Planning Commission 6-4-19

00120:19 City Planning Commission meeting we'll begin our meeting with a roll call Commissioner Milstein here commissioner Mills Commissioner I gave Randall Commissioner Ackerman Commissioner Briggs here Commissioner Silva yeah Commissioner Trudeau here commissioner Wetherby Commissioner woods we have a quorum of 6 members that would take affirmative votes from all members to advance any petitions great thank you do you have a motion to approve the agenda moved by Commissioner Briggs seconded by Commissioner Sauve any Commons changes all those in favor please say aye aye opposed it has approved introductions do we have any introductions this evening do not minutes of previous meetings we don't have any minutes of previous meetings and we are at reports from city administration City Council Planning Manager Planning Commission officers and committees written communications and petition will start with City Council Commissioner

002Ackerman Thank You mr. chair again a nice early morning release from City Council about seven items for your attention from that City Council meeting related to the UDC amendments revolving temporary outdoor activity and car storage you'll remember our conversation around Briarwood mall that was a those amendments to the unified development code or approved it segment reading amendments to the UDC around movable mobile food vending or food trucks on private property or approve hood segment reading at first reading front porch setbacks was the conversation that came to us by way of the Zoning Board of Appeals or approved at first reading moving to site specific items 14:48 orange and drive was rezone to single parcel formerly township bristol ridge off Pontiac trail the site plan was approved by City Council 841 Broadway or the DTE the

003Mishkan site was approved at first reading the area plan attached to PUD which is an exciting development and finally the bright dawn development on Burton Road off Packard was denied rezoning to our 4d that's my update Thank You mr. honored you have a report for us this evening I do not plan to commissioned officers and committees all right and then written communications up petitions we have one I believe one item and written communication that we received and it's in our PAC at this evening all right audience participation at this time anybody in the audience who wishes to address the Planning Commission number it's an item that is not on the agenda you may step up to the podium and you'll have three minutes to address the Planning Commission on an item that is not on

004our agenda for this evening thank you so much as I always say at these meetings I hope you will use your microphones I am having some difficulty hearing you thank you thank you is there anyone else wishes to address the Planning Commission regarding an item that is not on the agenda this evening all right seeing no one will move on to public hearing scheduled for next business meeting we have one new public hearing scheduled for the June 18th Planning Commission meeting it is 28:57 Packard Road Planned Unit development site plan for City Council approval a request to rezone the site from our 1e seen a single-family dwelling distich district to Planned Unit development to allow for 25 single-family homes and 26 townhome units you will recall that this is a petition that had previously been

005conditionally rezone with an area plan and was denied at the site plan level petitioner is now seeking a Planned Unit development application thank you moving on to number nine unfinished business before us this evening is a petition to mend chapter 55 Unova unified development code for city council approval tomorrow to allow restaurants bar and food service in the office Ozona district under certain conditions such as where there is already a large office building we will begin with a staff report thank you as mentioned this is a proposed amendment to chapter 55 unified development code it is an amendment to the office district an owner and manager of several office developments in town submitted a petition to amend the the UDC to allow office there allow restaurants in office districts and their suggestion or their request

006was to allow restaurants on large lots perhaps four acres or more with at least 100 or maybe 200,000 square feet of office use we held a public hearing about that on March 18th but this body voted postpone it and discuss it at a working session which we did on April 9th at the working session the Planning Commission asked that the amendment allow restaurants in proportion to the lot size throughout the office district and we were referencing some of the other caps on accessory uses that are present in other districts so the amendment that we have come are coming back to you is to amend the permitted use table which is section 515 table 5-15 to add an A in the accessory restaurant bar and foodservice to add an A in the office column and then

007to amend the use of specific standards which is section 516 3 L number 1 in that section Rd it talks about the new specific standards when you have retail in a man serene district so inserting no I think I have it wrong but pressing on inserting at number two the use specific standards for an accessory restaurant an accessory means you must first have an office use then when you have an established office use you can have this accessory restaurant the accessory restaurant can be 10% of the total floor area of the site but not to exceed 12,000 square feet drive-thru facilities for the restaurant bar and foodservice use are prohibited curb cuts and driveway approaches to the site comply with the number of openings provided in a different section of the code what this means

008is reinforcing that you cannot get any additional curb cuts just because there are multiple uses on the site but if perhaps but if you have enough frontage you could have an additional curved cut if you meet the curb cut criteria and then finally for off street parking purposes the restaurant bar foodservice use shall be considered general office and referring back to the off street parking table the general office use lines up almost exactly not quite but almost exactly with the shopping center use as opposed to considering it a free-standing restaurant this may has this by doing this we are making the assumption that there will be shared parking that some of the office users of that very site would be patronizing the restaurant and perhaps maybe other office or other uses nearby we are not

009assuming that every single customer of the restaurant will be coming in their own personal vehicle and so these are the proposed amendments the amended amendments for your approval staff is recommending approval thank you at this time I'd like to open up the public hearing anybody in the audience wish to address the Planning Commission in regards to this item you may step up to the podium address see your name and record your name and address for the record and address the Planning Commission is there anyone in the audience who wishes to address the Planning Commission in regards to this item C no one I will close the public hearing and I will read the motion the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approved the amendments to chapter 55 unified

010development code section 5.15 and 5.16 to allow restaurant bar and food service use in the OU office district and provides this view specific standards do Commission they will move move by Commissioner Briggs seconded by Commissioner Weatherby all right all those in favor please say aye aye posed it is approved all right moving on to regular business before us this evening we have 27 93 Plymouth Plymouth Road special use exemption exemption use and say plan for City Planning Commission approval yeah before we start on this petition I want to update the Planning Commission you will note the staff report recommends postponement as we've discussed before we are constantly trying to manage timing of petitions and agendas this particular agenda petition we thought I I thought was close to full approval by our technical reviewers we published

011it since that time I've learned that there is an outstanding review that has not been completed and signed off so therefore until we resolve that outstanding issue I'm requesting that Planning Commission hold the public hearing as advertised but then I would recommend movement to postpone until we've completed the staff technical review of the petitioner thank you at this time I'd like to open up the public hearing on this petition is there anyone in the audience who wishes to address the Planning Commission no one I will close the public hearing I still have to read the motion longest part of our conversation I actually think it would be appropriate to just move to postpone action on 2793 until reviews complete some of moved in its significant is sure Briggs question sorry since we did receive this

012is the one thing that we received public comment on I was just wondering that uh we've received a letter indicating that there were challenges with congestion of certain times and unsafe conditions sound primarily like from parents who were maybe accessing services in that area for their kids I don't know if that is something I assume that something that'll be covered in the report but maybe just a heads-up that that is something to address a little bit yeah we can make sure that's that's addressed within the eventual staff report nothing and we lost so endeavor to notify anybody that we received communications on once it's rescheduled of that reschedule date mr. Ackerman um note also we approve this special exemption use visit for medical marijuana also just a few thousand yards to the west on Plymouth

013bagel bagel credible location and there were also traffic and returning movement concerns there and just anything we learned from that if we could now apply just to the east I think would be yeah absolutely and as a reminder this petition is are has previously received a provisioning center special exception businesses our proposed expansion of that absolutely make sure that that's looked at any further discussion all right let's vote on the postponement all those in favor please say aye opposed it is postponed next item is amendments to city city of Ann Arbor chapter 55 unified development code for city council approval section 5.1 7.4 to correct an error in the dimensional standards table section 5.1 7.6 to change the primary street designation setback requirements and section 5.1 8.6 to change the premium options including other section

014other sections is necessary to cross-reference and administer the proposed changes will begin with the staff report no more head over to miss do I will mention and I will get into it the public hearing was advertised for three different changes to the city code we are only recommending two changes to the city code the ones regarding the building front and the front of setbacks we are not proposing any changes at this time and if you will recall a few months ago we had other Corrections and a change to the city code since we're back again I have named our files that was alpha and this would be beta so if if anyone is referring to remember remember when we did some changes to a city code I'm now referring to them as the Alpha group

015and the beta group perhaps they'll be a gamma group I don't know however we are proposing some amendments to the UDC first up we have a correction to the dimensional standards table in the mixed use zoning category specifically the error is specifically with the c3 district that sell for c3 maximum front setback has no dimension and references footnotes B C and G which is incorrect it should indicate 25 feet and reference footnote a also the cells for maximum front setback for c1 c1 B and C to be incorrectly don't reference footnote a so we have corrected that table also we've proposed to remove some redundant and duplicate references in the footnotes and to move some of the footnote standards into the table just for clarity and efficiency but those those I would not say are

016substantive changes those are formatting changes our second amendment is to the premium options this would be a change not a correction you may recall City Council passed a resolution in March that requested recommendations from the Planning Commission to increase the public benefit created by the affordable housing premium with the goal of increasing the number of units or payments into the affordable housing fund council asked the Planning Commission to examine things as requiring the use of downtown affordable housing premiums to access other premiums reducing the utility of the residential housing premium which would encourage use of other premiums and reduce the parking requirements for the affordable housing premium staff we have staff we brainstormed this we discussed this with a Planning Commission back in April and we have come up with a recommendation to combine the

017residential use premium and the existing affordable housing premium and combine them and call it the affordable residential use premium and we will be offering three we will be offering three options if a developer is committed to 15% of all the dwelling units in the building we will give them a hundred and fifty percent lot area bonus in the d1 district or 100% in the d2 if they commit to 20% of all the dwelling units are affordable in the project in the d1 district will give them a three hundred percent floor area lot area bonus in the d2 district a two hundred percent and if 30% of all the dwelling units are affordable in the d1 district they can get a five hundred percent floor area bonus these amounts equal the current Premium maximums right now

018you can get up to 700 percent in the d1 using residential use and 400 plus 300 is 700 in the d2 you can get up to 400 percent floor area ratio with premiums and in the d2 you know 200 200 it's 400% and we offer the super premium in the d2 I'm sorry in the d1 up to 900 percent and that's where the 500 percent comes in and what this will will likely look like is on the left there is a building this is not to scale but it's a little proportional the building is 400 would have 400% ffar that's a normal building any combination of uses can go in that building I've taken a site on South University the size of the site and the number of units that it proposed and extrapolated that

019out just for discussion purposes so we can have a hypothetical building of 66 thousand square feet it might have 20 dwelling units in it all market rate it's 400 percent if they are it uses no premiums it's a buy right project the next building in moving from left to right that building would have a they have that developer and has said I will commit to 15% affordable units so we have increased his maximum if they are or her maximum far2 550 percent if they build a building taking full advantage of that that would be a 90,000 750 square foot building might have about 35 apartments in it including five affordable units next building would be a seven hundred percent fa are building they would have committed to 20 percent affordable units to earn that additional

020three hundred percent chunk that building might be one hundred fifteen thousand five hundred square feet have about 45 units in it including six affordable units and if the developer was willing to make 30% of all the units in that in a building affordable their premium would be capped at nine hundred percent F AR it would be about a one hundred and forty eight thousand five hundred square foot building including sixty units with nine affordable units this is this is what we think will be the most likely scenario the main difference in concept from what our current premium program is and what is proposed our current program you sort of click your way up and every square foot of residential use you provide you get a bonus square foot or fraction of square foot and you

021just click your way up and it's very difficult to anticipate what it's very difficult to answer the question how much premium can I earn I can't tell you how much you can earn I can tell you if you're full development program if you can achieve what you want you have to tell me how much residential you want and I will tell you how much premium you you are awarded and so it's a it's a one for one and you just click your way up until you reach then the hard cap of the FA R this is more of the model that we use for the green building premiums if you provide a thing and in this case the thing is percentage of affordable if you provide a thing I will just simply raise your FA

022R cap and then you are free to do work within that cap so you can anticipate and you can better maybe perhaps better plan out your development program knowing what your amenity is and then what your FA our campus and we think these are probably the most likely scenarios as you know we get mostly residential buildings with a little bit of first floor or second floor commercial most new projects in the downtown or leaned heavily toward the residential but with this new serie scenario I would like to point out for transparency that this there are some unlikely scenarios then what we could get is for the one hundred and five hundred and fifty percent F they are you could get a for that 90,000 750 square foot building 90 thousand five hundred square feet of

023it could be office and you could they could provide one 200 square 250 square foot affordable unit that is more than 15% that's actually 100% of all the units so it will be mostly an office it could be mostly an office building with one affordable unit in it and I've gone through sort of unlikely scenarios for the other with 700 percent F AR you could get a basically a hotel with one affordable unit and maybe one penthouse condo with a 900 FA our building you might get again a very large office use with one affordable unit one market rate and percentage-wise all of those have at least fifteen or twenty or thirty percent affordable units I don't think the market is going this way and I also don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if

024a building was all office we also there has been some comments over the years that we should be incentivizing office in all cases we are getting affordable units whereas currently we're not getting any so and like you would dimension the market doesn't seem to be going this way but this type of scenario would be allowed and finally wrapping it up it is not in the proposed ordinance but we would suggest that you recommend also a change to the parking standards section 519 3 which is the special parking district paragraph a says paraphrased no parking is required for the floor area of normal F AR and one space is required for each thousand square feet of premium floor area recommend a further amendment to say continue saying no parking required for the floor area of normal

025f AR or and this would be the amendment floor area used for affordable housing units and then one space is required for each feet square foot well premium floor area I'm happy to answer any questions about the correction or the premium amendments but staff we are recommending approval thank you at this time I'd like to open up the public hearing on this item is there anyone in the audience who wishes to address the Planning Commission in regards to this item hi I'm Karen white 27:19 Cranbrook Road I'm interested in your discussion I need a definition of the term F AR and it would be also helpful to know what you mean by affordable so that's all thanks thank you thank you my name is Ethel Potts and I'm here to complain about the amount of

026information available to the public you know I look online your motion is there frankly you should not pass that motion your motion should contain the specifics that you are actually dealing with definitions and dimensions and so forth should be in your motion it shouldn't say better base general things like like change the setback changes from what to what and for what and your discussion will tell us for what reason we want to change the setback or check what on what premium options are being changed and your discussion will tell us why they're being changed so this is none of this is available online I have to either come to a meeting or have to go does it go to City Hall to the department's to pick up a copy of what it is sorry about

027that but I'm interested and I I'm only like tonight getting the information that I would like to have had a week ago you know do you actually know what these what these setbacks mean and what they will do for you or against you and changing the premium options one of the underlying problems with premiums and I've said this before is that we give a very generous premium for for housing and that's what the developers come to town to do that's their job to make housing to build housing so we reward them for it by giving giving them extra floor area and that what the end result of that is that no other premiums are used and we would like some of the other premiums to be used sometimes not just more and more and more

028housing but but you you considered whether or not we're defeating our own intentions with premiums by being so generous with housing premiums thank you thank you hello I'm Alan haver just hearing the this discussion on behalf of affordable housing it would seem to me given the amount of attention on affordable housing and the concern that this is essentially an emergency that the amount of affordable housing for which quite substantial premiums and increases in size are given it should be 15 percent should be like 30 percent and 20 percent like 40 percent and you know and so on double that indicate that really if you want to have any extra appreciation from the city for the more size which gives you more opportunity for more profit that put a more substantial amount of you know resource

029into the affordable housing part so I would hope you look at that what those premiums are and multiply them by some significant factor both to indicate that you recognize affordable housing it is a substantial question and that you want to do something in a clearer way thank you is there anyone else in the audience wishes to address the Planning Commission all right seeing no one I'll read the are I will close the public hearing and read the motion the in Arbor City Planning Commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approved the amendments to chapter 55 unified development code section 5.1 7.4 table 5 : 1 7 - 4 mix use zoning district dimensions to correct an error and clarify the requirements in Section 5.1 8.6 premiums to incentivize affordable dwelling units in the

030downtown zoning district moved by Commissioner Ackerman seconded by Commissioner Sauve the Shrek Ehrman Thank You mr. chair and thank you to staff for your work on this so just to clarify this is this is in response to council resolution directing us to look it downtown housing premiums they're coupling with the correction was that just for ease of getting it to the council table convenience convenience okay well hopefully that'll work in your favor so and part of your recommendation is if you deem it if this body deems it appropriate we can of course split it before it progresses to point or to City Council I think I would certainly be interested in that I think it just adds distraction to the conversation you know what one is a correcting a scriveners error and miss Potts question

031the impact of the setbacks when we transition from our chapter 55 zoning codes much much more traditional zoning code to the unified development code which is much more modernized this seems as those inadvertent error in which an incorrect number was copied over to the new to the new version and this is a correction to the original intent of the law so the the impact of setbacks would not be would not be anything out of the what we expect to see in the C 3 commercial fringe toning district but I do think that's a very separate conversation from the the downtown premiums turn into the downtown premiums for context in the audience in 2010 the original set of downtown premiums were adopted and to miss Potts point again we put a heavy incentive on building residential

032at that time there wasn't a lot of residential in our downtown and that really seemed to be what we wanted to encourage and at that time that made sense as we were now in 2019 and things have changed or noticing that most of the buildings being built or at least 90% residential so that leaves us with the question how do we then instead encourage and incentivize the type of development we want to see or the mix of income that we want to see in these developments which spurred a council resolution directing Planning Commission to take a look at exactly that this is the first it's coming back to define floor area ratio for you that's a unit of density that's really how we measure density in our zoning code and that's how we communicate the

033majority of our premiums not all of them some of them are in square footage which can get confusing but it's it's the primary unit we use to measure density it's a it's a ratio of what your buildable lot area is to how much you're stacking on top of it I might yeah if I could just clarify I think it's probably better to describe it as a massing okay because when I think it's a density of square footage but I think most generally when I think of density I think probably a residential density and I think for a ratio to be clear it could apply to it's it's a square footage it's a massing calculation relative to the lot size okay so just as an easy example if a hundred percent of FA are would be

034building a compote amount of square footage as the lot area two hundred percent FA are would be building a comfortable amount that doubles the square footage of the lot area so imagine though the entire lot from boundary boundary two stories would be two hundred percent and three hundred or if you could have a hundred percent FA R which is one story boundary to boundary or a two story building and only half of the parcel so it's a massing measurement so as we look around our downtown and we see a lot of the college residential rental buildings those are about seven hundred FA are so did you give you a sense yeah absolutely so we are now taking a look at how do we limit the benefit of what was a premium in 2010 that made

035sense and instead incentivize some more construction of affordable housing downtown and there are questions are on what does that what does affordable mean so this is the first time we're getting some concrete numbers back it's mostly been brainstorming to date the so I'm just gonna run through a list of questions if I could I wanna I guess first jump on lower income is capitalized is that a definition to find in the UDC and is that sixty percent in below okay defined it is 80% I'm under the impression that separate amendments are working their way through to change that definition to sixty percent got it we also measure you know affordability as a ratio of income the median income was for the can we measured at the county level not the city level so it's actually

036a little lower fortunately so it was 659 thousand dollars but I think it's gone up drastically and I don't know how often we update what that ami number is used to calculate it's typically updated on an annual basis okay so as an arbor becomes more affluent that has effect on the area median income of the county we may want to revisit those calculations as well or even determine if area median income is the right unit to measure off of but that's a whole other conversation I think this is good steps in the right directions I just wanna work through that so glad lower income is a defined term it sounds like we're moving it from 80 to 60 60 is kind of where all of our goals are sixty percent of sixty thousand dollars so

037what is that thirty six thousand dollars a year it would be affordable to that person's a thirty percent of their income so a lot of ratios on top of ratios the so getting it back into the questions can you talk us through the methodology of how these numbers were developed you kind of water yeah as we go through the increased massing or density how the numbers they were drawn from what what we incentivize are what we require in the PUD for a for PUD so those are numbers that we we already have in our and they they can be further chained that proposal can be changed but staff drew our do our starting point from where we already asked what we already asked for when we do pu these and what's so that's to say

038if there's a residential PUD if they want to get certain amounts of density they have to provide certain amounts of affordable residential housing right okay and what's been our success over the last 20 years in capturing these kinds of units with I guess what how long have these numbers been in our PUD ordinance they've been in the ordinance for quite a while I can think of one PUD right off the top of my head that proposed an increase in density and has affordable units in it that would be they actually Mews pewdie I'd have to think a little bit more about other peds that may or may not have use this also there are a good number of PUD s that don't have any residential component an unrealized pewdie that use this was the Broadway

039Village beauty mm-hmm and it had 20% affordable but it was never constructed and it's since been rezone that PUD has basically been nullified that is now a conventional district so okay I appreciate that my concern is we haven't seen a lot of successful residential peds move through I guess Lockwood would have been one it didn't move forward but that wasn't an issue of market constraints that was a council decision do I guess has staff assessed those numbers to see how viable they'll be in the market have we talked to the building community the local building community to see how these numbers jive I realize we're on a tight timeline but these seem like important yeah stopping development isn't the goal of this proposal the goal of this proposal is to allow development but to incentivize

040diverse incomes in our downtown I did not we did not reach out to at the development community for any focus groups or task forces we are relying a little bit on this public hearing process to see if anyone came forward we can reach out to the contacts that we do have but as you mentioned to keep on the timeline we put forth recommending our best effort of a recommendation it can be further vetted I guess so I turned to mr. Leonard Wood yeah and I guess I would tack on to that that I don't have any better more comprehensive data about past peds but my sense is is that there were there were several mostly pre-recession that were never realized that there were a couple of other peds that were never realized for a variety

041of reasons I would say that since that time well very recently we have had community experience with a series of project proposals that would suggest to me in the case of Lockwood for example that that is not a barrier from marketability market viability in order to achieve those kind of levels so that at least answers potentially the question as it relates to the 15 and 20 percent I my my instinct is is if the market would support those at that location there's probably more offsetting revenue possibility in the downtown districts okay I appreciate that Reid I appreciate that Reid I would love to shop it out shop it out so just to get some feedback also if you I would just hope that you know like you can have an open line to me and

042if you need an extension on the time line the point of the time line wasn't to create a bad ordinance it was just to get the process moving I don't mean this is a bad ordinance okay but that wasn't my implication but yeah and in I would I appreciate that and I would say to the to the full Planning Commission we have to report back to the City Council I've already communicated to the city administration office I anticipate a status memo at least being provided by the next city council meeting on June 17th my instinct is comms would be satisfied that some progress is happening whether or not we are on the verge of submitting a detailed ordinance or not I appreciate that so thank you I meant going back to the other question I

043think another recent I don't suggest this as definitive because we're still working to these projects but also for the first time staff is reviewing two proposals that are seeking use of the 900 percent premium as currently exists so that suggests to me that that at least at a level of enough for these ambassadors to go through the rigorous process of submitting a site plan and doing their perform analysis that at least in that framework there's also market viability to achieve the premium as as provided in addition to reaching out to potential property owners or trying to vet that may be one of the things we could do is try and sink the this approach to what those proposals would require now under the nine hundred percent premium just as a benchmark as well that would

044be and that explanation provides valuable context and I feel more comfortable about the numbers so thank you the that that conversation does your reference to Lockwood prompts another conversation around payment and lieu just cuz they are a specialty affordable housing developer they have infrastructure to build or to get low-income tax credits which is tough to do right it that takes expertise not all the developers that we see building in our downtown have that and the hope was that if someone didn't want to go through that process instead they would have to give us a sum of money that we could invest in our own public housing and I was curious where that stands we had a lot of staff conversation about that balance we we frankly debated it and where we arrived and what we're

045presenting and this draft is we only provide the payment lieu option for the highest density that is when you this ordinance proposes that when you are seeking those incremental steps the five hundred fifty percent if they are the seven hundred percent F they are the ultimate goal of of the city is a diverse housing and that would mandate the provision of those units in those buildings once you hit that highest threshold currently the ordinance that's where it opens up a payment and LU option to either provide those units on-site or out or potentially seek a payment in lieu option I think that that tension that you described still applies to those other levels and we struggled with that balance however again sort of going back to the conversation of marketplace our aspiration with these is

046that there's probably more offsetting revenue in the downtown district than maybe other areas in the city we're having the technical expertise for seeking a low-income housing tax credits is probably not as critical to the affordable units in in the use of the premiums as it might be in another property elsewhere where the overall market rents might be lower comparatively and thus less robust to offset quote-unquote losses for the affordable units so it's a long winded way of saying I think that conflict remains for those lower units and the recommendation that we presented was aspiring to realize more of those units in the downtown than just allowing a payment in lieu option fair fair yeah I mean I do capture the units if we can or build the units I should say if we can't with

047the attention at the higher level or the opportunity of the higher level that 900 where's that in code it's in the proposed draft at under the residential use premium option you see the table that we've added at the bottom of that page items see and okay thank you and the the resolution establishing the rate of payment the formula for payment in lieu would that be the same resolution for PUD correct okay and we're updating those I understand is the housing human advisory human housing and Human Services Advisory Board is in the process of updating those numbers and once that review is completed I think they'll be forwarded to the City Council for your instead of it great and that's supposed to be done on an annual basis right sometimes it falls off but yes okay

048so we'll be looking at these numbers annually and hopefully with more projects popping up because this will be integrated into the D 1 and D 2 they'll be more incentive to stay on that updating process just because there'll be more and more opportunities to capture dollars for public housing and I I aspire to advise the Planning Commission ultimately the City Council with the correct framework one of the things I like about this particular structure is that it does create I think as Alexis did a great job summarizing I think it creates sort of a logical building block that's a little less complex than the current residential housing and at risk of sounding like a cop-out there's a lot of touch points on this that we could adjust depending on our experience with it that is

049if 15 20 % thresholds don't feel right or they seem too easily attainable once that structure is there we it's probably relatively easy for us to make those kind of modifications likewise revisiting the annual amount how we calculate that certainly we are not going to be in the business of tracking the income I would suggest that relying on sort of a broader source in that regard such as HUD or Mishnah is probably worthwhile to maintain but still reference that as a moving data point so I just put that out there as to say if if we are finding that we are impacting in the marketplace in ways that we didn't anticipate I don't know that this framework is bad to respond to that in in in different ways you know it's certainly simplified and I

050was glad that the conversation at the working session moved in that direction and I appreciate that more premiums are getting into the same FA our unit language as opposed to switching between square-footage and if they are I think that's just better and cleaner and more intelligible so thank you for that as well getting to getting to three other areas other potential solutions to bring down cost and incentivize construction of affordable housing can we go over parking okay uh hi just yeah one note of the parking the calculation would still be there so I want to recognize it could be a moderate benefit so if you do to 500 square foot affordable units you're only potentially saving one parking space in that regard so I just want to I just want to point that out that

051I think we're still proposing that that sort of framework would be the same once you go above the base fer it's a thousand square feet the only difference here is anything devoted to affordable units doesn't get counted into that that doesn't I just want to be clear in some of those scenarios if it's a handful of relatively modest units it's probably not a substantial difference to the parking that would otherwise be required but definitely recognizing that when you're making this commitment we're not attacking an additional cost for them understand what's the what's the so for for all of our d1 and d2 districts do we calculate parking required by square footage rather than unit the logic there being it captures bedroom count as well the logic being that in the downtown districts you could build

052a residential building but then ten years from now you could convert it that office it's all mixed use by its nature understood okay okay I understand this okay moving to height 900 FA are will always exceed 180 foot height limit and that's been a pain point in achieving use of the affordable housing premiums we have on the books now any conversation around height limit and the ability to go above 180 feet Alexis tell me if I'm mistaken on this I've I my recollection was that we recognize that we think that the height limitation is a real limiting factor to realizing a fare premium probably more generally than just the nine hundred percent it probably not only challenges 900% fer but it probably challenges creativity in massing buildings to some extent I think to some extent

053it contributes to when you hear anecdotally from people that buildings look the same I think that that FA are and that hicap are are contributing to that we did discuss potentially height height premiums if you will when invoking this our sense was that that it frankly seems to be probably a bit of a touch point in the community and probably worthy of a broader discussion about design and massing of buildings and I guess my instinct is I just don't know if we could get to a resolution and and some sense of consensus on that in the same time we could come up with some other recommendations to realize more yeah you would be keep the 180 feet for I'll just use the 900 FA are for example now so the maximum affordable housing will keep

054the height limit and but there still means to go above the hundred eighty feet because you would have to there's no way you can get that passing well one of the things we talked about you we have the mechanism to do that now if your plan projects but one of the things we talked about I I think was if you are if you are going to the nine hundred percent by the affordable housing we would give you an additional twenty feet I figured with the dimension we were talking about there was a sweet spot we were looking at we played around with both like twelve twelve feet per floor yeah we play around with either twelve feet or 24 feet to give you one or two stories we played around with I think we came

055up with 20% a 20% height bonus and I think that when you are at 150 feet height limit that 20% would give you 15 feet that's 10% but maybe it was a 10% bonus but some districts have a hundred 50 foot height limit some districts have 180 we had a scenario once where you don't you don't count the height of the floor you just magically remove it if you had four people housing on that floor but a variety of scenarios and they all Brett mentioned seemed like biting off a bigger chunk of the Apple than it was worth it at this juncture okay we have ideas sure and we chose to address them at a different time okay that's fair can you help help me understand what the pain point is around the height limit

056so if we are in order to achieve a plan project the vote count doesn't change it's still six vote majority at the City Council table however it does create some discretion how much discretion is it creates as I understand it there are pretty finite criteria by which a plant project can be evaluated and those involve a public benefit and it would be a public benefit directly linked to the increase in height and it could be pretty easily argued that adding affordable housing is a public benefit directly linked to the increased height the plant project has specific criteria by which you can provide flexibility on dimensional standards and so one of them is affordable affordability that is one of the things we're looking at with a couple of projects right now that are seeking that nine

057hundred percent they are seeking some height modification and I think at least one project perhaps both and one of the things that we're trying to have to interpret it as part of that is what portion of that affordability do you get two hundred percent if they are and should that sister those same units also give you the ability to exceed the height requirement so but generally the pinch point is that realizing the full nine hundred percent within the height limit you just you just run into a building envelope challenge trying to build in all of your required stairways which don't know how your elevator shafts potentially and it unless your floors become so unrealistically scrunched either somewhere between undesirably or not meeting code requirements it's just difficult to achieve let alone try to achieve it

058in a creative massing way where it doesn't end up in a very rectangular block right I would only add that in broader high level terms pinch point for premium plan projects as opposed to premiums which have are very quantitative even we have the percentages proposed but even then you provide for every square foot of residential you provide you can earn point seven five square feet of bonus floor area strict formula you meet it you get that the plan projects there are I think nine but there are a certain number of amenities public benefits that's the phrase in that section public benefits that if you provide those you may be awarded a dimensional dimensional flexibility and it says affordable house for example it says affordable housing is one of the public amenities but it doesn't say

059how much and there is concern but there's also it also says solar orientation and energy conserving design but it doesn't say how much and I believe the anecdotal evidence from the developers side is I don't know if fifteen percent is enough to get me that I don't know where the line is how much do I have to propose and to get that premium to get that planned project modification so I think that's the that's some of the issue and the hesitation on the development community to even to go down the planned project road is although the um the category of amenities is outlined where the bar is or where the line in the sand is discretionary so you're and yeah sorry and this in this is anecdotal but we're also starting to hear from petitioners

060just a concern about plan projects and planet developments that I think there's a perception in the development community and those acting in it designers that discretionary proposals are pretty tricky in the city right now we have as a community we have a lot of goals that we're trying to aspire to sustainability and affordability and we're starting to hear feedback from folks that are saying that they are very purposefully not seeking those types of discretionary approvals because it's a there's a risk associated with taking on these projects and designing the buildings and and going forward and it's it's a leap for for somebody to make that level of investment assuming one of those discretionary approvals and get to the end and not have it and so certainly that's something that I aspire through our an upcoming

061master plan process is to really focus what our goal is it are and reflect our ordinance requirements to make sure that we're trying to get as many of them as we can but I just add that as a layer that we are definitely getting that feedback at the staff level that that is a barrier to using some of these tools that might otherwise come help help us respond to some of those challenges okay so if we look - thank you if we look to the first two tiers if you would of these three the 550 and the 700 it's likely that those would continue to be - by right you could get to the 700 within the height limit most likely yeah and and those are the ones for which we're gonna look and have

062an expectation that they build the units because there's no payment in lieu so then there are units but yeah fewer yes fewer units both market rate and affordable so but then kind of the situation that we have on our hands for that kind of super premium the 900 FA are looks pretty similar to what we have on the ground today it that piece isn't gonna change the well the unit ratio change market rate to affordable I think that's a benchmark that we have to do that's a gap question I think this is a probably result in more units but I'm not sure I said it wasn't that compare so it sounds like the standard product we see today will hopefully result in more affordable units integrated into them the super premium that we haven't seen

063will still be an option and look very similar to what it looks like today yeah okay I understand that I'm relatively comfort with that I I would love to be in a situation where we would be willing to say you can have one more floor in order to achieve the you know an extra 60 units of affordable housing I I would err on the side of let's include it and we can always trim it back if that's the direction of conversation we're happy to explore it yeah okay just I mean we as I said we we looked at it we've we've we were we were struggling with inclusion and finding the right balance I think ultimately the product that you see here is the vast majority of premium applications is in that 700 and in

064below and so I think we thought what are the policy changes in that range where most of the development seems to be happening that we could achieve some of those and so that was definitely the focus here but okay absolutely we're happy to come back with alternatives ideas obviously I'm only one member of this commission and I'm one member of City Council I would like to you know put forward what what we believe would allow for the most affordable housing to be built downtown and if there's if that needs to be trimmed back at a later date I'd rather have the opportunity to have that conversation and trim it back I think I don't think there's harm in that i-i-i i'm interested in college perspectives as well but I don't think there's harm in that

065as long as we can be ready with a you know a tangible means to trim it back and and not lose the whole the whole benefit that we see here okay and I promised two more questions sorry if I could just jump in yeah we're talking you've mentioned by right a couple times a night and I want to be clear I think Alexis did a good job but I just I just want to be absolutely crystal clear the way the premiums are now there's no discretion if you provide you get right that would be the same here so I when you're talking about buy right at 400% you're actually talking about buy right up to nine hundred percent given these conditions so I think elected again Alexis did a good job the the plan project

066says under these sorts of sorts of provisions you may get some flexibility on dimensional standards there's a level of discretion there once premium as premiums are currently in the ordinance and as they're proposed there is not discretion right if a then B I just I just want to be yep thank you yeah I was a if I was in Clara's including the 550 and the 700 is in my right as well but that thanks for the clarification all right finishings were also a topic of conversation about would we be comfortable you know allowing the affordable the designated affordable units to have more standard economy grade finishings not luxury finishings like granite and stainless steel in order to get more in order to get more affordable units did staff contemplate that the the ordinance for Business

067Committee was comfortable without if you notice there's no size when there's no size on the any unit affordable or market rate current ordinance has a 600 square foot size for affordable unit and there's no suffice it Ian finishes meaning giving as much opportunity to the provider to set that level and set that construction cost thank you and then can we turn to unlikely scenarios so these feel like loopholes it feels like you could I think you're building an office building and you're providing you know two units of housing one of which is affordable in order to get a lot more dense that you wouldn't otherwise get your example of the 900 that they are obviously the discretion of the plan project would kick in and there be some dialogue amongst elected officials about whether or

068not it's fair and we want to incentivize office to that degree is there any way to I mean is there any way to avoid this is this just the nature of a mixed-use downtown zoning district how do we seems like just such a it seems like a loophole and it seems like we there there should be some easy way to fix it but that could very well not be the case we could add thresholds for not code language I won't dictate in code style but we could add thresholds like when half of the floor area is residential and 15% of the all units are affordable we could add some upper or lower thresholds or when when no more than a third of the building is officer so thresholds could be added as could we make

069that non-residential I mean my preference would be could we make that non-residential as opposed to specify office or hotel or something yes yeah pick your term pick your threshold but thresholds could be added we discussed it a little bit and in our premium evaluation that was done a couple years ago our more much more robust process incentivizing office was almost made the cut and so as staff we thought well let's see let's see where it goes we don't think that we're gonna get someone taking you know doing this unlikely scenario but maybe if they did maybe it wouldn't be an all bad thing we would get we would get another thing that were not seeing downtown which is substantial office but that's not the purpose of this of this amendments so it's for discussion we

070can tighten that up we can put in thresholds but that would be another complication that would be another criteria and hurdle to achieve yeah so so this is a matter of preference for a hotel for example I don't know how unlikely that is they I think of the Graduate that's probably what like 700 F they are that's much more that's more okay but if I were a developer of a hotel of that scale why wouldn't I why wouldn't I take advantage of this but just for just for point of argument and yeah and discussion what would be so bad about another hotel downtown well we have means we have existing zoning code to allow hotel at our current densities with that incurred that allow them to take advantage of other premiums this is utilizing a

071tool that is meant to increase the amount of affordable housing in order to build a massive hotel while only providing one unit of affordable housing yeah and that would be the counterpoint okay so I Beatrice you're not getting any affordable units with that hotel what's that now you don't get any affordable units what they don't tell ya you have the provisions to accommodate it but you are not getting any affordable housing as part of that development but it's also within the bounds that our community has set for what we I think is okay in terms of massing I don't know I'm interested to hear what other people think I've asked a lot of questions so I'll leave it there for now I may come back on on a couple oh wait I'm sorry why it's

072time I feel passionately about this one so I read it in the table as percentage of unit dwelling units and then it's the calculations our square footage for unlikely scenarios here I thought that was more the unlikely scenarios but if you see the first one is a hundred percent affordable in the five fifty in the unlikely 550mm they meet the credit they meet the criteria this was just to exaggerate how how much of office relative because this meets the criteria it's a hundred percent of work all the unit of all the units provided its 100% and the this unit is tiny compared to the rest of the that they are with the square footage here with a lesser Deveaux got totally understood all right thank you make it seem as horrible as I am now

073officially done for now are you sure are you positive all right Commissioner Weatherby that comparison but I think is a loss to do to just have sort of an idea and so I looked at Boulder which I have relatives in Boulder I go there a lot definitely has height restrictions Boulder requires all new residential development to provide 25% of the total dwelling units is permanently affordable 20 percent at the sort of 80% am I so and that's with that's not not no premiums at all so that's just straight up 25 percent and if it's for sale it has to be 50 percent on site so to give an eye you know so that to me seems so much more than what we are looking at even we know people say a lot that they don't

074like are going to go with what people want hi I mean we're looking at for premiums something that other communities are looking up as just by looking at it just straight have to provide so to me this seems kind of and it doesn't yes you say that we want affordable housing I don't know if that's true you know building developments but it just seems to me that this is I would I I'll shoot you down I have a list first types of math questions on the example not this one looked like this one I think I'm not understanding the math so looking at the 900% if they are at 30% 30% of 60 is 18 this is 9 units if I'm missing something I could have a typo came in low 50% off site okay

075so I was wondering you got that that was my first math question and see what else do I have I think getting to I hit I sort of unlikely scenarios one it was the first thought I had when I didn't when I saw this proposal and that does seem like a big loophole to me and I think that the biggest challenge here is we are sort of using a percentage of units as the trigger but then we're providing floor area and units and floor area aren't the same thing and so that's how you get all these weird these weird scenarios that don't exactly mean what I think our expectations would be and I was done been sitting here kind of trying to think of other ways we could get to what we want that wouldn't

076create the same kind of loopholes I don't know if I have any specific proposals but I'm gonna be stewing in that one but when one idea would be as a percentage of the total floor area so it's like if it's the number of the amount of floor area you're dedicating to affordable units as a percentage of the total floor area that isn't and then going from there I don't know if that's something that would evaluated again I'm thinking about this now I don't I don't know if there's a good solution there but it does doesn't quite feel right and maybe there's not a good solution there and can I ask did you consider a formula that was more based in form floor area or not on staff discussions and was there any sort of highlight

077some why that could work or not work we discussed with the ordinance revisions committee three three approaches the first was based on the sort of art the exact current model and just which is for every square foot of residential use that is provided 0.75 square feet of bonus floor area is awarded and using that and just inserting and 15% of all units must be affordable we also approach considered the working with the super-premium language as sort of a second approach which that language currently says for every affordable dwelling unit that you provide you get three thousand square feet as a chunk and we discussed that and mr. sobei it's much better percentages than I am but the percentage-wise the city and that requires a 600 square foot unit and then you get a 300 square

078foot for a chunk and it just didn't seem like you were that was not the approach that that the committee would like to take and then the third approach was this format of this is what we want this is this is what we want and this is what you'll get I said based on the the Green Building premium the green building premium says if you are LEED Gold you can add 50% with your LEED Silver you can add a hundred fifty percent and if your leave platinum you can add 250% and we it was the ordinance commissioning revisions committee who who favored this approach also thinking and also wanting to not do too try to compare apples to apples every square foot of affordable affordable housing is just as value as every square foot of

079market rate and vice versa every square foot market rate is just as valuable so there were we did consider sticking with the FA our approaches and in the end it was the the ordinance revisions maybe who chose that this approach effect another unlikely scenario is we get a lot of giant expensive units and then you know a bunch of 250 square foot units which a bunch of 200 50 squared this would be great to have cuz we're not getting those now but it's still it does feel a lot of balance to me but I it's a tough one to figure out because it's coming up with a general formula for a lot of different cases is tricky especially and we're not talking about a hundred percent residential in which case I think this would work

080pretty pretty easily one thing I say that the ordinance revisions committee kept coming back to was the purpose of premiums is to articulate what you want and then provide a carrot to get it and it was pretty clear that what we what we want are affordable units in the building and are 15 20 and 30 percent seemed like good goals separate conversation whether they should each be doubled but again the purpose of the premiums I think the ordinance revisions committee sort of decided we might not get too far into the weeds about that might about the minutiae in favor of we can we can articulate what we want they wanted 15% of all the units in the building to be affordable we are not seeing any projects where that is occurring now and certainly not

08120% or 30% and if then that is what we want and we are willing to just increase the FA are to get that and then if developers are providing smaller units that was okay if developers are getting bigger units and luggage and even more lug units but the consensus was that that was okay because we are achieving our goal of realizing affordable units in the downtown and and it was deemed an acceptable trade-off I'd be happy to discuss other approaches or thresholds and yeah yeah I mean I don't know how hard I want to push on that because I think we have a workable framework that we can move forward with that's better than nothing yeah just yeah it did that's just one thing that I'm like I can see a lot of ways that

082this might be gamed and I'm not sure the framework it's gonna be easily fixable if we are really getting stuff we don't like maybe it won't I think it's unlikely but I think it's maybe not as unlikely as we think because the holes are pretty big I'm gonna keep thinking about that one another question I had was on the table that shows that three tiers when I first read this it wasn't immediately clear to me how those added together it seemed to me that they were more when I first read this my interpretation was essentially 15% gets me 150 and 30% gets me 500 oh that is right okay never mind so I'm not having him the 400 that you'll also get okay never mind just answer me one question that would that did throw

083me for a little bit of a loop because everything else was referring to the 550 and 900 and 700 number and maybe it would make sense to include the additive there just to make it clear or maybe it's clear I wanted to talk about parking that it wasn't in the packet the parking piece of the amendment I noticed it was not in the packet so just so I understand this so when we're saying the affordable housing square footage isn't counted like is it I'm not sure if that's clear enough and what that actually means we're do it doing the numbers because are we subtracting that from the total square footage of the building before we look at how much is the premium area or is it my it wasn't clear what the affordable housing square

084clerks get subtracted from in order to get the final number that were considering premium area that then triggers parking and and this is probably something similar to height where it might be better to deal with it separately and in the future but I love the opinion now we probably don't need any parking minimum for any residential use even if it's exercised in the premiums I think you could make the argument for other uses that it makes sense but for residential use given the parking patterns and the fact that you know it's easy to get a limited parking permit downtown already if you you know need your car during a day and you just need a place to put it at night and it just drives up costs of affordability overall like I would advocate just

085removing any any requirement of residential use from parking now whether we want to fight take that bite at the Apple or that with this ordinance I don't know but I think it would make a lot of sense and the curious what if anybody else has anything to say about that and then the last thing I just wanted to mention sort of on the like are these percentages big enough I do like the idea of having this framework that we can tweak I do think there's a risk of when you when you set the bar too high than do you get nothing and we I mean other cities have seen that where they set their mandatory inclusionary zoning limits high and then their pipeline goes dry nobody builds anything because nothing nothing works financially so we

086can we can demand all day that people build something but if it's not going to work financially then nobody's gonna build it and so I like having a framework that we can adjust and I I'm pretty comfortable with where the numbers right now but that would be just something I would also warn us about to think about and last question so what was the I I didn't I don't remember when I first downloaded the packet but was the the are were the amendments all online and ledges are ahead of time I think I got that email late last week the the yes okay would have been available for downloading on Friday okay so that that was available online I know I happy said she had trouble locating the details so maybe that's a tough line

087conversation help figure out how to help people find the details though that were there okay thanks commercial breaks I'm just gonna for the most part agree with different things that have been said which is I agree from our discussion just a little more clarification we did discuss in the OIC whether or not the you know what the likelihood of getting small units being built yes we agreed that they're probably gonna be small units we still think that that's valuable we just did discuss whether or not she bedrooms versus units and didn't think the bedrooms was appropriate because that could all just be stacked until one so we're really looking for units but regardless of the fact that they're likely to be small we didn't necessarily see that as a as troubling um they'll obviously be

088nice if it was more diverse set but with regards to loophole we didn't really get to that discussion and I do think I would concur that that seems troubling to me so I liked your suggestion Alexis in terms of how to create a you know an additional condition around that to hopefully not see this sort of hotel beam bills are all office building cuz I don't really think that's the purpose of this ordinance amendment is we're really looking for affordable housing I hadn't really thought about the parking issue until you mentioned it but um I would agree that and if there's any place we're gonna live in in the community without parking clearly it's the downtown and that's what's increasing cost and in building affordable units then that's something we should consider but perhaps given

089how controversial that topic is maybe not coupling that conversation together maybe trying to figure out we already talked about point out the just the components of this that are though the revisions to the UDC that are just you know clean up so I don't know parking might be a discussion you would want to have separately from that as well with regard just the height obviously that does seem to be an issue if we can't actually truly realize that premium that super premium then why are we offering it so I do think that that is something that should be made really at least made very clear moving forward if we don't address it that it that there are these clear limitations to achieving that I think that's it I'm sure so they this is a fun

090one so did we did a lot of math and back-and-forth and metrics and proportion and ratios and percentages to try to figure out a balance and I think I really appreciate the transparency of the loophole Alexis like just the kind of really lay out what some of the outcomes are so a few things one thing I wanted to ask about these percentages for projects that we've seen either proposed or created using affordability if we've seen them what percentage of units in the past have we seen we talked about like Lockwood which is about 40% of the unit's correct what other projects and proportion of affordable units did we see in projects I think that the Ashley amuse PD has something like it has a set number and it must be a low I think it's

091a low percentage because they have like for affordable units the Broadway Village pewdie that was not realized I think had 20% affordable housing and then we have two pot two applications under review right now that are using the nine hundred percent super premium and I think we can look them up we looked at them developing this and they were in this ballpark that we're talking about percentage-wise but I can close this down I can go look it up those site plans right now but we there's not many data points to compare particularly if you're gonna separate out the projects done by say Avalon housing which is a hundred percent affordable they are experts and that's their that's their only thing they do what Lockwood is was basically a affordable housing provider as well and so

092it may not be a fair comparison you know their percentages would be very high because that's their that's their thing but ten to twenty percent of some of those other projects would be around the baseline yeah I I don't have it at my fingertips but I would guess fifteen and twenty percent would generally be a higher percentage of most the other projects okay and I'm just looking at that in terms of I think the lockwood that didn't go through forty percent is outside of the downtown so when we're talking about cost of those units and what can be covered and development it's much different than what we can do downtown so we're just looking at different market metrics per those units for that percentage there was discussion at the o RC about additional payment in

093lieu and instead of just at that five hundred percent super premium and so I think with like the requests and the idea of more affordable units if we increased to approximately twenty five percent more in both of those scales so from 15% to 20% 20% to 25% and then keeping the 30% maybe at 30% so it's 20 25 and 30% within the first two tiers being 25% payment in lieu so that would still ensure that 15 20 and 30% or 15 20 and 15% stay on site but 20 25 and 30% units get developed so that way we have payment and LU at all tiers which i think was something that's a move back and forth about what's the tipping point what's the rationale between making it available I think there's kind of economies of

094scale that larger tier as the loophole shows and every scenario we can do two units and check the box so that would actually be something I'd be interested in more discussion if we did payment every tier basically maintain those percentages proposed and that any if we want to increase the numbers we did it as a payment in lieu strategy I think part of so going into the unit counts and this loophole and kind of two units checks all the boxes up to you know 30 percent to the super premium working on projects in the downtown and thinking about market conditions generally about affordability and if this becomes an office building with two units in it if rentable office space the rents go down it makes businesses operate at a more affordable rate it could increase

095income for those employees which could help them afford to live in this town Griese am I in a way it's stretch I know like there's some moving parts but it's almost like we're looking at 40 bucks a square foot for office space - like there's another affordable pressure and for some of these buildings that do get developed and if they build an office building and we get no affordable unit this would ensure one so I'm trying to play a worst-case scenario what do we get we still get something in more of it but I there is kind of market conditions that more housing is needed so it should get tapped into two so it's definitely a dynamic and multivariable scenario to try to play through if the solute pool will hurt or actually be activated

096in that way but III feel comfortable with how it's set up that it's adjustable in the future if there seems to be a tendency to go in that loophole direction so that's where I stand now is that this new framework supports change and improvement but I don't think the loophole is set up to create failure within this ordinance and then the last thing I have is for parking but some interesting things what I would propose is that parking count that applies that wouldn't apply to making parking spots based on those units would be applied to the square footage in the premium so above that four hundred percent to ensure that we're not borrowing from the base level so that that reduction is always applied as that they are so if if we're not gonna take

097the radical move of removing all residential parking requirements at least we're making the direct move of always removing all of the square footage requirements for those affordable units as part of that premium square footage parking requirement if that makes sense about where you're kind of sever that that count so those would be kind of I guess my clarification points are the 25 percent payment in lieu for the first two tiers to increase the 20 and 25 percent because the discussion point and then where we put that premium parking calculation reduction mr. Leonard I see you've been feverishly doing some math would you like to make some comments so of just doing some calculations on one of the nine hundred percent fa are proposals that we are currently evaluating right now based on there nine hundred

098percent fa are they are seeking they are proposing eight percent of their units as affordable and they are seeking a height modification of just one to eight feet just for a reference commissioners hey so I'll go to height real quick I'm not sure how this could work as premium just for this scope of work if affordable is included but anything above the actual finished roof height elevator pent houses and those sorts of conditions that are counted towards height if those could be removed with that how like I haven't looked into those projects specifically what if the if that isn't counted towards the height that might be something that actually helps and accommodates what the final maximum height could be even if you searches quickly it could be up to ten twelve feet right there with

099that elevator penthouse is rooftop units antenna and those sorts of things so that as the condition which isn't actually buildable volume being removed from the height calculation could support it anyway so I agree with a lot of comments have been shared this evening there are two things that I I want to discuss and one has to do more with the big picture that we're sitting here we're having this conversation we're throwing out these numbers and percentages and square footage numbers but it would be really interesting to see how the market will respond to this whether were too low whether we're too high and so I'm bit conflicted about moving this forward just because a part of me says yeah we're almost there to the finish line but this room is empty today and in our

100previous meetings when we've discussed it it's also been fairly empty so it doesn't mean that no one has a problem with it or does it mean that we're not reaching to the right individuals at this point so I'm a little uncomfortable moving this forward because I don't know if we've gotten that feedback and this is it's a problem in our community affordable housing has been a problem for a long time and I don't want to act too hastily on it just because City Council has given us a date to respond to them by if we haven't done our full due diligence and we know exactly what we're putting forth here because maybe these numbers are too low maybe they're too high I don't know if this is realistic and if developers will take advantage of

101this or if we're just gonna spin our wheels and actually it's gonna stall what's happening in our community so still uncertain about that so I'd like to get some feedback whether we're at a point where we're ready for a vote or whether we want to postpone this for a little while the other thing that I just wanted to also address actually have two other things with regards to what other communities do and I appreciate Commissioner whether it be pulling up what Boulder does the one thing that I I'm always conscious of this the markets are substantially different the prices that I see coming out of Boulder when I talk to other real estate professionals in that market is by far way different than what we see here so I like to see more of their

102numbers as well and all this just so that we can do a comparison with regards to where their affordability numbers are and what does 80% of am I mean to them versus what it means to us and then the other piece I just wanted to throw out there and I've thrown this out before also looking at affordable housing outside downtown we currently have no carrots for developers outside downtown to do affordable housing so this is not part of this motion but this is a conversation that we should also be having and maybe some city council will ask us to look into that so those are my comments and i will Commissioner Ackerman thanks I also agree I don't think we're quite there if mr. Lerner is comfortable sending to City Council just a status report

103for the next council meeting I think that's appropriate I was the ones who came up with the July 1st deadline and I think we are at a point where I'm glad we've picked up this momentum that was the intent of the deadline but I don't I would rather have something we're all comfortable with I do think that some more stakeholder engagement would be helpful I would love for a development professional to look at these numbers and in as objective of Ojai as possible because it's always I always have to wonder about bias but in this objective of a way as possible give us a read of what the effect on the market would be and kind of I think pulling from multiple sources might be helpful in that and and I'll I guess I'd leave

104it to staff to figure out the best way to do that so I I certainly would want to see a postponement for that reason and then also the now quote-unquote loopholes conversation as well as consideration of the height as something that can be kind of bolted on now and removed a conversation later dictates it should be those are the three areas that I identified needed a little bit more work mr. Weatherbee situation but I would like to see maybe some better view of other cities in Michigan or other just maybe some idea again I know every place is different but I think it gives it doesn't make sense but but we are developers come here what does Chicago doing what is I mean we are not Chicago but just some idea because they feel like

105we're kind of making up numbers figuring out what maybe works and that's good but I don't think we're getting a lot so maybe that are getting affordable housing mr. Briggs so I also agree a postponement would be useful primarily from my perspective to deal with the unlikely scenarios issue I am much less concerned about the 15 20 30 percent I think that I mean it's great at staffing and get some additional feedback or perhaps just further articulate from my perspective exactly how the numbers were justified I don't see this to be a huge issue the reality is that they can be tweaked if they are too low or too high or the unlikely scenario I think is much more from my perspective if you see a large see something being built if you see a

106developer come forward and present a project and use the affordable housing sort of premium to present a building that's much bigger than we would previously have allowed that sort of feels like something that's taking advantage of our bar code so that that's why I don't want to see that but I also think as I'm reading sort of the proposals from one of the reasons I'm not so concerned as well as is I think that as we're updating our master plan one of the things that I've seen in some of the proposals is that we are looking for a better housing analysis and stuff like that and so we'll have that data much better data to look at within this next year so we could come back to this when we get that and we could

107perhaps potentially ask the you know I don't know if mr. Barnard agrees with us but you know we can ask for feedback on this specifically as well to see if these numbers seemed accurate but in the effort to not stall this too much with getting better data if this feels about right I don't see any reason why we shouldn't move forward on this yeah we can definitely try to bring some of that benchmark information some comparison try to get some feedback like I just ran a quick calculation of the other petition that's seeking the night I represent currently they are not proposing any height increase over the current high limit and the unit's they're proposing would be at 11% so so we would definitely be increasing the requirement at the nine hundred percent level in

108addition to the lower thresholds mr. Ackerman yeah I think that added data and thanks for the benchmarking that's really helpful I mean we'd be tripling and right obviously they're not working to an apples apples requirement right now but if they were we'd be you know tripling the requirement I think that just get emphasizes the need for the height allowance just because if we are gonna be creating a much a much greater I don't wanna say burden bear with me you know the if we're decreasing the amount of revenue they could capture at this kind of density then we should reduce their risk I guess is what I would say so I think that the fact that it's a tripling of what we're seeing right now in our in our current state yeah illustrates why the

109height allowance would be would be needed and thank you I yeah last night was a long night it's not like I stumble through that sentence but I think I got there commissure Trudel one last thing and it has it didn't even bring this forward cuz I know the ORAC had a lot of conversation about this I'm sure staff did too going back to the loophole issue they're just playing around with numbers on FA our calculations and if we set so much so anyway this is an idea but maybe you can all just discard it and say it's too complicated to consider this point but taking the percentage of floor area dedicated to affordable housing and the fully realized FA are and then kind of working backwards to get the premium like it's like and I

110it's difficult to explain which is why I think it's complicated but so for it says as an example if somebody was shooting for the seven hundred percent total F IR which right now we're saying twenty percent of units if you took twenty percent of the floor area instead that would be about a hundred and forty percent of the FA are of the total seven hundred would have to be could be dedicated to affordable so if having B units just have it be floor area that's sort of it's actually probably more than what we've get in units cuz the units can all be small that might be another way to think about how we calculate it how you represent that in the ordinance I'm not sure yet does that make sense and is that something that

111we've already tried to represent and it doesn't work or we discarded and I like this idea because like when we talk about other uses you still get a bonus right so you get one hundred one hundred forty percent has to be affordable housing in that particular calculation but your bonus is three hundred so you're getting one hundred and sixty percent more FA are that you can do whatever you want with and so if you're doing a hotel like if you want another one hundred sixty percent F they are and then you throw the 144 a little housing if they are on top of that then you kind of get to the seven hundred and then we're not talking about units so we don't get these weird loophole considerations it's a pretty smooth formula I don't

112like that anyway I just wanted to push back on that feels more under that scenario you'd be concerned that the affordable units are six bedroom and the market rate units our Studios uh not so much because I feel like the mean unless I would have to look at what the sort of ami rent target's look like but I think with the poorly and it's given the way the rents work out actually that we're probably gonna still get some more smaller units because they're collecting rents on those units and so you could the rent per square footage from a financial perspective probably works out better for more smaller units than bigger units yeah just so I make sure I understand the concept would be switching the language that is currently 15% of all the residents units

113are affordable then you get a chunk and so you're saying that if 15% of the building is a four is devoted to affordable dwelling units then you can get 150% if 20% of the floor area of the total building is dedicated dedicated affordably and you would get three hundred percent and if 30 percent of the entire building that just like that's the concept I was backing it out so it would hit the same sort of seven hundred nine hundred five 50 marks with those percentages like I'm like if you maxed it out like how much fluoride you have to get to get twenty percent of 700 that's how I did the math and I think if you described it the other way I'd work out that way but that's what I haven't reasoned through yet

114is how you could write the ordinance to make it a little clearer so if you're gonna build a seven or percent instead of a 400% building you'd have to give twenty percent of the floor area but if you gave a little less is the twenty percent of the floor area of the bonus percent of the building okay I'm the building okay that would that's how I did the math and I think the numbers might need a little tweaking together because I think they move around a little bit by working on floor areas of unit based on the ratios but it's pretty close actually like if you work with the fifteen twenty thirty and then sample scenarios if I run it yeah you can run example scenarios to see what happens that yeah that's what I

115was thinking you build a model that you can like get a few examples and then just like from them and see what they look like with that yeah but if I didn't have a day job I'd be firing on my spreadsheet but me true survey so what I'm hearing just to kind of reference kind of one of one of the conditions from the Oh RC or one of the previous residential preemies this was 0.75 square feet of floor area in excess to regular floor area allows one square feet to use for residential and so right there like it's like a seventy-five percent premium sort of thing and there could be also a baseline with this 15 20 and 30 percent affordability that would just say of the premium FA are 75 percent must be residential

116use and then of that 75 percent 15 percent needs to be dwelling like I'm also trying to like simplify it in a way that these are easier boxes to check and adjust so that the kind of notching up goes away so it's clear for staff and developers to know what they're getting and just kind of three boxes so that would be it doesn't seem simple though so you're you're saying you'd get three hundred percent seventy five percent of that has to be housing and 25 percent of the 75 percent so you get their server talk about like 20% right yeah we get 300 percent in d1 so five percent of that is residential you get 300 percent if 75 percent of it is residential 870 / / sevens residential and 20 percent of that is

117affordable so it's 20 percent of the 75 percent yes okay no no the thing I don't like about that is it doesn't give us the big as big an incentive to get housing with other uses if we ever wanted to see a bigger lips to use kind of like a we wanted to see like a hotel plus residential like where's the versus a simpler like just like percentage of the floor area like you get the housing which which maybe maybe that would be a good question for developers though maybe nobody's gonna build like 60% happen you know Hoppus 30% before lousing building just to get a little bit more office I don't know or maybe that's a case for payment Alou makes more sense sorry I didn't mean to UM patent load all of these

118things that have been already kind of gone over Commissioner Ackerman Thank You mr. chair can I suggest a postponement of to the first meeting in July in order to accomplish four things Wow sorry action of what I was thinking is that we would just delete a part of the motion just because half of it is good to go I think we haven't had any discussion that it wouldn't be approved so I was thinking that we did we separate out the erection then staff would bring it back when I'm okay with stepping out connection mr. learner when do you think you could accomplish four things as I hear them one a little bit of feedback about the numbers we've developed adding language on height allowance for the 900 FA our tier the thresholds for the for

119the loopholes and then I guess the fourth may be interrelated to the loopholes but the line of conversation that Commissioner Trudeau and surveyor just engaging in about a potential solution to to close that and I'm fighting log with development community that was the first that was the feedback yeah I'm thinking we'd probably want maybe shoot for the first meeting in August second meeting in July and seems pretty good I'm just kidding I'll defer to you what do you think I like this let's do this let's let's schedule it for the second meeting in July and we will either come with all the answers or some of the answers that seems reasonable the only thing I would like it's a pretty robust discussion the first working session in July how about how about next week how

120about next week the only pieces we won't have feedback from the development community yeah at that point we can try to invite some folks to that working session yeah let me see what we can put together for that or so let's I guess I would ask for the flexibility to we may schedule a working session to discuss this clap really leave with you at worst we will do our best to bring all of that feedback back at the 2nd July meeting for either it'll either be asking well really for presenting it for a recommendation or another touch point that sounds great and then in the meantime I will update the City Council on our partners thank you very much oh did you want a motion to separate the two items yes all right I'd make

121a motion to separate the two items and take the first one now okay have a second seconded by Commissioner Trudeau any discussion on approving changes to section 5.1 7.4 the mix use zoning district dimensions all those in favor please say aye aye opposed and then I'd move to postpone the second item to the second meeting in July seconded by Commissioner Trudeau any discussion all those in favor please say aye aye opposed it is postponed thank you that was great discussion now we're on to approval of Planning Commission subcommittees and designee no but since it was not titled correctly I guess I would recommend we don't take action so for the next meeting I could present your work plan okay do you have a commissioner who will move post moment on that I don't move by

122commissioner survey second I thought commissioner Ackerman any discussion on that postponement please say aye opposed alright commissioner I'm sorry audience participation is there anyone in the audience who wishes to address the Planning Commission about anything at all if so please step up to the podium state your name for the record and you have up to three minutes to address us hi Karen white 28:57 Packard is what's on my mind you're gonna be talking about the PUD proposal I can tell you that my take on their PUD proposal is that it's unacceptable it does not preserve the forest fragment that's there it does not address the historic property that's there the historic house and I think it's the wrong development for that very unique parcel and we can't afford to raise that lot and lose all

123the benefits that already exist there and I don't see any benefits to the PUD proposal so that's it thank you thank you anyone else in the audience wishing to address the Planning Commission see no one do have a motion to adjourn move by commissioners survey seconded by Commissioner true Trudeau I saw a hand come all those in favor were adjourned thank you you