows.
16 MR. GRUBER: So it’s a no?
17 MR. LAMARQUE: Right, so you’d have to…but you would be allowed to release your
18 existing flows.
19 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: Why don’t you explain
20 it…he…control the flows on his site…historical flows on his site before he transfers it off…just
21 like…
22 MR. LAMARQUE: So you could…just for clarity…you could create an addition or
23 expansion, whatever you would like to do, from that side, and if you change the impervious and
24 added pervious, then you would just have to slow so that you met historic rates going across this
25 site.
26 MR. GRUBER: So I’d have to put in a rain guard or a retention pond or something?
27 MR. LAMARQUE: A basin…yeah one of those.
28 MR. MCASKIN: Thank you.
29 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can I just ask you one question?
30 MR. LAMARQUE: Sure.
52
1 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: On the drainage reports…state that they are
2 based on normal, everyday occurrences, and if you read the history of Spring Creek, there
3 are…Spring Creek has had numerous events. The 1997 flood didn’t happen once every 100
4 years or 500 years…there’s been a lot of flooding in between those times. So how do you
5 account for that? Your water…if we have a major flood again, your water quality pond is going
6 to be of no use whatsoever.
7 MR. LAMARQUE: Right, right, and that is true. They…so the water quality pond is
8 designed for normal, everyday thunderstorms. And they’re also required, per our Code and
9 stormwater requirements, to convey that 100 year storm or detain it. So, this site is imagining
10 those 100 year storm flows we call, which can happen more than once every 100 years, but it’s
11 a…there’s a 1% chance each year of these storms happening in this location. So, this site does
12 meet that criteria as far as being able to convey those flows to the pond, the pond will have a
13 spillway built in so those larger flows will spill over the spillway and into Spring Creek. And
14 now this site is unique in that it does not have quantity detention, so this site is not taking those
15 100 year flows and reducing the peak flow. That’s because Spring Creek, in the overall master
16 plan, those peak flows will come later, so we want these flows to leave this area and exit the area
17 before the flows from west of College come through here. And what that does is that relieves
18 even a higher peak, so these…it’s called beat the peak we call it. But so, these flows will
19 actually exit the area and Spring Creek can handle this site’s flows in a 100 year storm. So
20 that’s…and there’s modeling that proves that.
21 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: So the 100-foot buffer zone, the requirement,
22 you know, the City is using to try to protect that…those corridors? In this case, they’ll be
23 digging up within that 100-foot buffer zone and regrading everything so the original
24 environmental conditions will be completely changed.
25 MR. LAMARQUE: Yeah…now they will be altered. I know, in these buffer zones,
26 certain features are allowed, that when built and then revegetated will mimic close to the natural
27 features that are there, or even enhance it.
28 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: As for example Streamside, is that what’s
29 happening at Streamside…the other development right across there that has one of those pits?
30 MR. LAMARQUE: Streamside…I don’t know if it’s in the buffer or not, or where that
31 lies within that. I would have to investigate, yeah.
32 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: The Hilton hotel is clearly in the buffer
33 zone…the one behind the Hilton hotel on the west side of College, that great big one that they
34 just put in.
35 MR. LAMARQUE: Yeah…that was…
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1 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: They dug up everything and there’s this huge
2 dirt pit there.
3 MR. LAMARQUE: I think I know what you mean…
4 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: It’s like Centre Street…close to Centre Street.
5 MR. LAMARQUE: Yeah, I know the area…
6 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: If you walk on the trail you can see it…
7 MR. LORSON: Thank you Wes. Yeah, I think you’ve answered the question; I
8 appreciate it, thank you. Joe, did you have anything to add?
9 MR. JOE OLSON: Only if there’s questions. I think Joe Henderson gave a good
10 synopsis, and unless there’s questions, I’m happy to not talk.
11 MR. LORSON: Great, okay.
12 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: Could you repeat that; we didn’t hear.
13 MR. LORSON: Joe, the City’s traffic engineer said that the applicant’s engineer, Joe
14 Henderson, did an adequate job of explaining the traffic impact study. Yeah, will you just speak
15 quickly to features within the natural buffer area?
16 MS. KELLY KIMPLE: My name is Kelly Kimple, I’m an Environmental Planning
17 Technician with the City of Fort Collins, and I have reviewed this project. I’ve been here a
18 month and a half, so the initial comments that were made on this, I’ve looked at those, and
19 reviewed the ecological characterization study. And that’s triggered whenever a development is
20 within 500 feet of a natural habitat or feature, and natural habitats or features are defined in our
21 Code, and one of those is Spring Creek. And there is a 100 foot buffer required from Spring
22 Creek. There are allowable uses within that buffer, and these are allowable uses…we will have
23 some requirements around what they’ll be planting and how they restore the disturbances, and
24 how we monitor that restoration. And I think the key part of it is that, if it’s equal to or greater
25 than the current ecological value of that area. And we’ll do some…quantitatively, they’re
26 meeting the requirements for that distance, and qualitatively they’re doing some things to
27 enhance it with what they’re planting in it. And, I have been on the site just this week, and I
28 made three site visits and looked at it. During that first site visit, everything that was in the ECS
29 I agreed with. I did notice, during that first site visit, a Red Tailed Hawk and then I went back
30 the second day and again, I saw another Red Tailed Hawk. And it is adjacent to a City’s natural
31 area so there is some compatibility to natural areas that’s required in the Code, and someone
32 from Natural Areas met me there today and we looked at the…there are two hawks using the
33 area. I don’t have enough information to say how they’re using the area, so the part that I added
34 just recently is about the Code that asks you to survey the site prior to construction, and limit
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1 your development to a 450 foot buffer around any active nests, and that has been added to our
2 comments.
3 MR. LORSON: Thank you, thank you.
4 UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: And what does that mean?
5 MR. LORSON: To finish up, I’d like to address a couple of questions that you had. And
6 actually one of them…Shen, you had asked about height. And early on in our first comment
7 letter during staff review, I had said that the maximum height is 31 feet, 8 inches, because I took
8 the maximum height of a story, the 12 foot, 8 inches, and I multiplied it by two and a half…two
9 and a half stories. Deeper in the Code, in the definition section of the Code, we have a definition
10 of half story, which does not limit it to half that height, but in fact reads that a half story shall
11 mean the space under a sloping roof, which the line of intersection of the roof and the wall face,
12 not more than three feet above the floor level in which a space possible…floor area with head
13 room of five feet or less occupies less than 40% of the total floor area of the story directly
14 beneath. We don’t need any exhibits you guys…okay?
15 Then I met with the applicant and have gone to great lengths to try to keep them
16 compliant with that, even though the definition doesn’t really account for the multiple roof
17 planes and the modern architecture that they have. Thus, the exhibit that I showed before in how
18 a corner is cut off and it brings an awkward look to it, but I felt that this project, in the sense of
19 compatibility in terms of height and mass, had no flexibility to go even an inch higher than the
20 maximum height requirement. So, we did that and…I think that’s well defined in the staff report
21 for you.
22 One other thing I’d like to address is the two-family residence versus single-family
23 attached. Now, this one is interesting because they both…single-family attached says that it is
24 single…it is a dwelling unit that is attached on…but on separate lots. It doesn’t say how many.
25 The two-family says that it is a dwelling with two dwellings. Our Code, whichever is the most
26 explicit rules. You tell me which one is more explicit. So…
27 MR. MCASKIN: Well I guess without having as much experience with the Code as you
28 do, I would say that a two-family dwelling would be a typical duplex where both units are
29 located on the same legal subdivided lot.
30 MR. LORSON: Right, and it doesn’t define that clearly, so…
31 MR. MCASKIN: But I think that single-family attached or two-family dwelling, for all
32 intents and purposes, it’s the same thing. I mean, we’ve got 30 units that are being proposed.
33 MR. LORSON: So, I don’t have a clear answer for that, so…but it doesn’t matter in the
34 Land Use Code; they both are reviewed in the same manner: this hearing this evening. So, that’s
35 all I have.
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1 MR. GRUBER: Just the number…how tall are they…the tallest building, just the number
2 please?
3 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: The tallest building…
4 MR. GRUBER: I ask because I’m curious, given compatibility, what is the second tallest
5 building in the whole neighborhood.
6 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: So, per the way that the Land Use
7 Code defines building height…we go from the average grade plane…and some of these, on some
8 of these buildings it could vary by as much as four or five feet from high point to low point…we
9 take the average…measure from there to the highest point of the highest roof. And I believe it’s
10 one of those interior buildings…
11 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: We kept…all the high points are on
12 the inward facing…
13 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: So, the worst case scenario is 35 feet,
14 11 inches.
15 MR. GRUBER: Thirty-five feet, eleven inches? What is the tallest building in the
16 neighborhood…residential building in the neighborhood? I think it’s important.
17 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: I don’t think we have that…
18 MR. LORSON: I actually have that the highest would be unit B1 at 39 feet…or wait, no,
19 35, 11…you’re right…sorry…that was right, sorry.
20 UNIDENTIFIED APPLICANT TEAM MEMBER: I think that’s the highest one I
21 saw…every single one is different because of the grading…
22 MR. MCASKIN: Seth, thank you to you and all of staff for your work on this, and I
23 would also like to thank all the members of the public that have decided to spend your Thursday
24 evening here on this very…obviously very important case. You know, this is always a challenge
25 when you have the last, kind of undeveloped parcel in an area. Because it’s just hard to see that
26 go away, and I understand that. I mean, I’ve lived in neighborhoods where I dealt with similar
27 issues. But I really do appreciate everybody’s time this evening, and comments, and I’d also like
28 to thank the applicant and their team for responding to some of these issues. Just so everybody
29 here understands kind of next steps…I will take all of this information and all of the materials
30 that have been submitted, the staff report and everything that was entered into evidence tonight
31 as well, and I will take all of this under advisement. I will have a written decision that’s issued
within ten days, which according to my calculation is by Friday, July 10
th
32 . And again, if you’ve
33 signed in, you will get a copy of that from the…from City staff. So, again, thank you everybody
34 and at this point, I think I’m going to close the public hearing at 9:18. Thank you.
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