It's time for the weekly general session of your Denver City Council.

Tonight's coverage of Denver City Council starts now.

Good afternoon, and thank you for taking time to join us for the Denver City Council's meeting.

Today is Monday, September 15th, 2025.

Tonight's meeting is being interpreted into Spanish.

Sam, would you please would you please introduce yourself and let our viewers know how to enable translation on their devices?

Yes, of course.

Thank you for having us.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Sam Guzman with the CLC.

And along with my colleague Jasmine, we will be interpreting today's meeting into Spanish.

Please allow me one minute to uh give instructions in Spanish on how to access interpretation.

Thank you very much.

Welcome to the Denver City Council meeting of Monday, September 15th, 2025.

Council members, please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the play of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under eye, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Council members, please join Council Member Lewis as they lead us in the Denver City Council land acknowledgement.

The Denver City Council honors and acknowledges that the land on which we reside is the traditional territory of the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapahos peoples.

We also recognize the 48 contemporary tribal nations that are historically tied to the lands that make up the state of Colorado.

We honor elders' past, present and future, and those who have stewarded this land throughout generations.

Thank you.

Madam Secretary, roll call.

Council members Gilmore.

Here.

End of all.

Albitres.

Here.

Flynn.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Present.

Carity.

Here.

Torres.

Here.

Watson.

Here.

Madam Prota.

Here.

Twelve members present.

There are 12 members present.

Council has a quorum.

Approval of the minutes.

Are there any corrections to the minutes of September 8th?

Seeing none, the minute stand approved.

The minute stand approved.

Great.

Okay.

Are there any council announcements?

Waiting for some people to get in the queue.

Let's go ahead and start with Council Member Alvidres.

Thank you so much, Council Pro Tem.

I just wanted to first start off with a happy belated birthday to Councilman Flynn.

My neighboring Southwest council member, happy birthday.

35 years old, the youngest member of Denver City Council.

I also wanted to give a shout out to the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, specifically Greg Cisek, who's been doing amazing work in District 7, and really make been making a difference.

Lastly, I wanted to share something that is in Council President's district.

She's not here today, but very excited.

One of our small business owners on Broadway is also helping with this new business on federal at the Federal Theater.

So you can stop by the grand opening of the Federal Theater, one of Denver's most iconic and historic theaters.

It will be reopening.

We are so excited to continue this legacy.

Doors open at 7 p.m.

And I don't have the date.

I think it's Thursday.

I apologize.

This week.

I'll get back in the queue for that one.

Thanks, Council Pro Tem.

Thank you.

Councilmember Parity.

Yeah, I just wanted to let folks know that I have a um just an open coffee date this Friday from noon to 1 30 at the corner bakery on 5680 Tower Road is just a drop-in for constituents.

If you want to reach out in advance and let us know something you want to talk about, I'll hopefully be prepared on that.

But otherwise, everyone's welcome.

And it is in the far northeast, but anyone from around the city who who wants to come can come.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Hines.

Thank you, Madam President Pro Tem.

I um uh I have a uh bill that is on consent and figured rather than pull it off consent.

I'll just uh make my uh comments to it right now.

Colleagues, our work is to take the values Denver rights hold dear and turn them into law.

Council Bill 251241 does exactly that.

It prohibits the retail sale of dogs, cats, and rabbits by pet shops while still allowing adoption events with shelters and rescues with clear signatures so families know exactly who they're working with.

In Denver, a new best friend shouldn't come with fine print.

This isn't just fine print.

Too often what people really get is a medically fragile puppy, kitten, or rabbit, an animal that lives shorter, costs thousands in vet bills, and leaves behind not only grief, but debt.

Families thought they were buying joy and end up paying for ashes.

In Denver, we value honesty.

That means making sure people get what they think they're getting, not an animal bred in cruel conditions where inbreeding and neglect hide future health problems.

In Denver, we value fairness.

We believe people should pay a reasonable price for a reasonable item.

In this case, someone's new best friend, and not trapped in predatory lending or puppy leasing schemes that saddle them with high interest debt after the hard break.

In Denver, we value public health.

The centers for disease control is documented outbreaks of multi-drug-resistant campy law vector.

Sorry if I mispronounced uh this uh this issue uh linked to pet stores puppies.

Uh, when bacteria can't be treated with common antibiotics, the cost is measured in illness and in lives.

In Denver, we value compassion.

This summer, 165 dogs and nearly 100 cats were pulled from horrific conditions in Colorado's western slope.

Local rescues took up the slack when the puppy mill was raided, but they shouldn't have to clean up after a broken system.

And in Denver, we value prevention.

Right now, no Denver Pet shop sells puppies, kittens, or rabbits.

Passing this ordinance won't cost a single job.

It will simply keep a cruel business model from gaining a foothold here.

Across the nation, more than 500 communities in eight states have already said enough is enough.

Colorado cities from Aurora to Fort Collins have passed similar laws.

We are not alone.

We are part of a bipartisan movement to reflect what people truly value.

Let me be clear.

This ordinance does not touch responsible Colorado breeders who sell directly.

It does not prevent pet stores from hosting adoption events.

And it does not harm our pet care economy, which thrives in food supplies, services, and veterinary care, a 152 billion dollar industry.

So tonight, we have a choice.

We can either wait till Denver becomes the next market for predatory pet stores, or we can take the lead by by example for all those puppies, kittens, and bunnies that can't advocate for themselves.

Here's the punchline I want us to remember.

In Denver, your new best friend should come with love, not with debt.

Colleagues, I know this is on consent.

Um I hope it remains on consent.

Uh so let's put our values into law.

I respect uh respectfully ask for your eye vote on Council Bill 25 1241.

Thank you, Madam President Pro Tem.

Thank you.

Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Thank you.

Uh Madam Pro Tem, President Pro Tem.

I just wanted to make an announcement about another event uh that I'm doing alongside with Councilman Cashman.

These are our neighborhood engagement workshops where we'll be we're taking on the challenge of our registered neighborhood organizations and looking at how um how we can actually structure them in a way that works for our community members and and what they have to gain out of them.

So our next one will be this coming Saturday, September 20th at the Martin Luther King Junior Recreation Center, 10 to 12 p.m.

We'd love for you to RSVP if you can, but if you can't, that's no problem.

Still come and join us.

We'll have a light breakfast because it will be in the morning, and it will be right before um, which I think Councilman Lewis might be uh maybe gonna be announcing next, but it's right before another event that's taking place in Montbellow.

So um would love to see you there.

Join us.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lewis.

I feel like I'm going to fail you with that announcement.

Uh so get back in the queue or send it to me via text.

Um I wanted to announce the uh budget book club, which is on September 24th from 3:30 to 7 o'clock.

And we will be meeting at the Whittier Cafe.

We tested it out today.

They have delicious food um and drinks.

So you should come by.

Um, in addition to that, we have another meeting for the budget book club on October 4th, um, to begin to draft budget proposals.

Um, at the Carla Madison Recreation Center from 11 a.m.

to 1 p.m.

And there's something happening in Mount Mello.

That's it.

That's it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilmember Torres.

Okay, there's something happening in West Denver too.

Everywhere.

Um I just want to give a couple uh heads up on Saturday.

Sun Valley Harvest Festival is a really wonderful event in the Sun Valley neighborhood from one to four, and the community and um anyone interested is invited.

And then Santa Fe Nights is gonna be taking place on Saturday night from six to nine, right off of Santa Fe 7th in Santa Fe at the Denver Arts Society, doing an homage to Zoot Suit and Pachuco Styles.

So invite community out and hope to see you at one of these events on Saturday.

Thank you.

Oh, fun.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Alvidres.

Thank you.

Now, circling back to the Federal Theater, it will celebrate its grand opening with a free show on Friday.

This is on the north side.

Um, shout out to Council President who is not here today.

The show will feature two bands from Northwest Denver, Iscali, a Latin rock band, and Los Mocochetes, a Chicano Funk band.

This show is completely free for all ages, and it will be at 3850 Federal Boulevard.

Space is limited, so get there early or get a ticket at the Federaltheater.com.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Councilmember Watson.

Uh thank you so much, Council President Pro Tem.

Uh we had an amazing weekend uh on East Side in Five Points uh this past Saturday and uh Sunday.

Uh the inaugural High Points Festival was rolled out by the Five Points Business Improvement District in collaboration with uh all of the amazing small businesses along the Welton Street corridor, and this was a music festival um uh to kick off the fall.

Um, all of the storefronts were filled with hundreds of people.

We had a great event in um Cousins Plaza where we honored uh Charles Burrell.

And so I wanted to give a shout out to um uh five points business improvement district for the amazing work they did with pulling this together and all the small businesses that directly were impacted.

Um I could hear the thumping and bumping uh at my house a few blocks away from five points all through tonight.

And so I think we are ecstatic that this is a new event, and uh we want to give much love uh to the business district and the small businesses and demonstrate support for them to make this an annual event.

Uh, talking about collaborations, uh I am very honored to have been a part of a regional approach looking at transit-oriented development transit um um options uh to Red Rocks and to the mountain parks um throughout uh the uh the metro area.

Uh, over the last two years, uh, the mayors of Morrison, the mayors of Golden, uh Jeff CO Commissioner, um Andy Kerr and I, along with Devmer Parks and Rec and our mountain park staff in Jeff CO and in um in Denver have been collaborating with Green Latinos and many other nonprofits to identify an opportunity for a multimodal option to get from Denver to Red Rocks.

And if you've traveled by show of hands, folks here who've traveled by car to Red Rocks for a concert over the last 12 months.

I expected to see just as many hands.

Lots of folks are driving to Red Rocks.

We believe here in Denver as well as in Jeff CO, that we need to have an opportunity, working collaboration with RTD to find a multimodal option to get folks there outside of single-use cars.

Um over two million folks go to Red Rocks for recreation, a million folks go there uh to concerts.

Uh we are doing a demonstration this Saturday from 10 to 12 p.m.

Um, providing a connector from the W line um at the Jeff CO Center to Red Rocks and throughout Morrison throughout Golden.

Uh it's a one-of-a-kind collaboration um between um Denver, Jeff COL and our park systems as well as RTD.

We encourage folks to come out and see the demonstration, and we're gonna be rolling out multimodal transportation to Red Rocks and uh Morrison and Golden next summer based on the uh success of this project.

So kudos to everyone and the great Adam Paul.

I don't I don't see me in the audience for his work with the mayor's office here, ensuring that we got this demonstration off.

Got the funding from RTD and from the state to make sure that we can make this something that happens effectively starting next summer.

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem.

Thank you.

Councilmember Cashman.

Thank you, Madam Pro Tem.

I wanted to expand a little bit on the words of my colleague, uh Councilwoman Gonzalez Guterres.

Um, our offices uh have been working uh all summer long to collect uh uh thoughts from uh Denver residents on uh do they participate in a neighborhood organization designed to act in their best interests.

Uh do they know what a registered neighborhood organization even is?

Uh we devised this system of registered neighborhood groups back in 1979, designed to be liaisons between the residents and the city, except uh since that time the city has done absolutely nothing to support these neighborhood groups and uh in in uh connection with that, the groups then have trouble adequately representing their communities.

So um our staff's been to 40 uh uh events all summer long.

We are now uh we had our first uh neighborhood meeting uh uh last week at the Westwood Community Center, filled every seat with people anxious to help us uh devise a system to better empower residents to take a role in their own governance.

If you Google your city, your voice, Denver, you'll get to the page that will list not just the uh meeting coming up on Saturday.

There's a meeting in Northwest Denver uh uh location to be determined October 7th.

There'll be one at Cook Park Recreation Center Southeast on the 15th of October, and then the end of October on the 29th, there'll be a virtual session.

Uh to put it mildly, I think the city's doing uh a lousy job supporting its neighborhood groups.

I think we're doing a lousy job uh exchanging information with our residents.

We want to do much better, and your participation will help us do that.

So uh, like I said, uh your city, your voice, Denver, it'll get you information on what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how you can participate.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Pro Tem.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lewis, I've come to realize what's happening in Mount Bello and is the Montbello Alive celebration.

It's actually their 10th year celebrating.

Um the celebration is from noon to 4 p.m.

But if you're interested in participating in the 5K, which my staff and I are, um you'll have to arrive at nine o'clock, and it's not too late for you to join.

I personally will be trying to survive and to keep up my staff, but I'll see if I come back on Monday.

We'll see.

That's it.

That's great.

Um, Councilmember Gilmore.

Thank you so much, Council Pro Tem Romero Campbell.

Most definitely for the Mont Bello Alive event.

It was started in recognition of Mont Bellow's uh 50th anniversary 10 years ago, I believe.

I'm sure folks will correct me if I'm wrong, but it's been going strong for that decade.

And so really grateful to the community for doing that work and councilmember Lewis highlighting it in her comments.

I also wanted to uh share that last week um I want to share my really sincere um thanks uh to the Parks and Rec Advisory Board uh last week at the meeting myself and um other community members um and I really want to call out and thank um Teddy McCullough um from the Denver American Indian Commission and Dr.

Tink Tinker um for commenting um and sharing their thoughts um at the Prab meeting.

It was in regard to something that council members will see come through on consent.

Um it is for the first time in the history of the city and county of Denver, a park will be named for an indigenous American Indian, specifically American Indian person uh in the city and county of Denver.

It will be Amache Prowers Memorial Park, and so um I'm posting online, etc.

Um, more information about Amache Prowers.

Um, but I think it is very apropos for the times that we're living in that um Amache Prowers was um an American Indian woman who was married to a white cattle rancher and lived in the area um close to Sand Creek, and actually her father, who was a chief, was um massacred at Sand Creek along with other family members, and she was held by the U.S.

military herself and her children and her husband were held by the U.S.

military and kept from warning her family members about the Sand Creek Massacre.

And so she was a people's advocate, um, was uh convener, was a mediator, and all of her life um tried to be a peacekeeper, and she was um honored by the women's foundation and others, and so we're very grateful um for uh the American Indian community for allowing this to move through the Parks and Rec advisory board process and um all through also through council on consent in preparation for the commemoration of Indigenous People's Day on October 13th.

So wanted to mention that so folks can follow it through the process.

Uh thank you very much, Council uh President Pro Tem.

Thank you.

Um I just have a few announcements as well.

I would like to thank those who came out for the El Grito 5K and for the co-sponsorship with uh Councilwoman Alvidres and Councilmember Sandoval.

Um it was lovely.

It was a 5K.

You can do this, Councilmember Lewis.

You can do this walk or run.

It's gonna be lovely.

Um, but it was a it was a great time to be able to come out.

It was the 30th annual um El Grito run, and it's moved to the Aurora campus, so it was in front of the MSU, that quad area, and we had about 250 um folks that showed up, um, and it was a nice day to be out um and just celebrate, recognize.

Um we did run out of burritos.

We'll change that for next year.

Um so we apologize for that.

Um, also they uh I wanted to let people know that we have a meeting with the city and county of Denver, Mile High Flood District, um, and the Goldsmith Gulch Stormwater Project.

Um, and this is an effort to reduce neighborhood flooding and the entrance spaces between Bible Park and Evans Avenue.

So over the next few years, we will be um they will be designing improvements to address stormwater management in Bible Park, I Live Stormwater Basin, and the downstream segment.

We have a open house, come and learn about it, explore the interactive stations set up this Wednesday, September 17th at 5 30.

It's an open house between 5 30 and 7.

Um the notice that has gone out says the council district offices, but it's in the building right next to us.

So that is 7535 East Hampton Avenue in room 105.

So on the main floor, it's the building with the boys' um uh big brothers uh big sisters sign on it.

So please join us for that open house.

All right, uh I just turned myself off.

There are no presentations, there are no communications, there are two proclamations being read this afternoon.

Councilmember Alvidres, will you please read proclamation 25-1360?

Uh yes.

Proclamation is.

Yes, proclamation 25-1360, a proclamation honoring Denver Crime Lab National Forensic Science Week 2025, whereas the Denver Crime Lab has a long and well-deserved reputation of using technology and investigative excellence to further advance the criminal justice system and provide either exoneration or accused of the accused or justice for the victims, and whereas this longstanding reputation began with its founding by the Denver Police Captain Joseph Muma in 1940, who purchased the lab's first equipment, a microscope with his own funds.

And whereas the approval of the departmental and civic leadership, the Denver Crime Lab began its drive to excellence with forensic science still in its infancy.

Captain MUMA and the staff worked successfully to achieve top ratings in key areas of analysis, including narcotics, firearm identification, ballistic analysis, general chemistry analysis, explosive detection, and document authentication.

And whereas the Denver Crime Lab continues to be a trailblazer in the area of forensic science by developing by develop by developing mobile crime lab vehicles that allow for scientific analysis in the field in the late 1950s and 1960s, and whereas Denver leadership successfully resisted the trend of major cities in 1970s to privatize crime lab functions.

This allowed the lab to build a strong team of scientists dedicated to the criminal justice for citizens of Denver.

And whereas the Denver voters approved a bond initiative in 2007, which allowed for the development of a nationally recognized state-of-the-art facility and furthered Denver's leading role in forensic science and DNA analysis, which has since fostered national model programs in DNA cases, DNA property crimes initiatives, innovations and DNA database searching and gun crime intelligence, and whereas leadership with the Denver Crime Lab aggressively sought available federal grants for DNA analysis for cold case reassessment, which resulted in countless successful identifications of previously unknown perpetrators of violent crime and closure for many victims.

It also resulted in the exoneration of individuals that were not involved in crimes.

And now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the city council of the city and county of Denver that the Council of the City and County of Denver recognizes the important contributions of Denver's crime scene investigators, forensic scientists, laboratory management, and leadership for their work in establishing excellence in forensic science to serve the citizens of Denver as part of Forensic Science Week 2025.

Section two that the clerk and of the city and county of Denver shall affix the seal of the city and county of Denver to this proclamation and a copy be sent to Gregory LeBurge, Director of the Denver Crime Lab and the Denver Police Museum.

Thank you, Councilmember Alvidres.

Your motion to adopt.

I move that proclamation 25-1360 be adopted.

It has been moved and seconded.

Council comments by council members.

So we will start with you.

Great.

Thank you so much.

I'm really proud to be able to sponsor this proclamation and really proud of the work that the Denver Crime Lab does.

It's been amazing thing to learn about while I've been on Denver City Council, especially right now when the state is looking to us to help resolve some of their backlog in DNA results.

And across the nation, you will see that they're behind on things like DNA rape kits, which are very important.

So this is something that we should all be proud of that makes me extremely proud.

We were able to do a tour of the crime lab and see how difficult their job is.

It's difficult to analyze narcotics, especially when such a small amount of some of the drugs that are found today can be deadly.

So I want to thank you for all of your work.

And it makes me really proud to know that we are not part of that backlog and that we're helping solve problems bigger than Denver.

Thank you, Council Pro Tem.

Thank you.

Councilmember Flynn.

Thank you, Madam President Pro Tem.

I just want to briefly add my uh congratulations and uh the recognition that the crime lab gets is wholly deserved.

It's I think one of the nation's leaders, and I'm very glad that we have and that we have Gregory LeBerge reading it.

Uh Chief Thomas, you have an excellent resource in the crime lab.

It's doing great work for the people of Denver.

Thank you, Madam President Pro Tem.

Thank you.

Madam Secretary, roll call.

Council members Gilmore.

Aye.

Sawyer.

I'll be there.

Aye.

Flynn.

Aye.

Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Aye.

Heinz?

Hi.

Cashman.

Aye.

Lewis.

Aye.

Parody.

Aye.

Romero Cam.

Apologies.

Um Doris.

Aye.

Councilmember Watson.

Aye.

Madam Pro Tem.

Aye.

Madam Secret.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

Twelve eyes.

Twelve eyes.

Proclamation 25 1360 has been adopted.

Councilmember, oops.

Wrong number.

Let me give you the right number.

Oh, no, that's right.

Councilmember 25, 1360 has been adopted.

Council members.

Councilmember Alvidris.

Who would you like to call forward?

Uh, thank you, Council uh Council Pro Tem.

I would like to call forward Chief Thomas, Mr.

Michael Hesse, and Gregory uh Leberg, forgive me if I said that incorrectly.

Please come up to accept.

Thank you, Councilmember Alvidres.

Uh uh, Madam President Pro Tem, members of Council.

Certainly want to thank you all for continuing to support the Denver Police Department and our efforts.

I think it's very important this week being uh, you know, National Forensic Science Week.

I think we all understand the importance of forensic science and sometimes making the impossible possible.

And I think with some of the events that have occurred across the country, even most recently in Utah, understanding the value of forensic science.

And you know, to my left here stands a man who had the vision to turn a parking lot in front of uh police headquarters into what is truly the most world renowned um uh forensic science facility in you know in the world, truly, but it is not that just because of his vision, it's also because of many folks who are sitting here in the room the the work that they do every day that I think uh makes it such a world class facility.

So uh thank you all, and I'll turn it over to Dr.

LeBerge.

Uh Madam President, on our honorable members of council, uh Council Woman Alvarez.

Um, this was a staff initiated recognition.

I think that um this is forensic science week has been going on for several years nationally.

We've just never really done anything formally in Denver, so we appreciate your support and your kind words for the work we do every day.

Um, as the chief mentioned, if you see recent events, the first thing they mention is that they got forensic evidence.

They've got fingerprints, they've got footprint evidence, maybe DNA evidence.

These are the people here to my right that do all of that very, very uh detailed work that has to be right a hundred percent of the time.

And I think that with the support of council and the city of Denver in general, we've been able to set the bar nationally to do that, but we still need your support continuing into the future with these budget concerns and these issues.

Um, doing this work in a timely way so we don't have backlogs requires resources.

Um, we've always been straight across the board with those justifications and support, so you will always find fact-based uh support and justification for everything we ask for all the time.

Um, I set that bar several years ago with Mayor Hickenlooper, and I think that it's something that if we're coming to you, we really mean it, and they they will support that.

So if you'd all stand, I'd appreciate it.

So this is a large part of the staff, not all of it, but a large part of the staff.

Um they will often have results within a day.

Um things that you will not see federally even, certainly statewide, you will not see the performance that they do for the city of Denver pretty much anywhere.

Uh so we're greatly proud of that.

We we uh ple appreciate your continued support of our division and our role within uh the process in the criminal justice system, we seek for the truth every day, and we make it happen for Denver, and we appreciate that.

Mike, no, thank you all very much.

La berge is how you I'm French.

Appreciate it, thank you.

That's awesome.

Okay, thank you.

Um council members Watson and Torres, will you please read proclamation 25-1359?

Uh, thank you, Madam President Pro Tem.

Uh, proclamation number 251359.

Recognizing and responding to food insecurity in a city and county of Denver.

Whereas food is a basic human need and right, essential to the health, well-being, and prosperity of all residents, and whereas an estimated one in six Denver residents struggle with food insecurity, lacking consistent access to sufficient culturally culturally relevant and nutritious food, and whereas a food insecurity in a city and county of Denver and across the U.S.

has been exacerbated by rising costs of living, shifts in federal supports, systemic inequities, and limited access to affordable, healthy food in parts of the country, and whereas the impacts of food insecurity are not experienced equally, disproportionately affecting low-income households, those who are underemployed, multiracial and ethnic communities, households with children, those who identify as LGBTQIA plus, and people with disabilities, and whereas Denver is a home to wide array of food assistance providers, community-based organizations, public agencies, and local food producers who are working tirelessly to reduce hunger and increase access to healthy, culturally relevant and locally grown food and whereas the Southwest Food Coalition, a network of community residents, schools, and community-based organizations in Southwest Denver, has brought together diverse voices to collectively address food insecurity by coordinating resources, building trust, and advancing systems change, the strengthened neighborhood-based solutions to hunger, and whereas local food pantries, WIC clinics, school nutrition programs, farmers markets, SNAP enrollment sites, and mutual aid groups report increasing demand and greater complexity in meeting the needs of communities they serve, and whereas the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment, Denver Department of Human Services, the Office of Children's Affairs, and Denver Human Rights and Community Partnerships and Community Partners continue to lead and collaborate to support Denver's Social Safety Net.

So households don't have to decide between food, rent, medical care, transportation, and other basic needs.

Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the Denver City Council that the Denver City Council hereby proclaims September 2025 as hunger action month in the city and county of Denver calls upon all residents, organizations, and policymakers to support a more just, resilient, and equitable food system for all so that no one goes hungry, and that the clerk and recorder of the city and county of Denver shall affix the seal of the city and county of Denver to this proclamation and that a copy be transmitted to the Southwest Food Coalition, Denver Department of Public Health and Environment, Denver Department of Human Services, Denver Office of Children's Affairs, and the Denver Human Rights and Community Partnerships Agency.

Thank you.

Councilmember Watson, your motion to adopt.

I move that proclamation 251359 be adopted.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded.

Comments by council by members of council.

We will start with Council Member Watson.

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem.

Food insecurity has uh direct impacts on many communities.

Um I can recall growing up poor, living in the projects in the Virgin Islands, and oftentimes when I should be focusing on uh what we're studying in school and what my attention span, my attention should be as far as a young kid.

Uh, often the growling of my stomach and that of my brothers and sisters impacted our abilities to be fully focused on the work before us.

Um we had a mother that did everything as she could to make sure to have food on the table.

Um, but without uh neighborhood organizations throughout the small island that I lived on, without support organizations and nonprofits, um, there will be many days that we would go without.

Um there are many organizations throughout the city and county of Denver on the east side and the west side that provides that support that provides that bridge.

Uh, this proclamation is uh for all of them, communicating your value, communicating what you provide to young families, single mothers throughout our communities that need that support and that need that help.

Um, I'm honored to uh put forward this uh proclamation with Councilmember Torres and to elevate the organizations that do this for a living, uh, providing um uh food and um reducing food insecurity for families like mine and many hundreds and thousands of families throughout the city and county of Denver.

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem.

Thank you.

Councilmember Torres.

Thank you, Madam Pro Tem.

Um, we recognize it, but will we be able to respond?

Is I think the biggest concern that I have.

Um, it at CU Denver, my my alma mater, um, one in three college students face or experience food insecurity, and the recent survey showed um over 50 percent of first gen students identified themselves as food insecure.

Um, growing up um like councilman Watson, my family relied on SNAP.

I remember getting commodity food, generic food, the boxes, the powdered uh milk, you name it.

My family relied upon it.

Um, and Congress right now has cut um almost 2 billion, 200 billion dollars in funding for food programs over the next 10 years.

Um, four million people will see food access and assistance cut or reduced, um, additional work requirement, exclusion of refugees, asylumes, certain survivors of domestic violence and sex trafficking, and shifts costs to the state.

Um, who benefits from things like SNAP, not just families buying food, but the grocers they buy them from, the producers sourcing the food.

It is a direct chain effect, and SNAP is irreplaceable.

Um, additional programs cut, local food for schools, local food production, purchase assistance cooperative agreement, a billion dollars in funding.

And in District 3, Revision, Denver Urban Gardens, Sun Valley Kitchen, Denver and Inner City Parish are doing everything they can to try to address our communities' need.

But we are going to have more kids and parents go to bed hungry because they've had to make that difficult choice.

Because as we experience during COVID, families that don't have access to this affect everyone in this city.

You can't insulate yourself from the kinds of impacts that food insecurity gives.

So I'm incredibly grateful for the organizations who are here for the work you do on the ground.

Jamie, I know even during the pandemic we were working on where you could distribute because more and more people were coming to food lines, and we've not seen the that need reduce even since the pandemic.

Hundreds of families, thousands of families depend on you for all of that work.

So thank you so so much.

People are shocked when I remind them the district three has two grocery stores.

Two big grocery stores.

Some people have that within walking distance of their home in Denver.

We have two for a 10-neighborhood district.

And I just thank you all for everything you do every day.

Thank you, Madam Prote.

Thank you.

Councilmember Heinz.

Thank you, Madam President Pratem.

Thank you, Council Torres, for your comments.

You're talking about your district has two grocery stores.

I love that I have a direct view of two monitors instead of you, but um believe that I'm looking in your direction.

You know, uh what we do have access to grocery stores in District 10.

We also have grocery stores that uh that price themselves higher because they know that the uh surrounding neighbors can't afford cars.

And so um so we have grocery stores that also prey on those who are food insecure because they can.

And um, and so I just I think uh it's great that we recognize our um our reality.

And so thank you uh to the sponsors for this proclamation.

I also want to share that uh you could be food insecure, or if you're not someone near and dear to you or next to you, your neighbor could also be food insecure.

Um that same grocery store, I would go uh to it, and there was a checker there, you know, uh uh someone who'd worked nearly 40 hours a week in um, you know, a job that uh where you had to pay taxes.

And uh one day I saw him at a food line at um at one of the churches that's uh just a few blocks from this grocery store, and I said, What are you doing?

And he said, I can't afford to eat.

And I said, Well, you have a job, and he said, Yes, I can't afford to eat.

Um, so uh it is I I uh this is an old statistic, but I um I've uh several years ago.

Two I heard two in five DPS students don't know when or where their uh next meal will come from.

And I remember that when I was growing up, my mom would not eat so that I could.

And uh so this is something that is very important for us to consider, to recognize uh that we are increasingly becoming an income disparate society.

We have a few people with a whole lot of money and a whole lot of people just trying to figure out how to eat.

Thank you, Madam President Pro Tim.

Thank you.

Um I would just like to thank the sponsors of this um proclamation to bring it forward and to elevate um the issue.

It's more than one just to identify it, but how do we respond?

And I think those are very powerful words, Councilmember Torres to remember.

Uh in Southeast Denver, you know, we are not in a food desert.

And we have our, you know, Jewish family services, is the food bank there, and they are strapped.

They are serving both ends of the spectrum, like many of your organizations that are here.

Um, and I just wanted to thank you for the work that you do for feeding our youngest and our um most vulnerable um of our of our community.

So thank you for the work that you do, Madam Secretary.

Roll call council members Gilmore.

Hi, Sawyer.

Albitris.

Aye, Flynn.

Hi.

Gonzales Gutierrez.

Aye.

Heinz?

Hi.

Cashman.

Lewis.

Aye.

Parity.

Aye.

Torres.

I Watson.

Aye.

Madam Proton.

Aye.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

12 eyes.

Twelve eyes.

Proclamation 25 1359 has been adopted.

Uh Councilmember Watson and Councilmember Torres, who would you like to have accept the proclamation?

Councilmember Torres, I I have uh Sydney Skilkin and Ken Knobloch, but obviously if you also have someone within the audience, um, we can call them forward uh as well.

No, I think that's great, and I think we have reps from DDPHE and Denver Human Services and some of our other agencies.

So I invite you all up.

Um we want to celebrate all of you who are doing this hard work.

Come on up.

So come on forward.

And if you don't mind introducing yourself and the organizations that you support.

My name's Ken.

I'm with the Southwest Food Coalition.

Uh I have a little speech prepared, but I'll let everyone else introduce themselves first.

Thank you, Council Jamie Trujillo, representing Denver Human Services.

Thanks, Jamie.

I'll introduce how I do it.

Hi, my name is Sydney Skilkin, and I'm with the Southwest Food Coalition.

Thank you, Council Andrea Garcia Schosel, representing the Office of Children's Affairs.

And hello, Council uh Nikki Collins with the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment.

Thank you.

So on behalf of all the folks up here, um and all of our partners, we're deeply honored to accept this.

Um wanted to thank you guys for sharing your personal stories.

Uh, these are stories that we unfortunately have to hear every day.

Um, and it's really heartbreaking to hear those stories, but I appreciate you guys sharing your own personal stories.

Um we know that elected officials face dozens of competing priorities every day, and so we're so grateful that you've chosen to elevate this one.

And to us it feels more uh more than a statement.

And and hearing uh your stories today feels more than more um than just a statement.

Uh really an affirmation that the city is seeing us and hearing us, and that you value the essential role of food access in creating a stronger Denver.

Uh we know that despite all the current efforts of the pantries and churches and schools and all the folks right up here, um, despite all the current funding of foundations in the city, uh right now, there's 15% of Denver residents that don't have enough food for their families.

That's over 100,000 people.

And too often uh we feel that food is treated as separate from major challenges that the communities face, like housing and employment and mental health.

But we feel that food is the foundation for addressing these challenges.

Uh as we've heard before, it's hard for children to learn when they're hungry.

It's hard to get a job and keep a job when you're hungry.

Um, and stable housing and mental health are difficult to maintain when you're hungry as well.

Um at the end of the day, we can't do anything without good food.

It's the foundation for health and opportunity and resilience.

This proclamation affirms that hunger is a priority issue in Denver.

We know it's a tough year for budgeting in Denver with federal cuts and state futs as well, state cuts as well.

Local funding is so critical.

And so we want to thank City Council for their continued support for the Food Justice Fund.

And as you work towards the 2026 budget, we ask that you continue to push for this funding.

And let's keep food at the top of the agenda, right alongside housing, jobs, and health.

And now that uh this proclamation for Hunger Action Month, just a few last things.

First, I want to make sure that I think everybody who puts their effort into this uh this issue.

All the um just thousands and of people in Denver that spend time trying to make sure uh people are getting healthy food, so recognizing all those agencies and the people putting that that work in.

Um, and now that it's hunger uh hunger action month, uh just a few closing thoughts.

So, what can we do now that it's hunger action month?

Uh, some very simple things.

Uh, find your local food pantry, donate some good food, healthy food.

We're we've had enough of the box food.

Staple food is good, but let's also get some good healthy fresh foods on there.

Donate some money, do some volunteering, and then uh what can we do for the future?

It's a really complex issue, as we know.

So I'm uh sort of calling upon city council and city, the mayor, everyone that's involved in this issue, residents, uh, to come sit at the table with us and talk about these things.

Um we don't know what the answers are, but please help us uh figure them out so that uh every resident in Denver could access the good food that they need to thrive.

Thank you all.

Thank you, Ken.

Is there anyone from the department that wanted to say a few words?

Thank you again.

Um Ken for the words.

Uh, just in addition, as we continue to address food insecurity, we continuously try to find ways to fill in the gaps.

Uh on a daily basis, not just for our customers, but our community community at large.

Um, we remain vested to this effort, and we continue to partner with our community partners and collaborate in a way that is really innovative and makes sense to meet customers where they're at, um, and really being mindful on decisions that we're making.

Budget has been hard, and that's been a huge talk for us.

But at the end of the day, we cannot be removed from what our basic resources are, and one of them being food.

So we will continue to be in this plight and support um our community and continue to work with our partners, and we just thank you all for your continued support.

Thank you, J.

All right.

Okay, okay, okay.

Another thing that you can do in the immediate future is vote yes on propositions LL and MM, which will fund healthy school meals for all at the state level.

Um, and that November or that election is November 4th.

Thank you.

All right.

I'll be saving the obvious here, but this work, of course, is ongoing and it takes a village.

Uh I oversee Tasty Food, which is a cost-free and wholesome meal service for young people in Denver, ages three to eighteen.

We're looking to expand in um high need areas, including Athmar Park, Villa Park, Marley, Westwood, and Montbello.

So I'm hoping that we can continue this work and um find the sites that could best serve these young people within your districts.

Thank you so much.

And just for the record, maybe we ask your name and your organization.

State my name.

Yes.

Andrea Garcia Schosel, Office of Children's Affairs.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

All right, thank you very much.

Um, Madam Secretary, please read the bills for introduction.

From the Finance and Business Committee 25-126, a bill for an ordinance authorizing the issuance and sale of an aggregate amount not to exceed $23 million dollars of the city and county of Denver, Colorado Multifamily Housing Revenue Bonds, Loreto Heights Family Apartment.

Series 2025 A and an aggregate amount not to exceed $5 million of the City and County of Denver, Colorado Multifamily Housing Revenue Bonds, Loreto Heights Family Apartments, Taxable Series 2025 B for the fine for the purpose of financing the acquisition, construction, and equipping of an affordable multifamily rental housing facility located in the city and county of Denver, Colorado, and to pay certain expenses of such bonds as defined below issue, approving and authorizing execution of a bond financing agreement, a tax regulatory agreement, and a bond purchase and construction loan agreement, each as defined below with respect to the bonds, making findings and determinations with respect to the project as defined below, and the bonds authorizing the execution and delivery of related documents and repealing all action heretofore taken in conflict here with 25-1260, a bill for an ordinance making a rescission from and an appropriation in the Denver Public Library Special Revenue Fund to make a cash transfer to an appropriation in the library capital fund.

25-1262, a bill for an ordinance authorizing a capital equipment purchase from the risk management fund, SRF 11838 fund for the Denver Fire Department.

From the Governance and Intergovernmental Relations Committee, 25-1247, a bill for an ordinance amending the classification and pay plan for employees in the career service and for certain employees not in the career service.

25-1248, a bill for an ordinance amending the classification and pay plan for employees in the career service and for certain employees not in the career service.

25-1249, a bill for an ordinance amending the classification and pay plan for employees in the career service and for certain employees not in the career service and from the Health and Safety Committee 25-1029, a bill for an ordinance approving a proposed agreement between the city and county of Denver and Denver Health and Hospital Authority to enroll patients in and provide women, infant, and children WIC services during pediatric and OBGYN appointments at several Denver Health Outpatient Clinic locations.

Council members, this is your last opportunity to call out an item.

Councilmember Lewis, will you make the motions for us this evening?

Yes, Council President Pro Tam Ramero Campbell.

Great.

Now I will do a recap.

Under resolutions, Council Resolution 25-1357 has been called out by Councilmember Lewis and Parity for comment.

Under bills for introduction, council bills 25-1247, 25-1248, and 25-1249 have been called out by Councilmember Lewis for questions and comments.

Under bills for final consideration, council bills 25-1221 has been called out by Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez to take the item out of order.

Council Bill 25-1237 has been called out by Councilmember Lewis for questions and by council member and by councilmember Torres for comments.

And Council Bill 25-0628 has been called out by Councilmember Parity for amendment.

Under pending, no items have been called out.

Madam Secretary, please put the first item on our screens.

Council resolute.

Okay.

Council Resolution 251357, a resolution authorizing and approving the expenditure and payment from the appropriation account designated liability claims, the sum of 1 million $60,000 and no cents made payable to Arnold and Porter K.

Scholar, Scholar, client trust account for the full payment satisfaction of all claims related to plaintiff Loris Folkertz, Joseph Gallegos, Zuri Hoskin, uh Wheatsealy, is that right?

Am I saying that correctly?

I don't think I'm gonna pronounce the name correctly.

Um, Hadamio, Deborah Gahiri, aka Kelsang Vieira, and Douglas Munn on the civil action cap uh captioned Jasmine Bellahan et al.

versus City and County of Denver, Colorado, et al.

Which was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado.

Oh, case number 22.

Do I need to read?

Case number 22-C V-1338-SKC-SBP.

Councilmember Lewis, please go ahead with your comments on council resolution 25 1357.

Thank you.

After consistent feedback from my constituents, I see it is my responsibility to ensure that the public is aware of every tax dollar being approved as an expenditure and payment of funds for a settlement with the city and county of Denver.

My office is tracking every dollar by department and as a running total with the approval of 2513.57 tonight, the city will approve settlements in cases involving the Denver, the Denver Department of Safety in the amount of 1,060,000 and zero cents.

This brings the 2025 total for taxpayer dollars in city settlements to 6,316,500 and zero seconds.

This fund is drawn from a liability claims pool of money that is refilled when necessary from the city's general budget and does not come out of the safety budget budget.

I would further comment by mentioning that this amount constitutes more than one tenth of the current year's budget shortfall, and was money we could use that we could have used to lessen the impact of personnel and services within the city.

We must therefore pay extra attention in this budget environment and that we are watching out for how the city spends our money and that we are making decisions for the future with this knowledge.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Parity.

Yeah, and I also always call off any um settlement of this nature from the agenda just to say that once the case is completely closed, um, I think it's appropriate for um representatives of the public to um hear more about the events that led to litigation being filed because we're limited in our ability to discuss those things with the people affected while there is litigation.

So if anyone here is a plaintiff in this case, once your case is closed, you're no longer represented.

Um I would love to hear from you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Madam Secretary, please put the next items on our screens.

Council Bill 25-1247, a bill for an ordinance amending the classification and pay plan for employees in the career service and for certain employees not in the career service.

Council Bill 251248, a bill for an ordinance amending the classification and pay plan for employees in the career service and for certain employees not in the career service.

Council bills 25-1249, a bill for an ordinance amending the classification, and pay plan for employees in the career service and for certain employees not in the career service.

Councilmember Lewis, please go ahead with your questions and comments on council resolutions 25 series 25, 1247, 1248, and 1249.

Thank you.

Um, so I wanted to know.

I have two questions.

What are the impacts to personnel payroll and services in the city from these changes?

And then what is the reason for these changes?

Anyone here to answer?

Do we have someone in chambers?

They're online.

Are they promoted?

Mallory?

Yeah.

Yep.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

We have Blair Mallory on my okay.

Please go ahead.

Yes, hello, I am Laura Malloy with the Office of Human Resources Classification and Compensation Division.

Um I am presenting all three of these items.

So the questions I think you have are what are the impacts to employees?

What how much does it cost?

And um, third question was why are we bringing these forward, correct?

Yeah, and I actually the first question was the impact to personnel payroll and services.

Okay, personal payroll services.

So, um I'll talk about each one separately since there are some items.

So number 1247.

This is to change certain pay grades and create some new classifications for a handful of classifications within the auditor's office.

So there's 29 employees affected by this change.

There's no budget impact.

Employees in those classifications would only see a um pay impact.

Should there be an increase that they would need to go to if their pay grade moves, then they would go to the range minimum if they're paid less than the range.

They're paid in range, they would then just keep their current pay.

Um, so that's the first one.

It's all that one's only used in the auditor's office.

The second one is yes.

No, go ahead.

Go ahead.

Oh, wait, the second one is kind of similar.

It's for the internal orders.

Um this will affect 34 employees.

It has a similar no budget impact.

Um the employees, the current employees are all paid well within the range on both 1247 and 1248.

So there's no budget impact.

Nobody is close to that range minimum today.

So when the range is move, this one we're just adjusting pay grades.

Um, so we are um there's no budget impact, but it does affect 34 employees.

So that one's in four agencies.

We have auditor's office, airport, human services, and hosts.

Most of those employees are at the auditor's office.

And the auditor is aware of these changes.

Yes, ours is aware of these changes.

All the affected agencies are aware of these changes.

This has been socialized with them.

And they're in agreement with the changes.

Yes.

Okay, those are my only questions.

Thank you so much.

Yes.

Thank you.

Um, Madam Secretary, please put the next item on our screens.

Council bill 25-1221, a bill for an ordinance approving a proposed cooperation agreement between the city and county of Denver and the Denver Urban Renewal Authority for Rockdrill property tax increment and sales tax increment area to establish, among others the parameters for tax increment financing with incremental property and sales taxes in district nine.

Councilmember Gonzalez Good Guedes, would you like what would you like to do with council bill 25 1221?

Thank you, Council Pro Tem.

I move to take council bill 25 1221 out of order.

Postponing consideration of the item until after the public hearing for council bill 25 12 22 during the 5 30 p.m.

session.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded.

Comments uh by members of council, council member Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Um yeah, this is just this um this the um council bill 1225 1222.

Um they're interrelated, so we just need to make sure that we're hearing them both at that time.

Thank you very much.

Madam Secretary, roll call and taking council bill 25-1221 out of order.

Council members Gilmore, aye, Sawyer.

Aye.

Albidares.

Aye, Flynn.

Gonzalez Gutierrez?

Aye, Heinz?

Aye, cashman, aye, Lewis, aye.

Parity, aye, Torres, aye, Watson.

Aye, Madam Proton.

Aye.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

11 ayes, 11 ayes, council bill 25 12.21 has been taken out of order and will be considered during the 5 30 p.m.

session.

Madam Secretary, please put the next item on our screens.

Council Bill 25 1237, a bill for an ordinance amending section 54-816 of division two of article 15 of chapter 54 of the review of the revised municipal code of the city and county of Denver concerning disposal procedure of impounded vehicles.

Council member uh Lewis, please go ahead with your questions on council bill 25-1237.

Thank you.

So, um council member Torres, it's been wonderful with answering some of these questions.

Um, but the questions that I had were what qualifies an eligible organization for donation?

Um, is there a list of eligible organizations?

And um, how does an organization apply for one of these vehicles?

And Councilmember Torres, I think you can answer those questions, or I can read what you wrote to me, but I did get my questions answered, so I can get out of the queue.

Here we go.

Councilmember Torres.

Thank you so much.

That queues me up perfectly to describe what this is.

And thank you all for hopefully supporting it.

Almost a year ago, Emily Griffith reached out, reached out to my office, because we were doing quite a bit of work in Lama Lincoln Park.

After they lost some vehicles to both theft and fire at their location in that neighborhood.

And they asked whether the city could donate old uh fleet to them, and General Services indicated that per our code we cannot donate.

Get rid of vehicles by sealed bid, scrap metal conversion, or law enforcement use.

But General Services responded and we worked together to create this provision that adds donation to educational institutions in Denver to our code.

That's what's before us today.

What kinds of vehicles?

These are vehicles that are impounded.

They have been deemed ready to auction.

And they would go to nonprofit institutions providing education credential or workforce development.

Currently, there are three programs we found that would qualify Emily Griffith Technical College, CEC Early College, and Montbello Career and Technical High School.

And we heard from all three of these schools how difficult it is for them to acquire vehicles to train on.

And the instruction they provide on newer and more varied vehicles is so important and imperative to sending folks off into the workforce ready to apply that knowledge and get a job.

And so really appreciate Adrena Gibson, Al Gardner's support on this, and glad we can bring this forward to support these schools at a really minimal impact to the city.

So I hope my colleagues will vote yes.

Thank you, Madam President.

Pro tem.

Thank you.

We do have Adrena Gibson online with her hand up.

Would you like to promote her?

I was this is Adrena Gibson, uh executive director nominee.

I was just ready and prepared just in case there were any additional questions or concerns around this.

Other than that, Councilwoman Torres, we really appreciate you being an advocate and bringing this forward.

We're excited to lead this effort.

And Councilwoman Lewis, I would love to circle back with you if you'd like, as we are developing a program framework around this, some standard operating procedures as to how we're gonna work inside of the city, metrics that we'll keep, and then um the ramp up and implementation of this going forward this year.

Beautiful.

Thank you so much for doing it.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Madam Secretary, please put the next item on our screens.

Council Bill 25-0628, a bill for an ordinance concerning recycling and organic material diversion and in connection wherewithin repealing and reenacting Article 10, Chapter 48, adding a new article 11, chapter 48, adding new Article 15, Chapter 10, and amending Article 1, Chapter 24 of the code.

Councilmember Lewis, will you please put council bill 25-0628 on the floor for final passage?

I move that council bill 250628 be placed upon final consideration and do pass.

Seconded.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded.

And thank you.

Councilmember Parity, your motion to amend.

I move to amend Council Bill 25-0628 in the following particulars on page 16, line 14, strike 300, and we'll place with 350.

It has been moved and seconded.

Comments by members of council on amendment 4 to Council Bill 25-0628.

Councilmember Parity.

So the purpose here is just to change the section related to special event requirements and thresholds for event attendance that require composting recycling.

So that for that one threshold it matches up with the permitting tiers that we already use within the city.

Last week our amendments were geared towards matching things to task force recommendations, but this is such a small difference that it makes sense to realign us.

So we're just going back in and doing that while we have the chance.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Madam President Pro Tem.

Just wanted to say I support this amendment.

And really appreciate the sponsors going back and having a conversation.

And with the Office of Special Events, to make sure that this aligns properly.

And so just wanted to say that while I had the opportunity, since I am uh remote today and don't want to have to jump back in because I know it takes our producer time to toggle back and forth between us.

Thanks, Madam President Pro Tim.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Okay, Madam Secretary.

Roll call on the amendments to Council Bill 25-0628.

Council members Gilmore.

Aye.

Sawyer.

Aye.

Albidras.

Aye.

Flynn?

Aye.

Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Aye.

Heinz.

Hi.

Cashman.

Lewis.

Hi.

Parity.

Aye.

Torres.

Aye.

Watson.

Aye.

Madam Pro Tam.

Aye.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

12 ayes.

12 ayes.

The amendment to council bill 25-0628 has passed.

Councilmember Lewis, will you please put council bill 25-0684 as amended on the floor for final passage?

I move that council bill 250684 as amended be placed upon final consideration and to pass.

It has been moved and seconded.

Councilmember Flynn.

Uh thank Madam President Pro Tem.

As I did last week, I'm going to vote no on the bill itself, as Councilwoman Sawyer would as well, in light of the adoption of one of the amendments last week that I believe places a disproportionately heavy burden on our smallest businesses.

And so for that reason I'm going to vote no.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Torres.

Thank you so much.

I did hear back from some of the folks in my district.

Super supportive of getting to this place.

I think what we experience, and this was from a lot of my Westwood businesses and Morrison Road organizations, is um impact to organizations or businesses that are like less than 200,000 in revenue in what it takes to run either their um catering organization, food truck, et cetera, out of the kitchen network.

And not wanting to be part of maybe a first phase that kind of ramps up in experiments with deadlines and um enforcement and things like that.

So just wanted to hear from um and uh Tim, I'll just ask you a question here, just in terms of um how the administration plans to roll this out.

Um Morrison Road is about to be um totally rebuilt.

Um and one of the questions that we had kind of talked about was whether or not corridors that also qualify for biofund, um, for bond projects, major city construction projects can en masse qualify for a time-limited exemption.

Just wondering how that how you guys have internalized that.

Yeah, thank you for the question, Councilwoman Torres.

Tim Hoffman in the mayor's office.

Um we've had numerous discussions within the agencies and then with a couple of the council members as well.

Um once presumably, and I'll knock on wood, this passes uh tonight.

We then move into the rules and regulations phase of getting waste more up and running.

September of 2026 is when implementation would uh formally go into effect.

So that gives us about a year of figuring out rules and regulations, including things like uh what you, Councilman Torres brought up of um are there other creative ways that um we can make sure that some of our most impacted businesses uh are not being adversely and financially harmed by uh some of the implementation here.

Um the other thing that I know was discussed at length last week with the sponsors and with some of the agency personnel is that um the administration will be taking an education-based enforcement approach.

Um, and certainly as it relates to um small restaurants and small businesses, that will be the goal once this becomes formally implemented in September of next year is making sure that it's an education-based uh disciplinary matrix and only kind of in a last resort type scenario would a financial burden or something else be uh put into place.

Okay.

Um is the rules and reg uh creation a public process?

It is.

Okay.

So folks can expect um some way to be able to hear what's happening and engage.

Yes.

Will that be done through DDPHE or excise or who?

It'll be it'll be numerous agencies.

Um it'll be uh unfortunately for the city staff who's been meeting with me regularly for the last two years, they'll continue having to meet with me uh for the next year.

Um so it'll be anywhere from five to eight um different agencies across.

Will you notify us as soon as it becomes a public um process?

Absolutely.

Okay, thank you so much, Tim.

Um one of the reasons I have those concerns about um the small restaurants in my district, uh, but one of the reasons I'll vote yes today is that um I think this language is still better than what's currently in ordinance, um, which could be harder on those those businesses um and organizations, but I do want to make sure that um my district's able to get to the table.

So um thank you, Madam Prote.

Thank you.

Councilmember Hines, uh I think uh there's been a switch in a queue, Council President.

Okay, council member Watson.

Thank you so much, Council President Pro Tem.

Um Tim, do you mind coming up for a quick question again?

Uh, Councilmember Torres asked um the majority of my questions.

My curiosity on the small restaurants, the the one amendment that was um removed uh specific to um them being able to opt out.

Can you speak to or be exempted?

Can you speak to what steps um it passed um that the administration will take to ensure that uh those resurns um beyond simple education, but for them to really be aware of kind of what their options are for possibly opting out, choosing to um not implement to opt in.

What are some of the things that these very small restaurants um may uh be able to do, um, if this uh passes as amended?

Yeah, thank you, Councilman Watson, Tim Hoffman in the mayor's office.

Um I do think a big part of this is going to be uh public education campaign, and that'll be um both from the city and then from outside entities, making sure that uh impacted businesses know that this is coming in the next year, um, the possible implications of it, and then um as we go through the rules and regulations process as uh the uh amendment sponsors pointed out, um, there still exists a financial hardship exemption um that restaurants will be able to apply for um on a uh kind of a restaurant by restaurant basis.

Um and so as we formulate what exactly um it looks like to qualify for that type of exemption, making sure that there's ongoing communication uh between the administration and city council, and then uh between the administration and outside groups and the impacted businesses, and this goes just beyond the restaurants, right?

It's also gonna be the events, it's gonna be the commercial spaces, it's gonna be the construction and demolition companies.

Um, so I think the ongoing public discussion and information being provided in addition to seeking the input through the rules and regulations process of those small restaurants and everyone who's potentially going to be impacted of, um, from their perspective, where are the real hurdles implementation?

Uh thank you, Tim.

Um, I know I've heard a lot from small restaurants throughout District 9, especially on Wellness Street corridor, um, their concerns um of that this may have um adverse impacts if there's hardships.

Uh, I look forward to leaning in on the education piece and participating in the rules and reg process.

If this uh amend amended uh bill is to pass, um I will be a yes tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Gilmore.

Uh thank you, Council Pro Tem Romero Campbell.

Um, I have a question for Tim as well.

Bring it on back.

Just need to stay up front there, Tim.

And Councilwoman Gilmore, I'm back at the microphone.

Right on.

Um, thanks, Tim.

Um, I, you know, totally understand um folks' concerns um about small restaurants um and you know, community events, et cetera, and that threshold.

Um but in the interest of the environment and making sure that we're doing what we say we value.

Um, I guess where was the conversation with Denver Parks and Rec, um, building out very simple um composting sites on parkland.

Um, you know, you can do that with um some two by fours and chicken wire that you put down.

Um and so just curious about that because I I feel like there's like this imaginary like pushback around like, well, there's not the services, we don't know the price of services, and so it's gonna be too much.

So we're just gonna say no instead of let's make this threshold and then commit to working together to create those micro-composting sites close to business corridors so that we can do both.

And so, if you wouldn't mind sharing uh my direct question is why weren't there directives to have composting sites in parks um close to these corridors to accomplish that?

Thank you for the question, Councilwoman Tim Hoffman in the mayor's office.

Um councilman, I think that as we move into the rules and regulations phase of the waste no more ordinance and what the implementation actually looks like.

I think that um the topics that you just brought up are perfect examples of the type of thing that we'll absolutely look to explore with making sure that parks and recreation office of special events, other city agencies are doing what they can to make sure that as you were alluding to, there is the infrastructure in place so that composting and recycling becomes a much more um easily accessible uh form of disposal of waste in the city.

Um I think that the part of the tricky part, and it's it's not to um say that this it's an unworkable part of it, but um on the back end it's still the small events that theoretically would be paying for the waste hauling to the private waste haulers, and I think that that's where a lot of the concern with the cost comes into play, not necessarily the infrastructure on say parkland, um, but I think that uh what you just alluded to is exactly the type of thing that we'll be um looking to build out in the next year before formal implementation goes into effect.

Okay, I really appreciate that, and I would um say again that I think that that's a false um scenario around the small events um as well.

There's a lot of money in the CATHER fund, and quite frankly, it wouldn't be um out of the realm of possibilities for the CATHER fund to supply small grants to those small events to allow them to comply until we get the provider services up.

We give rebates for e-bikes all the time, and again, if we're really gonna do this, um I would hope that um folks will vote affirmatively for um this very important um amendment um and on the final bill because um there are ways to um support small businesses and small local community organizations and some more supporting the environment um and reducing that greenhouse gas as well.

Um thanks, Tim.

Thank you, um Council President Program.

There we go.

Thank you.

Um Councilmember Parity, are you okay?

Um we are gonna have to break for recess so we can do the general public comment.

I'd like to give you plenty of time.

Are you taking 30 seconds?

I was just gonna say that um I think the remarks from the mayor's office representative mostly covered this, but if anyone's listening from small businesses, I want to be super clear that um you can apply for exemption for basically any good reason um as this ordinance stands now.

Um and if you don't apply affirmatively, it's not like you didn't do your taxes.

There are not yet any penalties set in place, and you can hear that our the agencies are not planning on taking a super draconian approach towards this.

So I just want to make that really clear in case anyone's listening in um and feeling spooked.

That's it.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you.

Um same comment, Councilman Hines.

Okay, so we will roll over to the next one.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Okay, tonight council will hold a required public hearing on council bill 251091, changing the zoning classification for 4626 East Louisiana Avenue in Virginia Village, a required public hearing on Council Bill 251071, changing the zoning classification for 1717 East 39th Avenue and Cole, a required public hearing on Council Bill 25 1090 1079, approving a proposed contract between the city and county of Denver and Oliver Buchanan Group LLC.

Development of approximately 6.69 acres located at the 1717 East 39th Avenue in Council District 9, a required public hearing on Council Bill 25-1222, approving the Rock Drill Urban Redevelopment Plan, and the creation of the Rock Drill the Rock Drill Urban Redevelopment Area and the Rock Drill Property Tax Increment Area and Sales Tax Increment Area.

If there are no objections from other council members, we will recess until 5 30 p.m.

before we convening the regular meeting, city council will provide a half-hour general public comment session to hear from the public on city matters, except for any matter that is scheduled for a legally required public hearing.

The general public comment session will begin at 5 p.m.

Thank you.

That concludes our public comment session.

If we did not get you to get to you today, please join us at our next session or submit your comments in writing.

The next session will be held on Monday, September 22nd.

Sign up begins at 5 p.m.

on Thursday, September 25th.

We look forward to hearing from you again.

Thank you for attending.

Council will now reconvene from our earlier session.

We will continue with the consideration of Council Bill 25-0628.

And I believe we had Council Member Hines in the queue.

Thank you, Madam President Bro Tem.

Mr.

Hoffman.

I miss you at the microphone, so might as well bring you back up.

So I just want to make sure I get the order of operations right.

So the people passed this um uh waste no more in 2022.

Correct?

Correct.

Um, once that was passed, uh there was a delay, but it is now.

That delay is already passed, and it is now currently law that every restaurant must uh comply with waste no more, correct?

Yes, it is part of the Denver revised municipal code, but it has not been enforced.

But yes, it is on the books.

Uh it's currently on the books that every restaurant without exception must comply.

Yes.

Now we have an uh proposal in front of us that would exempt some restaurants.

Is that correct?

Yes.

So I I just want to put that on the record that by voting against this, you are voting to have every restaurant comply with waste no more.

By voting for what we're considering right now, you're exempting some restaurants uh from complying with waste no more.

Is that a fair statement?

Yes, I uh look there are uh some nuances in that the assigned agency in the DRMC based on what the ordinance as passed by the voter said was Daughty, for example.

Dotti does not do enforcement of restaurants, other things like that.

So there are kind of cleanups that would need to be done regardless, but generally speaking, yes.

So I just want to make sure that we all know that if you're voting against it, you're voting to be more punitive to restaurants, because I've heard two council members saying they're voting against it because the restaurant exemption wasn't carved out enough, yet by voting against it, they'll be more punitive to restaurants.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam President Pro Tem.

Thank you.

Councilmember Flynn.

Uh, Madam President Pro Tem uh Councilmember Heinz, I fully understand that I'm voting no because I believe that this should go back and we should reconsider.

Thank you.

That's all.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lewis.

Um I just wanted to say that over the weekend I had a conversation with a number of nonprofits who provide um food to some of their clients, and they were excited about the opportunity to potentially partner with the businesses to be able to take that food to be able to give it to folks who are in need.

And we talked about there was a proclamation that was read earlier, and so we know that folks starving in our communities is pretty pervasive.

Um, and so I'm excited about the opportunity for businesses and potentially nonprofits to partner um to dispose of the food waste so that it's not going right, um, so that it's not being wasted, but also so we don't have folks in our communities who are starving.

So this is a no-brainer for me.

There's also an app that I learned about that you can um sign on to to be able to learn about the uh restaurants in our city.

Actually, in any city, um that has available food waste, and so that they don't throw those things in the trash.

You could just look into the app and see Chipotle may have five burritos left over, and you get to eat five Chipotle burritos.

So um just wanted to let folks know that.

That's it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Um we are ready for our vote on this.

I think that we've had um let's go ahead and vote.

Madam Secretary, roll call on council bill 25-0628 as amended.

Council members Gilmore.

Sawyer.

Council President Pro Tem, I apologize.

Uh, quick question.

Was there a motion and second prior to the vote?

Yes.

It was when it was uh for discussion.

Yes, no, I appreciate that.

Um yes, it has been moved and seconded.

Councilmember Albidas.

Aye, Flynn.

Gonzalez Gutierrez, aye.

Hi.

Cashman, Lewis, Parity, aye.

Torres, I Watson.

Aye.

Madam Pro Tem.

Aye.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

Ten ayes.

10 ayes.

Council Bill 25-0628 as amended has passed.

This includes this concludes the items to be called out.

All bills for introduction are ordered published.

Oops.

Yes, that's correct.

Uh, council members, remember that this is a consent or block vote, and you will need to vote aye.

Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote.

Councilmember Lewis, will you please put the resolutions and proclamations for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on the floor?

I move that.

I move that the resolutions and proclamations be adopted and the bills on final consideration be placed upon final consideration and do pass in a block for the following items.

251358, 251263, 251357, 251006, 251007, 251008, 251250, 251251, 251252, 251253, 251254, 251255, 251257, 251259, 251256, 25, 1192, 25, 1208, 25123, 251237, 251214, 2512 28, 25, 1229, 2512 41.

It has been moved and seconded.

Madam Secretary, roll call.

Council members Gilmore, aye.

Aye.

Albidres.

Aye.

Flynn.

Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Aye.

Hines?

Aye.

Cashman.

Lewis.

Aye.

Parity.

Aye.

Torres.

Aye.

Watson.

Aye.

Madam Pro Tem.

Aye.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce and announce the results.

12 eyes.

12 eyes.

The resolutions and proclamations have been adopted and the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass.

There is one proclamation being read this evening.

Council members, Alvidres and Gonzalez Cutieres, will you please read proclamation 25-1361?

Uh yes, madam uh Protem.

Uh proclamation 25, 1361, honoring the Hispanic, Latino, Latina, Latinx, and Chicano, Chicana Arts and Cultural Heritage of Denver during Hispanic Heritage Month.

Whereas Hispanic Heritage Month, observed each year from September 15th through October 15th provides an opportunity to honor the histories, cultures, and contributions of Hispanic Latino.

I'll be doing that throughout, and Chicano, Chicana communities in Denver in Colorado and across the United States.

And whereas the Denver City Council recognizes and honors the many community partners who have worked tirelessly to preserve, share, and advance Hispanic Latino Latina Latinx and Chicano and Chicana Heritage through arts, culture, and education, and whereas these community partners serve as a as living bridges between past, present, and future, by uplifting heritage through music, dance, visual arts, theater, storytelling, and cultural education, ensuring that traditions are celebrated, identities are honored, and future generations may take pride in their history.

And whereas, through their vision and commitment, these organizations not only protect cherished traditions, but also inspire unity, foster creativity, and build greater understanding across cultures, strengthening the bonds that make Denver a place we are all proud to call home.

And whereas Denver's Hispanic, Latino, Latina, Latinx, and Chicano and Chicana communities have shaped and enriched the spirit of our cities for generations, weaving their culture and traditions into the very fabric of our shared history.

Anne.

Whereas community partners devoted to arts and culture ensure that this heritage remains dynamic and enduring, celebrating identity, fostering belonging, and bringing people together through creativity and pride.

And whereas this council honors and celebrates the invaluable contributions of Hispanic, Latino, Latine, and Chicane artists, educators, and cultural leaders, recognizing their work not only as a cornerstone of Denver's past, but also a guiding light for our future.

Rooted in resilience, imagination, and community strength.

Now therefore, be it proclaimed by the Denver City Council that Denver City Council recognizes September 15th through October 15th as a Hispanic Latino AAX and Chicano A month.

And that the clerk and recorder of the city and county of Denver shall affix the seal of the city and county of Denver to this proclamation and a copy be transmitted to the Mexican Cultural Center, Grupo Taloc, Echo and Westwood, Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, Inla Cesh, Denver Arts, Museo de las Americas, Baila Conmigo, Artístico, Su Teatro, Grupo Foclorico, Sabor Latino, Inc., Latino Culture Arts Center, and other community partners who celebrate their roots through arts and culture.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Councilmember Elvidres, your motion to adopt.

I move the proclamation 25-1361 be adopted.

It has been moved and seconded.

Comments by council members.

Councilmember Alvides, we'll start with you.

Thank you so much, Council Pro Tem.

It's such an honor to have all of you here today.

And I feel so lucky that our culture is so well represented in the city.

And we're still missing people.

And so I think that this makes me really, really proud of the work that we're doing here.

And this is part of Colorado's history.

This isn't just like Latino history, this is like Colorado history, and I think that's something important to highlight.

Especially, I also want to shout out the Mexican Cultural Center, who's not here right now because it is Hispanic Heritage Month.

There's a lot of independence days, there's a lot of events, and um there's some events happening in community right now, but I'm so grateful that all you guys came on such short notice to be here with us today.

Um, and I'll just hand it over to my for the record.

The co-sponsors are all the Latinos on council, so there's a lot of us up here too, not just in community.

Um so I'll hand it over to Councilwoman Gonzalez Gutierrez and then all the other sponsors if you want to say anything.

All right.

Thank you, um, Councilwoman Alvidres, and thank you for inviting all of us to be part of this proclamation.

Uh arts and culture are essential, uh they're an essential part of humanity and and you know, um, of enjoyment as well, right?

We are uh who we are.

We are who we are, thanks to our ancestors and everything that they shared through generations that now form an essential piece of our present.

I want to invite us all to appreciate, foster and nourish our arts and culture, not just today, this week, or this month, but every single day of the year.

Um, as you know, when we talk about these different identity months, we talk about the fact that you know many of us live in the in the skin, right?

We live in this culture, and it's not just one time one month a year that we celebrate these our heritage and our culture.

We celebrate it every single day and all year long and our entire lives.

So today we are highlighting a number of organizations who I just wanted to give a quick shout out to.

Um I don't see them in the hallway, but we had um Grupo Taloc, Dante Azteca, um, if Carlos is here.

Just want to recognize you.

Um, the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, Chuck, um, I don't know if Brenda Gurole, um, in La Kech Denver Arts.

We have Mariana Lucero.

Just want to recognize you.

Please feel free to stand and be recognized, Mariana.

Um, in La Cetch works on increasing access to community responsive arts and education for fifth to twelfth graders, um, youth of color living, uh systemically underserved communities in southwest Denver.

Thank you for your work.

I want to recognize Ana Rojas Artica.

If you could please stand with baila conmigo.

Baila conmigo is an international folklore dance team concentrating on dances from South America, Central America, and Mexico and Spain.

Thank you so much for being here and for always sharing your performers.

Su Teatro, which was born at the height of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement.

Su Teatro has been has established a national reputation for homegrown productions that speak to the history and experience of Chicanos.

So I want to recognize Tony Garcia and Mika Garcia de Benevides.

My mom used to dance with Lorenzo back when they were with the Crusade for Justice when my mom danced by Flo Corrigo.

He uh they offer an interactive and engaging view of unique indigenous culture led by Lorenzo, who has been teaching since 1973.

And let me get the rest here.

Um my colleague mentioned the Mexican Cultural Center.

We also had Museo de las Americas.

Um, not sure if anybody's here from there, Latino Cultural Arts Center.

Oh hey, there you are.

Okay, great.

Thank you for being here.

Um they opened their doors in 1991, has spent the last three decades shining a spotlight on our community's creative um achievements.

We have the Latino Cultural Arts Center with Joyce Sanchez and Mandy Medrano, please fill stand.

LCAC develops, elevates, and showcases the artistic and intellectual contributions of Latinos by centering, celebrating and activating Latinidad.

Etchel and Westwood, we have Tamaris.

Please stand.

So formerly known as Rise Westwood Collective, who focus on supporting Latinx BIPOC-owned businesses, organizing community events, and providing culturally responsive youth programming, and they make delicious things out of chocolate.

But thank you, Damaris, for being here.

I don't know if Jose Rosales and Alfonso Merasa Prudente, they're not here, they're probably out doing other cultural events.

Um, but want to also um recognize them as well as we did outreach to them.

Um so the last thing I'll just say on this is I want to thank all of you for taking the time for being here this evening.

We know that there are so many organizations and artists in our city that are sharing our cultura and their artistry with community every single day.

So thank you for keeping our cultural traditions alive.

Um and the good thing is this is just day one, right?

Like we got we have the whole month um to be able to celebrate, and and I get like I said, every day and every day of the year.

Um so thank you for your contributions and for sharing um your your work with all of us.

Um thank you so much, and I'll leave it open um for other council members, and then we have a special little surprise.

Thank you.

Council member Torres.

Oh, thank you, Madam President.

Um, just really proud to see so many um organizations here today, especially those from District Three, and uh know that you are who really bring to life when we talk about community uh in Colorado exactly who we are and why we do what we do in community.

Um it is growing up with um Mexica dancers that um inspired me to uh really bring the land acknowledgement forward um here in Denver City Council.

So it is um the reclamation of um our indigenous roots, um our contemporary roots and the stories that they tell.

And I'm just um so uh I find it just such a cherishing acknowledgement that um uh you are all making sure that new generations um don't ever forget this, and um really cling to um this part of who we are because it's such a source of uh pride and identity.

Um I know when um I traveled to Mexico when I was in college and lived there for four months.

I came back and completely changed the vision of who I would be when I grew up.

Um, what kinds of things I wanted to study because I wanted to study who I was and where I came from, and I feel like you're preparing folks for that.

Um, that conversation much earlier than I ever did.

So thank you all so much.

Um, and just want to give a shout out to uh MSU who just created the first Mariachi degree program uh here in Colorado.

It's um a really, it's just an incredible thing to be proud of.

And so um thank you all so much for being here and thank you for standing up for community and uh and showing up the way you do.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um I'm honored to co-sponsor this uh proclamation, and to see the faces in front of us tonight um is so exciting, and to see you uh and knowing that it's not just one organization, but it really is this network of organizations that not only do the good work and have that connection with young people and families, but that you connect with each other and strengthen that that heritage and that culture that we have.

Um I started out doing Bale Foclorico with uh Ballet Foclorico the Denver with the late um uh Lulinan uh who is no longer with us, but it inspired many things within me.

I danced for 12 years, all through elementary through high school.

Um and my children um also had an opportunity to participate with Suttiatro, so thank you, um Tony and Mika for being here.

Uh Sophia learned so much.

Um doing a billion plays of Bless Me Ultima, um, and I do see that it's coming out again, and so this is something really exciting.

Um, and I I don't know how many years it's been eight, ten years since the last time you did bless me ultima.

I'm just making this up on the floor, nine.

I knew it was nine.

Uh eight, ten, I had nine in the middle.

Um, but with bless me ultima.

Um, she also had an opportunity to participate in a mariachi um growing up, and then in turn became a mariachi instructor.

And so I think that those are the stories of um as we receive, we also give back.

So thank you all very much for being here today.

And we do have a.

I think we have to vote on this first, huh?

Oh, one more.

Yes, I was just gonna ask for everyone that is here for this proclamation.

If you could all like stand together, just so we can recognize you, that would be great.

Everyone, please stand.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you, Council Pro Tem.

Thank you.

Um, without further ado, we will uh, Madam Secretary.

Roll call.

Council members Gilmore, Sawyer.

I Albitris.

Aye, Flynn, aye.

Gonzalez Cutieras.

Aye, Heinz, Cashman, Lewis, Harody.

Torres.

Aye, Watson.

Aye.

Madam Pro Tab.

Aye.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

Eleven eyes.

Eleven eyes.

Proclamation 25 1361 has been adopted.

Yay!

So, council members uh Gonzalez Cutieres and Alvidres.

Would you like to bring that up?

So we'd like to invite um the Mariachi group from In La Cage uh to perform perform a song for us.

To wrap it up.

Uh, I think oh yeah, come over here in the front at the mic in front of the podium.

Yeah, thank you.

So if you come up to the front by the by the podium, um close to the podium, they can probably also hear you if we've got somebody singing.

It's okay.

Oh, we're gonna have you turn around because we can get a better view on the camera if you're facing this way.

But everybody behind you can still hear.

I think you're gonna find a microphone since you're seeing it.

Perfect.

Ready?

One, two, three, one, two, three.

That's great.

Excellent.

That was fantastic.

Um, great job, and now we want everybody to sing their acceptance for proclamations from here on out.

That was wonderful.

Thank you so very much.

Okay.

We have four required.

Actually, I'm gonna give you a moment um to go into the hallway.

To be able to go into the hallway for a picture.

Come on, just wait a moment.

That was fantastic.

We have four required public hearings tonight.

As a reminder, council members need to turn on their video during a during the vote.

For those participating in person when called upon, please come to the podium.

On the presentation monitor on the wall, you will see your time counting down.

For those participating virtually when called upon, please wait until the meeting host promotes you to speaker.

When you are promoted, please accept the promotion.

Turn on your camera if you have one and your microphone.

All speakers should begin their remarks by telling the council their names, cities of residence, and if they feel comfortable doing so, their home address.

If you have signed up to answer questions only, state your name and note that you are available for questions of counsel.

Speakers will have three minutes, and there is no yielding of time.

If translation is needed, you will be given the additional three minutes of your comments to be interpreted.

Speakers must stay on the topic of the hearing and must direct their comments to council as a whole.

Please refrain from profane or obscene speech and refrain from individual or personal attacks.

Council Member Lewis, will you please put Council Bill 25-1091 changing the zoning classification for 4626 East Louisiana Avenue in Virginia in Virginia Village on the floor for final passage?

I move that council bill 251091 be placed upon final consideration and do pass.

It has been moved and seconded.

The required public hearing for council bill 25 1091 is open.

May we have the staff report.

Good evening.

My name is Etzen Ivanas.

It's really hard to come up after that.

What an awesome voice.

So my name is Ethan Ivanis.

I am with uh community planning development.

And before you today, we're looking at a rezoning application located at 4626 East Louisiana Avenue.

So the request is to go from a single unit zone district to a zone district that would allow for small multifamily the row house zone district.

So I'll go through the request, we'll look at the location and context.

We'll look at the process and review criteria for this.

So the request is the site is highlighted in red there on the map.

It's just on the south side of Louisiana Avenue.

It's a single family residence, and the size of it is just over 24,000 square feet, so just like a little over half an acre.

And like I mentioned, the request is to go for for a suburban row house up to 2.5 stories in height.

And so it's located in Council District 6 in Councilmember Cashman's district in the Virginia Vale neighborhood, as you can see highlighted in red there.

So the site is sandwiched between small multifamily to the to the east and to the west, and then some multifamily to the north.

So it's currently, like I mentioned, it's currently zoned SSUD, which is a single unit zone district.

To the east and uh to the west is SRH 2.5, which is that row house up to 2.5 stories in height.

And to the north, we have SMU3 and SMU5, which stands for multi-unit up to three stories and multi-unit up to five stories.

Directly to the south of the site is uh single unit zone district, so it's a single unit D, which has um uh the D stands for um 6,000 square foot minimum lot size.

Um, and so when we're looking at the land use, what we get from the assessors' records, the site is classified as a single-family residence because that's what's there.

Um to the east and to the west in orange is multi-unit residential.

So it's a mix of like um town homes and um triplexes, and then to the north we have some um multi-unit residential.

Um, and then to the all around the south is single family houses.

Um, so the subject property is on the top right corner.

Um, it's kind of hard to see on the fence, but it's about a 1.5 story, two-story structure.

Um, directly to the west of the site as you see some of these town homes.

Uh there are about two and a half to stories.

Um, to the north is a um five-story apartment complex to the north of the site, and to the south is you see single-family residents, which are predominantly one-story in height.

Um, so now looking at the process and informational notice was sent out in April of this year.

Um, the application was revised and uh sent out again in June.

And so originally the application was for an SMU 3, which is a multi-unit 3, then the application applicant revised their application to do an SRH 2.5.

Um, and so it went before the planning board on July and it was um went before committee on August 8th and is before you tonight.

Um, so just want to kind of give a quick summary of what we received so far.

We received one letter of support from the East Evans Business Association RL.

Um, we've received one letter of support, um, and then we received one letter of opposition and two letters of concerns.

And those concerns predominantly came when it was the original zone district of SMU 3.

There were concerns on height specifically and what can be possible with those heights.

The applicant did revise their application to an SRH 2.5.

Um so now going into the review criteria.

Um the uh Denver zoning code specifically has a review criteria that every rezoning has to follow.

And uh three uh the Denver zoning code specifically has three, so it's consistently with adopted plans, public interest, consistent with neighbor context, zone district purpose and intent statements.

So when we're looking at consistent adopted plans, we're really focusing on three plans, which are comprehensive plan 2040, blueprint Denver of 2019, and the near Southeast Area Plan of 2023.

So when we jump into uh comprehensive plan 2040, so there's multiple strategies that are highlighted in the staff report that this specific rezoning aligns with, but I just wanted to highlight a few under equity and climate goals.

So under equity, it's consistent with the equitable affordable and inclusive goal two strategy A, create a create a greater mix of housing options in every neighborhood for all individuals and families, and then under strong and authentic neighborhood goal one uh strategy D, encourage quality infill development that is consistent with the surrounding neighborhood that and offers opportunities for increased amenities.

Under climate goals, it's consistent with the environmentally resilient goal eight, strategy A, promote infill development where infrastructures and services are already in place.

When we jump into Blueprint Denver, Blueprint classifies this area suburban, so it's consistent with that neighborhood context there, where homes in this context are largely single unit but can also include some higher intensity residential.

It's classified as low, medium residential.

So low medium residential is a mix uh to low mid-scale multi-unit residential option.

So it's a small-scale multi-unit buildings and building heights are generally up to three stories in height.

Um, and then Louisiana Avenue is a residential collector.

Um then uh all other um the growth area strategy for this site is all other areas of the city, where we anticipate to see 20% of new housing and 10% of new employment growth by 2040.

Um, additionally, it's consistent with some of the equity goals and constants because this small scale rezoning can now implement the following goals, such as the land use and built form housing goal two, diversify housing options by exploring opportunities to integrate missing middle housing into low and low medium residential areas, as well as multi-unit buildings are more energy efficient than low residential development types, and they'll help reduce climate goals by that.

Um, when we jump into the near Southeast area plan, um, it's classified as low medium residential with heights up to 2.5 stories in height.

So it's consistent with the heights and the recommendation within low medium and residential, low medium places with 2.5 story maximum height, recommendations of appropriate housing types include duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and townhomes, which would uh the the um SRH 2.5 would allow.

Additionally, you know, strategy LU6B2 does talk about introduce missing middle housing types in designated place adjacent to corridors, creating transition areas that scale down intensity from corridor into surrounding neighborhoods and residential neighborhoods, and it talks about limit rezoning in new designated places until design requirements have been updated.

So we feel like this site is very unique in one that it's sandwiched between already the SRH 2.5.

So the place designation changed, there's a place designation specifically when this plan was adopted from low to low medium.

Um, and then looking at that surrounding area, this will help facilitate development consistent with that surrounding area where it's kind of sandwiched between SRH 2.5, and then we have that multi-unit directly to the north.

Um, it's consistent with the public interest, as um, it would be consistent with the um recommendations that we see within blueprint Denver and um uh the small area plan, and it's consistent with the neighborhood context zone district purpose and assignment as specified in the staff report.

Um, therefore, CPD recommends uh approval based that all the findings of the root criteria have been met.

I'm available for any questions.

The applicant is here for any questions you might have as well.

Um, and thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Um, we have one individual signed up to speak this evening, Jesse Paris.

Go ahead and introduce yourself and when you are promoted, yes, thank you.

Good evening, members of council, those watching at home, those in the council chambers.

My name is Jessica.

I'm representing for Black Star Act and Movement for Self-Defense.

Party of Colorado.

Member of residents of California, the Quebec Street Corridor Task Worth from Black North.

Yeah, a revolutionary agenda.

And I was on the CCA's office of studios.

And fine district nine and Daryl Watson's district.

As y'all know, I have supported a rezoning.

I want to know what these um homes are gonna be.

Are they gonna be four sale?

Are they gonna be um rents?

If somebody answered that question, I would really appreciate it.

Also, what is the traffic study?

Has there been a traffic study done?

So this stretch of uh Louisiana is pretty uh heavily trafficked.

Um what's going on with parking in this area?

Well, um, what I can remember the parking is pretty limited over there, so have you all done a parking study?

It's pretty close to railroad tracks.

Have you done a railroad study?

If someone can please answer those questions, I would greatly appreciate it.

I thank you, and I'll see you on the next one.

Thank you.

That concludes our speakers.

Questions from members of council on council bill 25-1091.

Should we start with you?

Councilman can oh council council member, I don't have counsel.

Okay, council member Lewis.

Yeah, I just have two quick questions.

The Srh 2.5 versus the original application, it was in response to the feedback that they had gotten from the neighbors.

Is that there?

Um, they they were looking at two specific things.

You know, blueprint recommends up to three stories in height, but then the small area plan recommends up to 2.5 stories in height.

Okay, and so uh when the applicant started looking at that specifically, decided to do that additionally, the SMU3 would allow for that four stories if they did affordable housing, and so there was some concern, and so I know the applicant took that into consideration as well.

Okay, and then one more question.

Um, so you mentioned a residential collector.

I one, I don't know what that is, and two, I was curious as to what's the significant for significance, excuse me, for this application.

Um, one of the things we highlight is that certain type of building forms or more intensity, we want to see them more along our collector or interior streets rather than our local streets.

Got it.

And so local streets are more heavily for like our single unit and two unit uses, and then our collector streets allow more intensity because it's more heavily trafficked.

Um, and so great.

That's it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilman Cashman.

Thank you.

Uh Madam Pro Tem.

Is the uh owner here?

No.

Please, sir.

And if you'd introduce yourself when you get up to the mic, please.

Hello, I'm Howard Kent.

Uh, I do reside in Denver.

I'm the architect that the owner brought on board to help him through this process.

Terrific.

I'm just wondering how many units you think uh you'll get on this piece of land.

So it's it's an interesting piece because it's it has a very deep front to back, but a somewhat narrow side to side.

So with the 50-foot frontage minimum that is required for the zoning type, you really, if you were doing single family, there's only 132 feet of width at the front because there's a public service, which is now XL uh piece of property at the front that was carved out many years ago.

Uh so you could get two or maybe three single family homes on what would end up being a 12,000 square foot lot, which would be much larger.

So if we go to the row house or townhouse, or we create our own driveway into the back and park and are able to add two two off-street spaces per unit, it's likely we can get five, or if we use uh sort of unique or or um different sort of uh housing type for the piece that's hidden behind the public service easement, perhaps six units.

Um if you were to do this as single family residential, you'd get two, and with perhaps an ADU at the back.

By nature, that limited density would require those units to be of a much higher value because your uh cost per unit of the land development cost would be much greater.

So actually making more units is more likely to hit in the attainable or affordable range than leaving it as a single family residence.

So you're looking at about a half dozen units.

At the high end, I believe so, yes.

Okay.

But we have not done any three dimensional studies.

We've just looked at this.

I've done what, sir?

No, no, we've no three dimensional studies.

We've only done sort of a look at site planning and zoning, right?

And this would have to go through the concept review uh for comment in terms of uh how it looked, how tall it was, how it was broken up.

Good deal.

Thank you, sir.

I appreciate that.

That's all, Madam Pro Tem.

Thank you.

No one else?

Okay, public hearing is closed.

Comments by members of council on Council Bill 25 1091.

Yes, ma'am.

We'll start with Councilman Cashman.

Thank you, Madam Pro Tem.

I know this uh property extremely well as Stone's Throw from my home.

Um my uh good friend Jay Razor lived there for years and years, passed away a few years ago, sadly.

But this property, as the uh staff report says, is between two very similar developments than what is proposed for uh 4626.

So uh I think clearly uh it makes uh it does meet all the criteria.

What uh adds just a little bit of interest to this particular project, and that whole uh Louisiana corridor is another stone's throw to the west.

Uh King Supers is building a brand spanking new 103,000 square foot superstore and traffic along uh uh Louisiana is going to be challenging at best, and I'll take this opportunity to say that I've been asking our Department of Transportation and Infrastructure to pay serious attention to this corridor for about uh four or five years now, and um uh they have failed to do so.

And I would hope as this store is supposed to open up uh in the springtime, that uh uh they'll take the time to to see what they can do to mitigate traffic between Holly and uh uh Colorado Boulevard.

But to repeat, uh, as far as this rezoning is concerned, uh I do support it and hope my colleagues will do the same.

Thank you.

Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 25, 1091.

Council members Sawyer, aye.

I'll be this.

Aye, Flynn.

Aye.

Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Aye.

Hi.

Cashman.

Aye, Lewis.

Aye.

Parity?

Aye.

Torres?

Aye.

Watson?

Aye.

Madam Pro Tam.

Aye.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

Eleven ayes.

Eleven ayes.

Council Bill 251091 has passed.

Councilmember Lewis, will you please put council bill 25-1071, changing the zoning classification for 1717 East 39th Avenue in Cole on the floor for final passage?

Um I move that council bill 25 1079 be placed upon final consideration and do pass.

It has been moved and seconded.

The required public hearing for Council Bill 25 1071 is open.

May we have the staff report?

You may.

Good evening.

My name is Tony Lechuga.

I'm a planner with community planning and development, and I am here tonight to present the private applicant proposed change to the zoning classification at 1717 East 39th Avenue, which is more popularly known as the Rock Drill.

So their request is actually to take the property and break it into two different zone districts, which we'll talk a little bit more about in detail in a second, but ultimately bringing it into the Denver zoning code, bringing it into consistency with our current adopted plans.

And those two districts are CMX 12 and CMX 16.

Those stand for Urban Center, mixed use, up to 12 or 16 stories.

And I am going to talk a little bit about them in a bit here.

In terms of framing where this is for location and context, so it is located almost right in the center of Council District 9, represented by Councilmember Watson.

And you can see outlined in red here, it's right along that northern boundary of the coal neighborhood, right where it abuts the Illyrious Wancia neighborhoods, and then you can see just a few blocks to the west where it runs into five points.

We're gonna linger here a bit to talk about the context.

So the property itself is just over six and a half acres in size.

If you look at the map, you can see a little uh steps uh on that southeast corner of the property.

And I want to note that that uh property that's left out of making it a perfect square is an existing condo building that has separate ownership.

There are no intentions to redevelop or rezone that property, and so it is not part of the larger project that we're gonna be talking about tonight.

Um but notably the site is the home of the rock drill manufactur was the home of the rock drill manufacturing company, which opened its doors here in 1910, and then over the 20th century expanded their industrial operations to occupy the totality of the site.

Uh they are famous for manufacturing pneumatic rock drills, which were used in the mining industry throughout the century.

In 1992, it was bought by the Weiss family, who has used it since then largely for industrial warehousing, but in recent years, most of the site has actually been vacant.

Turning to the context of the neighborhood, um, this part of coal is known for its mix of uses and building sizes, mixed-use developments, single-family homes, duplexes, a number of industrial uses as well.

Um, to the north is the Union Pacific Intermodal Terminal.

Um that's a location where goods are brought into the city on various forms of transportation, shipped to other forms of transportation, and either delivered to homes, stores, or shipped elsewhere across the country.

Um to the south, you'll notice the 39th Avenue Greenway, which begins right here at the southern edge of the property, running east.

Uh, and then beyond that, you kind of have the traditional single family, two-unit, and duplex uh nature of the residential core of the coal neighborhood.

Um to the east, you'll notice a mix of residential and industrial, um, and that industrial property sort of on the edge of the screen there that uh that remains is the Coca-Cola facility located within Coal Neighborhood.

And to the west is where we see a lot of new mixed-use development between sort of 12 stories and as high as 17 stories, all of that sort of associated with the transition from industrial after the building of the 38th and Blake train station.

Um, just hidden behind the scale on this map is the St.

Charles Rec Center, two blocks away from the property.

Wyatt Academy is two blocks to the south, and then slightly farther, just about a half a mile to the south, is uh coal middle and high school.

On a tangential note, both my great-grandmother and my mom went to coal middle school, which is really fun.

Um, and then in terms of transit, as I mentioned before, we are just about a quarter mile from the 38th and Blake train station, um, and this site is also served by the 44, the 24, and the 12 buses.

Um, so a heavy diversity of uses uh and access to to uh a multitude of things within the context.

This has no relevance to the reason uh the rezoning criteria tonight, but I bring it up uh because it was posed as a question by a member of council.

Just want to make sure that both council and the community understand that this is a former industrial site.

So, so how do we guarantee that sites like that are cleaned up appropriately, that they don't have negative effects on uh nearby residential uses or future residential uses?

And so I do want to note that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has a voluntary cleanup program that they manage.

This applicant team has already begun discussions with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment about engaging in that process, which would require a preliminary assessment, them creating a remediation plan, and then having an environmental professional on site to manage any soil disturbing activities and make sure they are following through on that plan.

And then for city and county of Denver projects, there's also our standard materials management plan if contaminated soils are found.

And then through the site development plan process, there's a review of environmental conditions, and the city can enforce our various ordinances on remediation and construction.

So now let's turn to the existing zoning, and this is where I said I would talk a little bit more about what's going on here.

So you can see that the site itself is outlined in red here.

Notice it contains that purplish color that's associated with our industrial zone districts, either IA, which is light industrial, or IB, which most of this site actually retains.

And IB is meant for our heavy industrial uses.

It doesn't allow residential uses, it doesn't have ground floor activation, and so it really is meant to preserve those heavy industrial uses.

And you can notice this is kind of an outlier.

To the north is IB, but it is separated by the train tracks as well as 40th Avenue.

Everything south of 40th here does not have that IB designation.

There are still some IMX zone districts, whether eight or five, there is the IA at the Coca-Cola site, but again, those are not high-intensity industrial uses like would be allowed in the IB zone district.

So this property does sort of retain unusual zoning in that it could allow for things like a cement processing plant.

The other zone district on site is a small corner in the southwest section that's CMU 10.

That's a former Chapter 59 zone district that allows for commercial uses only.

Notably, it doesn't allow for industrial uses in that one tiny little corner of the property.

And then it does contain a waiver which allows for zero foot setbacks along that.

So the purpose of this is to take that existing zoning and turn it into some modern zoning that sort of matches the exist the surrounding context.

And so to the east you see IMX-5 zoning, to the west you see IMX 8 as well as some IMX 12, some CMX 8, and then as I said before, to the south you see the USUA, which is typical of the traditional low-scale neighborhood.

Um that PUD directly to the south is the 39th Avenue Greenway, which just contains that particular zoning designation.

In terms of allowed building forms, the proposed districts they're asking for are urban center, mixed use, either 12 or 16.

And I'm gonna go back real quick because I should have noted it here.

The 16 is requested for that far northwestern corner of the property, that red square, and then the rest of the property would get the CMX 12 designation, which would be a slightly lower maximum height.

But otherwise, the two zone districts largely match each other in their expectations for building forms, setbacks, and street level activation.

And so those two zone districts do allow for a diversity of building forms, including the townhouse, which maxes out at five stories or 70 feet, the drive-through restaurant and services building forms, and then they do allow for the general and shop front building forms, which are the only two building forms where you access the sort of heights associated with 12 and 16 stories, or somewhere between 150 and 200 feet.

I want to pause here to note that this project has a large development framework.

One of the other things you're gonna see tonight is an urban uh renewal, urban redevelopment plan.

Both of those documents outline expectations for what we plan to see built here.

And both of them acknowledge that we should be creating a socially and economically inclusive development that encourages high to moderate densities and creates a complete neighborhood.

And based on the language in those two documents, we would not anticipate seeing the townhouse or the drive-thru building forms.

Really, the only things that help us achieve the goals of those plans are the general and shop front building forms.

So while they are allowed, they are not anticipated to be built through this project.

In terms of existing land use context, this map is a little misleading, and we'll talk about why.

So the site itself is in purple, as well as a lot of the other industrial lands there.

However, I want to note that many of the properties to the west and to the east that still have that purple color, either have approved site development plans or ones that are being reviewed now that are not industrial in nature.

So we have largely seen the transformation of this area away from industrial uses, with kind of the one big exception being the Coca-Cola site to the east there.

But you notice it does have a diversity of mixed uses, some office uses in the vicinity, and then you can see the low-scale single, two-unit, and multi-unit residential to the south there.

And then, of course, to the north, as I said, the union Pacifics site listed as transportation.

Alright, before we get into the review criteria, I do want to talk about a couple of concurrent agreements.

And while this particular public hearing is only related to the rezoning, I do want to note that this did go through large development review.

So the city required that based on the gross land area of the project, as well as a need for a coordinated master framework for what would happen on this site.

That includes the creation of an infrastructure master plan for helping determine all right, how do we take this large block and sort of break it up to maintain pedestrian access, truck access, vehicular access, open space.

We also knew that this site was gonna have to go through a rezoning, and that there was gonna be the creation of this urban renewal plan in order for them to get tax increment financing.

So all of those things sort of required that we create this large development review framework to determine how this property should move forward.

And as part of that process, they were required to hold a community information meeting on November of 2023.

They actually held many community meetings beyond that, but I will let them speak about those.

And then they completed their large development framework in February of 2024, over a year ago.

There is a development agreement associated with this.

That will be the next public hearing, but I do want to comment on it here just so that we have a full picture of what is happening here.

So it does include an affordable housing plan, which I'll note is a high impact development compliance plan required because of both the size and their utilization of a Met district which already exists across the site.

And that affordable housing plan does require 10% of units at 50% AMI, and then also creates set percentages for the number of bedrooms that have to be two bedrooms and three bedrooms on site.

It also waives the right to the VNL, requiring that all of these affordable units will have to be built on site.

There's also an agreement for economic development and opportunity.

Some of that mirrors what Durer requires in terms of working towards prioritization of small businesses on site, and then there's also an agreement that they will continue to work with Dito to locate the feasibility of locating a child care facility on site.

And then the third thing in the development agreement that we're very excited about is landmark preservation.

They will be preserving somewhere between half and on a map about two-thirds of the site, either for new open space or for preservation of those actual buildings.

So those three things will come to you next, but I wanted to just put them out there so we have the full picture.

And then finally, as I mentioned before, because there is this urban redevelopment plan, Dura has its own requirements for what happens on a site should it be approved, and they are allowed to tap into those TIFF dollars.

And those are a set of requirements that are meant to promote positive development focused on providing funds for arts, engaging in the first source hiring program, complying with our prevailing wage requirements should they build city infrastructure and requirement to adopt a small business enterprise, small business enterprise utilization plan that helps focus small businesses within the site.

So all of these are just context for understanding the larger picture.

So now let's turn our attention to the actual process of this project.

So informational notice went out about the rezoning back in July of 2024.

That's when they chose to submit their rezoning application.

There was a long lull after that where they continued to work on negotiating the development agreement that you're gonna see next, working on community agreements, and ensuring that they were moving in the right direction.

Planning board notice went out back in July of 2025.

They held their public hearing on the 16th of that month.

This went to committee on the 29th of that month, and that brings us here tonight to the City Council public hearing.

In terms of public comments that we've received, they have been unanimously in support of this project.

We've received three letters of support from local RNOs, including the coal RO representing that area, and then we've received 21 letters of support from the general public.

And these have noted the historic preservation as especially important to the community, the provision of affordable housing on site, and the mixed-use amenities that will really help activate this neighborhood and this site that has largely been inaccessible to the public for over a century.

When planning board held their hearing on this item on the 16th of July, they voted unanimously to recommend approval.

They noted that it was consistent with the plans, that it had robust community support, and they noted the associated community benefits that would happen through the development agreement and the Dura processes.

And that brings us to the review criteria.

So for anybody who doesn't know, we are required to look at the review criteria from the Denver zoning code and determining the appropriateness of these types of requests.

And there are three review criteria, the first of which is consistency with adopted plans.

And lucky for us on this site, we actually have five applicable plans.

The first of which is the city's comprehensive plan 2040, which is a citywide set of goals of narrative goals.

There's a lot of text on this screen for the record's sake.

I'm not gonna read it all to you, but we did want to note that we believe that these requested zone districts would promote a more equitable, affordable, and inclusive Denver by creating opportunities for greater access to amenities, as well as creating a diversity of housing that is close to transit.

In terms of the various goals that promote strong and authentic neighborhoods, we believe that this would help ensure neighborhoods have a mixture of housing and services, that they are people-oriented places that contribute to the economic health of the neighborhood, that they contribute to public safety, neighborhood culture, and quality of life, and that it's promoting the stewardship of existing buildings and support for neighborhood-serving businesses.

In terms of creating more connected, safe and accessible places, we believe that this is consistent because it would be transit-oriented development that is promoting higher density, including necessary affordable housing near transit.

In terms of creating a more economically diverse and vibrant city, we believe that these two goals would help, would be achieved through this rezoning because this would create a diversified economy on site, and it would target investment in small businesses through the necessary agreements.

And finally, in terms of environmentally resilient, we believe that these two goals and strategies would be achieved through the rezoning because this would reduce waste waste through the reuse of existing buildings.

It would promote infill where infrastructure already exists, and it would focus growth along our existing transit lines.

And now we'll turn to Blueprint Denver, which is the city's citywide land use plan, provides a little more nuanced guidance on what we should expect from land use decisions.

So Blueprint Denver has future neighborhood contexts, and you can see on this map everything that's in that sort of yellowish gold color, it identifies as being part of the urban center context, which is described as dense, vibrant areas that support residents and visitors, have high-intensity residential unemployment, and a large access to amenities and entertainment options.

And you can see both the properties to the west and the east retain the same designation of urban center.

The applicant is asking for two different urban center zone districts, and we think that they are appropriately applied based on this particular guidance.

Blueprint Denver also provides future places.

These typologies identify areas where we should expect different intensities and types of development.

And for this particular property, you can see again, the whole property is listed as a regional center.

When we look at Blueprint Denver and we see what an urban center, regional center looks like, it talks about having a diversity of commercial and residential uses, a sort of 24-7 live-work-play environment with a high degree of urbanism and a really strong pedestrian realm.

And we believe that the CMX districts provide that by having really strong build to requirements for buildings, 100% requirement for street activation, and creating this sort of dense environment.

Notably, this particular language in Blueprint Denver is absent on recommended plan, recommended heights, because the expectation is that urban center, regional center will be the sort of highest density, highest intensity building types that we might see.

And therefore the CMX 16 and 12 sort of align with what that recommendation would be.

And again, this recommendation is the same for the properties to the West and the East.

And then Blueprint Denver's final map that we have here is targeted growth strategies.

So this identifies parts of the city where we should be trying to target higher intensity growth so as to not overburden parts of our city that already have some established residential character.

This is listed as a regional center, which is the highest intensity for growth, where we anticipate 50% of new employment and 30% of new housing by 2040.

Obviously not all located in this one block, but in this typology.

And you can see that's true for properties both to the east and the west, with the idea that those established neighborhoods to the south get to sort of remain as established neighborhoods by targeting development here.

Blueprint Denver also contains a number of narrative goals.

And again, I'm not gonna read the laundry list that I've put here, but we believe that these policies and their associated strategies within the land use and built form general category would be achieved through these rezonings by promoting growth, including high and high-density mixed-use development in major centers and corridors that are connected by transit, by allowing increased height in exchange for desired outcomes, such as affordable housing and new open space in transit-rich areas, and through promoting coordinated development through large development review.

In terms of Blueprint Denver's narrative housing goals, we believe that we would achieve this policy and this strategy because we would capture housing growth in a regional center that is near transit, as identified in the plan.

In terms of Blueprint Denver's economic goals, we believe it would achieve these policies and strategies because it would capture growth in regional centers by allowing high density development.

It would improve an equitable access to employment by creating a higher diversity of jobs in this area, especially along transit where people can access them, and it would promote and incentivize affordable and family friendly housing through our high impact development compliance plan and the base zoning itself.

In terms of mobility strategies, we believe that this would encourage mode shift, which is the idea that we could get more people out of their cars, thus alleviating some of traffic, by getting people on bikes, on trains, or by walking.

And it could do this by increasing amenities that are close to established residential areas and promoting mixed-use development so that people might be able to work where they live.

And then finally, we believe that this would help promote these quality of life policies and strategies by promoting attractive streets, attractive outdoor spaces, and overall improving access to amenities for people who live in the neighborhood and the region.

In terms of Blueprint Denver's climate goals, we believe that this would help achieve at least three of them by again promoting housing close to transit, thus alleviating the need for people to drive as often, by adaptively reusing some existing historic buildings, thus alleviating the need to demolish structures, and encouraging a mixed-use environment, again, where people could potentially live, work, and entertain themselves.

And then while we're still on Blueprint Denver, I do want to acknowledge that because of the project's size and scale, we did conduct an equity analysis.

I want to note that we did the equity analysis back in 2023 when the property first came in and they had their community information meeting, and then we've updated it over the years as we've continued to update our data that's associated with each year's new equity analysis update.

So I do want to note that this first map shows access to opportunity.

And if you're asking, what is that?

It's a good question.

So access to opportunity measures people's access to healthcare, parks, transit, centers and corridors where they might be able to do shopping or have employment, and their access to grocery stores.

And this property is listed as having higher than average access to opportunity, which in many ways is true.

We've acknowledged that it's close to parks, it's close to some new development that has mixed use.

But I do want to caveat a fault in the data in that this actually says that it's close to a grocery store.

And as the as the crow flies, that is true.

But anyone who lives in coal can tell you that the natural grocer that's located on the other side of the train tracks along 38th Avenue doesn't feel accessible.

And so for us, it's always important to look at this data with a little bit of nuance and consider what is the data not capturing that we know to be true for people who actually live this experience every day.

So the new zone district would uh provide additional open space, it would also allow for higher density of residential and commercial uses, and could open the potential for alleviating some of the things that might be missing from the coal neighborhood's access to opportunity.

In terms of vulnerability to involuntary displacement, the coal neighborhood scores a three out of three, which is a bad score.

It means that it checks all the boxes for things that make people more vulnerable to displacement.

And what that's measuring is people's median incomes across the neighborhood, which in this area are lower than citywide average.

You'll notice that's true for the neighborhoods immediately to the north of them as well.

The percentage of renters in the area, there are a higher percentage of renters than owners in this area.

It's close, but it's just slightly over the bubble that checks this box.

And then the last measure is the number of residents that have a college degree.

And this neighborhood has a lower than average college degree attainment, which could impact people's potential access to a diversity of jobs.

So in negotiating things like our development agreement, we consider these.

When looking at the zone districts, we consider these, and we see that an affordable housing plan would help create more income restricted units on sites.

It would create a more mixed environment of bedroom types.

And we know that through some of the requirements of Dura, that there will be hiring practice requirements to make sure that jobs located in this area are attainable to those people who potentially don't have a college degree and need that type of employment.

In terms of housing diversity, what this measures is five different metrics.

Those are the cost of housing, which I think we know is kind of inaccessible in every neighborhood.

Uh, bedroom counts.

Do we have a higher number of bedroom counts than the citywide average?

Uh, do we have missing middle housing, which is do we have those buildings that are that contain somewhere between 10 and 20 units?

Um, do we have income restricted units within the neighborhood?

And then what is that balance of renter to owned?

Um, and this neighborhood actually scores pretty well.

There is a diversity of housing in the area.

Um, there is a diversity of housing typologies, sizes, um, and as I said, there is a pretty decent balance of renter to owned.

It's just slightly tipped towards renters.

Um, but we believe that the zone districts would allow for more housing on the site, coupled with our affordable housing plan that would help create more housing and different typologies of housing by requiring some one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom units.

And then the final blueprint equity uh piece is uh looking at jobs diversity.

So we do try to see what types of jobs are located in any given area.

Uh, you can see this particular spot highlighted in yellow shows that there's a high emphasis on manufacturing jobs, which is great if that's the type of job you're looking for, but ideally we want to create uh a mixture of job types that are within the citywide averages, so that we maintain some manufacturing jobs, but we are also promoting some retail jobs and what are called innovation jobs.

Um you can see um areas of five points immediately to the west, as well as parts of the Clayton neighborhood immediately to the east, have that citywide average.

We believe that these new zone districts would allow for continued use of some particular light manufacturing uses, some uh retail uses, and some innovation jobs, uh, so could create a better diversity of jobs than what we see right now.

Alright, let's turn our attention to the three small area plans that apply to this site.

Um, the first of which is the 38th and Blake Station Area Plan, which I'll know it was adopted in 2009 and then was amended in 2016, and we'll talk about what happened in 2016.

So, first of all, I just want to note that this plan emphasizes the industrial nature of the historic neighborhoods.

It wants to recognize that that character is there, and some aspect of it should remain.

And we believe that that is achieved through the historic preservation of these old industrial sites that are really no longer being used as industrial sites.

It also sets a framework for emerging residential and arts districts in the area and calls for the expansion of residential and employment opportunities in ways that haven't historically been available in the neighborhood.

In terms of land use recommendations, you can see the property highlighted in yellow here.

It is sort of on the edge of the land use recommendations for the station area plan, but it does call for mixed-use residential.

It does say that there should be a higher density of residential located on sites like this than some of the other TOD core or main street designations, and that is because it's adjacent, some historic residential neighborhoods, and it calls for creating a strong ground, uh active ground floors.

And again, the CMX districts require 100% active ground floors.

So we believe they are appropriate with these land use recommendations.

All right, here's where we're gonna linger for a little bit and try to stay with me.

It gets complicated.

So in 2016, um there was an amendment to this plan to create incentive heights.

This was sort of one of Denver's first stabs at creating requirements for or incentives for affordable housing.

And so we created what are called the I-01 overlays.

Um that created incentive heights that said, only can you achieve this height if you provide the benefits of affordable housing?

Um this map was created to sort of show, okay, what should be the base height?

And so you can see the property outlined in purple, and it lists the base height as three.

And then it lists some incentives that could be achieved through the provision of affordable housing.

And you can see for the majority of that site, it's colored orange, which means it could achieve a height of up to 12 stories through the provision of incentives.

Post-EHA, we actually ended up rezoning portions of this neighborhood to remove the I-O-1 designation.

And when we did that, we created zone districts that would match the incentive heights here.

So if it had a recommendation of an incentive height of 12, we would have potentially given a property a zone district such as CMX-8, because post-EHA, that's the incentive height they would be able to achieve is 12 stories.

So some of the properties both to the east and to the west had this happen post-EHA, we rezoned them to be things like IMX 5 or IMX-8, noting that they would be able to achieve some of those incentive heights that are listed on this map, whether it be five, eight, or 16.

This property was not included because it was retaining its industrial uses.

There was no planned development on this site, and so this is now the one opportunity.

So that's what happened with the 2016 amendment.

And I do want to note that these are height recommendations from a small area plan.

But regarding height, Blueprint Denver says we should consider a number of things.

And I'll remind you the Blueprint Denver recommendation for height was that it should be the highest in the context, with no set maximum given.

But Blueprint Denver says that we should look at our small area plans, but it also says that we should look at things like the surrounding context.

And so we did just that when thinking about heights for this property.

And so here's a map where I'll note the properties again outlined in red, and then everything that you see in blue is a property that has been built out, and you can see there are two to the west that are 12 stories and 17 stories.

And then everything in yellow is a property that has an approved site development plan.

And you can see they range from nine stories on the east there to 13 and 17 stories to the west there.

Um so again, this property owner is asking for the majority of the site to go to CMX 12, and then that small corner, the smaller corner in the northwest corner to go to CMX 16.

And we believe that those are in line with the surrounding context of the neighborhood, especially when you consider that everything that's sort of on that eastern half to two-thirds are buildings that will be preserved through the landmark designation process as part of the development agreement.

So it really does limit development potential to that western side where we would see potentially one building at 12 stories or with incentive 16, and then another building in that northwest corner with a base of 16 or incentives up to 22.

The other things it asks us to consider are transitions.

So when we were looking at this site, we noted that everything to the north is actually train tracks and industrial sites, and that's where shadows would be cast on properties during the winter season when the sun dips in the southern sky.

And so this new development wouldn't be casting undue shadows on adjacent parks or lower scale residential properties that are actually to the south.

It also would have to transition down to the south because there is the 39th Avenue Greenway, and then slow scale residential.

So those properties would sort of be protected through where the buildings have to be located, as well as the landmark preservation of the majority of the site.

We're asked to consider its adjacency to transit.

This is, as I said, just about a quarter of a mile away from the closest train station, which is very close to downtown.

So we believe that locating higher intensities close to transit would be good.

And then the final two achieving plan goals for community benefits and urban design goals.

And we believe the totality of this project does promote both of those things through its landmark preservation, its affordable housing, and through the Dura process requirements.

And so while this might be slightly different than the plan recommendation for heights, we believe that it believe it meets the rest of these things that Blueprint Denver asks us to consider, and therefore we find it appropriate.

Alright, two more plans.

The next one is the River North Plan, which was adopted in 2023.

And we're not gonna linger long on this one.

That plan actually predates the construction of the A-line through this area.

It tried to create a framework for what this area could look like once that was built out, and it largely called for transit oriented development, which this would be, providing a compatible mix of uses focused around what was then the unbuilt train station, and this would help achieve that goal.

And then it also called for creating more compact, mixed-use pedestrian-friendly areas in former industrial sites, and we believe that this would achieve that.

And then the final plan that we want to look at is the Elyria and Swansea neighborhoods plan, which was adopted in 2015.

And this is not within the plan, the neighborhood boundary of the Elyria and Swansea neighborhoods.

You can see on this map, those neighborhoods are outlined in black and represent everything to the north, and then a slight bit to the uh the west where walnut divides the two neighborhoods, and 38th divides the two neighborhoods.

Um, but that plan did sort of extend beyond its boundaries in its land use recommendations, but you can see here outlined in red that it called for this property to be mixed use.

It called for mixed-use areas to have sizable employment bases, mid to high density housing options, and to have higher intensities if the property is mixed use rather than just 100% residential, which this would be.

And so we believe that it is consistent with these particular land use designations from that plan.

And then there were three other narrative goals from that plan that we actually think this does achieve.

Um, one is about increasing housing choices, um, especially encouraging investment in new housing to expand the number of residents in the area, building on our transit oriented development by encouraging higher intensity development and services and employment near rail, and using mixed use development to improve access to goods and services.

We believe it would achieve all three of those narrative goals.

And that brings us to the second review criteria, which is is the rezoning in the public interest?

And we believe that it is for a number of reasons.

We believe that it is truly the implementation of our plans by creating a high density mixed use area.

We believe that it furthers our equity and our climate goals.

We believe that it will result in a walkable mixed-use area by design.

It will improve preserve important landmarks in the neighborhood through a true designation process, and it will provide much needed affordable housing to the city.

And then finally, we believe that this would result in consistency with the neighborhood context, zone district purpose, and intent statements, which call for this to be a high density urban center with a mixture of uses.

CPE recommends approval.

And I'm happy to answer any questions.

The applicant team is here as well.

I know we have a second public hearing about the development agreement, but if you do have questions that relate to affordable housing or landmark preservation, some of my colleagues are here as well.

Well, thank you very much, Tony.

That was great.

We have seven individuals signed up to speak this evening.

Thank you.

Next person is Brian Fishman.

Good evening, Brian Fishman with Already Cannon Group, part of the development team for the Rock Drill project here to answer any questions.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Reed Raskin.

We love this project.

We've been working closely with the development team.

I think they first approached us at the beginning of last year.

By summer, we'd heard enough kind of in the meetings that they had gone through to issue a letter of support.

We've continued those conversations since we issued that letter last May.

I think they have been with us at five of our RNO sessions.

The activation on the greenway, we love that greenway.

We're very blessed to have it.

I think we all feel this project will breathe some life into it.

And the retail component, of course.

At the beginning of this year, we began trying to codify some of the discussions and the feedback we'd heard from our neighbors, which was all positive.

But we began a community benefits process.

I believe everyone here was sent a summary of where we landed on a community benefits agreement.

We went through, I want to say four um meetings this year as an RNO.

Uh the first of which our council member kind of introduced conceptually what what we were looking to do and what what a CBA can do.

We feel very good about where we landed with it.

And so I am certainly available to answer any questions on the process and where we landed, but we are excited to welcome new neighbors and businesses, and we hope you share that excitement.

Full support.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Sandra Douglas.

Is she online?

Is she having trouble getting online?

Okay, we can come we can come back.

All right.

Uh good evening.

Pardon me, I'm a little intimidated here.

My name is uh Joseph Wafford.

I live at 3508 North Ray Street, so about five blocks away from the uh Rock Drill site.

Um I moved there.

I'm born and raised in Denver and uh moved to the cold neighborhood about 10 years ago.

Um, and soon after moving there, uh I attended one of the first public information sessions with um, I think a previous iteration of the development project, and couldn't tell you how excited I came away from that.

Um, it was held in the beautiful sawtooth warehouse of the rock drill site, um, which if you haven't been to, I suggest going to Set Food in.

It's absolutely gorgeous.

Um, and I came away from that really excited about um what it meant for the future of our neighborhood.

Um, obviously, that was uh right around 10 years ago now, maybe eight, and um, in that intermediate time, um, unfortunately, what the Rock Drill site has brought us is kind of lots of uh sidewalk weeds and uh one or two pop-up Christmas markets.

So it feels like um as a community it has a lot more it could offer to us, and um, that's something that it seems like this claim is really bringing to the forefront and that makes me very excited about it.

Um, in addition to uh just preserving the remarkable historic structure.

Um, as many folks have mentioned, um, having that many new neighbors would be really great, especially ones who are um are able to walk straight to public transit, um, which is delightful, and um certainly funneling that foot traffic along the 39th Avenue Greenway would be a really nice way to activate that space.

Um, I hope that the um uh council uh agrees with some of those observations and uh approves the rezoning to set our community on a um on a path towards a future worth celebrating.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh the next speaker is Rachel Marion.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Rachel Marion.

My address is 1777 East 39th Avenue.

I'd like to note up front that while I am a member of Denver's Planning Board.

Uh I am not here in that capacity this evening, and recuse myself from the room for all planning board deliberations on this project.

Instead, I'm here as the president of Denver Raptor Lofts HOA.

Um, where that little carve out that Tony mentioned earlier, and also as a board member of Cole Registered Neighborhood Association, somebody who's in was involved in the community benefit agreement negotiation.

On behalf of the owners of the 30 condo units that sit at the southeastern corner of the subject property, I am here in strong support of the full package before you tonight.

This rezoning proposal is consistent with adopted plans and meets the city council's criteria by promoting transit oriented development, increasing housing availability, and thoughtfully balancing historic preservation with future growth.

This kind of thoughtful density will help provide much needed housing options for Dunbrights and contribute to a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood that honors the area's history while looking forward while looking toward the future.

As a board member for Cole RNO and a licensed attorney that participated in the community community benefits agreement negotiation, I'm grateful for the community members who participated and proud of the agreement we were able to reach in collaboration with the developer.

Thank you for your time and consideration, and I'm available for any questions you may have.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jesse Paris.

Yes, good evening, members of the watching at home, those in the council chambers.

My name is Jessica Paris and I'm here for Black Star Axiomer for Self-Defense, Positive Asking Commerce of the Change, as well as the Unity Party of Colorado, the Northeast Denver Residence Council, the Quebec Street.

Which is northwest.

This just seems like more adventurification as well.

More unintended consequences for more response.

So just down the year.

Is there an actually be housing?

The whole presentation confused me.

Because you said it was gonna be commercial mixed use.

And then you said there was not going to be housing, and you said there's gonna be housing.

If there's gonna be housing, what is the AMI level gonna be from the housing?

Has there been uh neighborhood uh benefits agreement signed?

Did you actually interact with the neighbors and coal?

Is it the black neighbors of coal?

Because this is an ethically being ethically cleansed, gentrified neighborhood of coal.

So did you have to reach out to the remaining black residents of coal to see what they thought about this?

Um, has there been a sidewalk study because this area of 40th or 39th, whatever is a trophy?

Um I just want to know exactly what is actually gonna be mailed here because that presentation was not clear on that.

And how is this how is gentrification benefit benefiting the public interest?

And I know you're gonna say, but there's nobody living there currently.

Yeah, we heard that before, and then we got unintended consequences like the Navajo village right down the road, where there was a little there, that did call that area home, the unhealth neighbors, what have you?

They got this place.

So I can please answer those questions.

I would really appreciate it.

On the next one, thank you.

Uh Sandra Douglas.

Okay.

That concludes our speakers.

Questions from members of council on council bill 25 1071.

Councilman Watson.

Uh, thank you, Council President Pro Tem.

Um, from the applicant, uh, can we can you talk us through a little bit of the community process that you engaged in?

I know that um uh one of the neighbors shared community benefits process, and I'll have a follow-up question on that.

But from anyone that's representing the uh the applicant, if someone can walk through uh the community uh informed process.

Uh yes, Brian Fishman, uh, uh part of the project team and development team.

Um as you heard uh Tony say, um this has been uh a pretty long road to get in front of you today.

Um and part of the reason for that is the community engagement that we wanted to make sure that we took place.

Um the very fortunate thing that we have with this project, um as was mentioned, um, are some really fantastic buildings.

Um the sawtooth building, the foundry, the boiler.

Um, these are really great assets, and so to be able to use those to help with the community engagement process has been fantastic.

Um I've been a part of and led, um, I did a count yesterday, 102 tours.

Um, and so those tours are predominantly done with neighbors and stakeholders, um, and that has taken place over the course of excuse me, the last several years.

Um, in addition to that, um, you know, as you heard uh Mr.

Raskin say, we've been trying to participate as much as we can um with the RNO meetings um as well as additional stakeholders, whether they be um Clayton Neighborhood Organization, Denver North Business Association, etc.

Um, the one thing I do want to circle back on my I think our favorite tour um that we had was with a group of manual high school students.

Um they asked uh probably the toughest questions, and uh were by far the most fun.

Yes, so um, does that answer your question, sir?

That is helpful uh Brian.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um I know that we have uh the next presentation is gonna speak a little bit to the housing, but I just as a um a initial question on this rezone.

Is there someone from Department of Housing Stability that can provide us a little bit of the background and obviously may maybe redundant with the next uh presentation?

But if you don't mind um introducing yourself and sharing the housing mix and what was the uh affordable housing uh process um uh that you went through for this um proposed development.

Thank you.

I'm Laya Mitchell from the Department of Housing Stability.

So, as Tony mentioned in the presentation, because of the size and um even more so because of the public financing, this project was required to um develop a high impact development compliance plan with the Department of Housing Stability to commit to affordable housing.

We worked closely with the development team on understanding their plans for housing on the site.

Um they can speak some more, I think, to the full picture, but an estimated something between perhaps 700 to 800 residential units on the site.

Um, the commitment that they have made is that 10% of those units would be at 50% or made available to households at up to 50% area median income, which is below um the standard expanding housing affordability requirements.

Um they have opted into enhanced levels and actually are going beyond the enhanced levels and their commitment, which gets them the incentive height.

So the additional those additional units like from the 38th and Blake overlay that we've now sort of expanded citywide through the expanding housing affordability policy.

And in addition, there's a commitment to a minimum of 20% of units to be two and three bedrooms, and that's a minimum of five percent three bedrooms and 15% two-bedroom units among the affordable housing and on the site.

Thank you very much.

And uh obviously there are gonna be plenty more questions for you as the other uh presentation uh continues.

But um Rachel Marion, I had a quick question for you on the community benefit agreement.

Uh I know that each of the council members received uh the outline of that.

Do you mind providing a little more specifics of uh some of the tenants, some of the outcomes, some some of the items agreed to by neighbors and kind of walk council through a little more deliberately what that community benefit process looked like?

Sure.

So one thing we wanted to focus on um on the outset was including as many neighborhood voices as possible in the conversation of a high level what um the neighbors wanted to see included in the agreement.

So as part of that, and a big thank you to your office for helping us um get all of the addresses of every resident, both owners and renters in the coal neighborhood.

We sent 1700 postcards in English and Spanish that had a QR code.

That QR code was also um posted at St.

Charles Rec Center and a couple of other community spaces within the neighborhood.

And it just asked very, I think maybe three or four questions, um, tried to keep it, and again, the questions and responses were in both English and Spanish for what do you love about your neighborhood?

What do you wish um what existed in the neighborhood that doesn't currently exist there, and what would you like to see at this Denver Rock Drill site if it's redeveloped?

We uh received about 80 responses, which felt really great for uh particularly in a neighborhood that we don't always have the highest level of engagement.

Um we also then discussed the what at our uh publicly noticed meetings in January, April, and July of this year.

Those are meetings that we host at the St.

Charles Rex Center.

Um, during those conversations, we heard and through the survey that was uh conducted, there were a few um things that came across pretty resoundingly.

Tony mentioned one, which is the neighborhood desire for a grocer.

Um, even though natural grocers is, as he mentioned, as the crow flies somewhat close, it's also not really a full service grosser.

So, so and a fairly expensive grocer.

So, for a lot of the community that's looking for everyday items, um, it's not only not that close, but it it also doesn't really check the box in terms of, you know, toilet paper and cleaning supplies and and affordable daily food.

So that was far and away the the biggest um thing that we had heard from the community.

Also high on uh the list was uh the inclusion of community spaces.

Um let me rewind a little bit.

So grocer, um, we understand that there's a lot that is within the control of the developer with regards to a grocery and there's also reasons why a grocer has not located in the neighborhood despite you know other property owners uh trying to get a grocer to locate there.

And so we tried to strike that balance by putting into the community benefits agreement language that uh requires them to use you know commercially um standard commercially commercial efforts to secure a grocery and and to check in with us about what they're doing to recruit the grocer.

Um, in every conversation we've had with them, they believe a grocer is not only a good use for the community but a good use on that site and are um using those commercially available purposes to recruit a grocer.

Um the second thing that we heard was a desire for community spaces, both outdoor spaces that could be programmed with um community festivals or uh farmers markets, as well as indoor spaces that could be used for community meetings at multiple times per year.

So that's another piece that we uh were able to include within um the community benefits agreement.

Uh historic preservation.

I think that'll get discussed some in a later presentation, but that was another one of those top things that the community said they don't want to see the entire site demolished and they want to see a balance of preservation of some of these iconic buildings that um are on the site and are really a landmark to anybody who is both living in the neighborhood and it also is visible from the A line.

So anybody who's taking the train, you know, between Union Station and the airport sees some of these iconic buildings.

Um so it is really a landmark for our neighborhood.

Um just touching on a few of the other things that we heard was uh supporting of local artists and and inclusion of art on site.

That's another thing that is a bit of a landmark about the buildings today is there are some really some of the cities.

Uh I'm biased, it's my neighborhood, but some of the city's best murals are on this building and have changed over time.

Um, but really, really beautiful art exists today, both inside the space and and outside the space, and that's something else that they've committed to continuing.

Um and then, you know, I know our our folks from Housing at the City Housing Stability Office spoke to this, but uh the creation of affordable housing on site, which we also believe is met both in the development agreement, but it was important to us because the development agreement is something that lives at the city to also reflect that affordable housing commitment in a negotiated contract with the community, um, so that you know, worst case scenario, if things were to fall through on this redevelopment, that we would still have a document that was entered into with the community, ensuring some of these uh the provision of some of these things, including affordable housing on the site.

Um we opened up once we identified the what those those key items that uh the community desire to be part of the community benefits agreement.

Um, we opened up the specific contractual legal negotiations to anybody who uh wanted to participate.

Um as somebody who's a recovering attorney myself, the there were not a bunch of people clamoring uh to participate in that, but there were three of us from the neighborhood that did participate in I think roughly seven negotiation meetings about the detail and the specific language within that contract.

We brought that final draft to a public meeting on August 28th uh for discussion and question and answer within the community, and then it was approved unanimously by the board at that time.

Thank you so much, Rachel, and this is a rezone.

Tony Lachuga is sitting there, and I don't have any questions for him on a rezone.

I think it was a thorough process.

Uh, Council President, no further questions.

Thank you.

Councilmember Torres.

Thank you, Madam Pro Tem.

Um uh Rachel, I think just a question, well, a comment really well done on the CBA.

I think it was really clear and discernible what both the community expected from the developer and what the developer intends to provide in communication.

So thank you so much for working on that.

Thank you.

I it was one of our big goals to ensure that the community really understood what is deliverable and and not and to manage expectations about what can and cannot happen and both be aspirational and practical as we negotiated this.

So I appreciate the kudos.

Great, thank you.

Tony, just a quick question on the applications.

If it's in one of the next presentations, just let me know and I'll hold my question for that.

Um the uh there was uh reference in an email to us that uh the developer agrees to a 20% goal for SBEMBEWBE.

What agreement is that in?

That might be a requirement of the Dura process.

Is that a Dura?

And yes, okay.

Oh, I I can hold for that presentation if that's where it's at.

Okay, perfect.

And then the other one is is there any part of this project that qualifies it for the one percent art trigger?

Yes, that's also through the Dura process.

Also, Dura, thank you.

Okay, I'll hold for them.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Madam President for Tem.

Thank you.

Uh Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you.

Rachel, I just had one follow-up question for you.

You mentioned that um you all had sent out um sent out the I think you said 1900 or 1400, I can't remember the number, and there were three questions on those.

Those three questions, how did you all use that information?

So those informed, we um asked those essentially about what what are you concerned about with relation to this uh development?

What do you want to see happen?

And then each one of those, anything that we heard from the community, um, we incorporated into the community benefits agreement.

That's what I wanted to know.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

Sorry.

Sorry, I'm back here.

We're back.

Hold on.

Let's go back into the public hearing.

Council member Torres.

You're doing very well, Madam President.

Very quick.

Um, if Tony, just really quickly, if the 1% art is in the agreement, do the other agreements and maybe this is what what's built into the CBA on top of that, or is it more procedural in terms of working with the neighborhood uh for that?

Um, because they know we're gonna be approving the rezoning first.

Yep, it's both and um so it anything that was reflected in either the development agreement or Dura's agreement.

We also wanted to reflect it in our community benefits agreement.

And then there's an additional, there's additional language about having community participation with regard to the selection of that 1% permanent art.

Okay, okay, got it.

Thank you.

Thank you, madam.

Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Yes, um, thank you, Council Hotem.

Um, so just a quick couple of quick questions.

I just wanted to make sure I had correct.

Um, this is for Rachel.

Um, sorry, thank you.

Uh you mentioned the the who worked on the CBA.

You said there were about there were three people who worked on that CBA.

Yeah, there were three of us that sat in the formal uh negotiations with the attorneys for and the developer, but four public meetings where both the high level content was discussed with the broader community and then the legal language brought back to the community to the larger group for further discussion prior to us voting on it.

Okay.

Um do you know how many, like what what did participation look like at those community events?

Do you feel like there was a good number of community members present?

Yeah, we um it's sort of why we we did both the survey and and noticing every member of the community because you know we recognize that it is hard to show up and sit down for two hours on a weeknight, um, even when we try to make it as accessible as possible.

Uh, I would say of those, you know, we probably had a total across those four meetings, over a hundred people participating in those conversations.

Um, some folks coming to everyone, some folks showing up to one.

Um, but it felt uh like a good turnout, particularly given Cole's a pretty small neighborhood geographically, and um, you know, could it have been more representative?

Pro you know, there I think there's always things, lessons learned in way you you can improve, but I was grateful for the participation we had and also the participation in the survey of both English and Spanish uh Native speakers.

Okay, great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for the um answering those questions.

Um thank you, uh Madam Pro Temp, that's all I have.

Thank you.

Um I just have a real quick question for you, Tony.

And um, we had asked this during one of the briefings, um, but could you speak a little bit more to the shade?

I don't really, I was looking for the slide, but the shade coverage.

Um, yeah, it was really just a uh a concept that we had contemplated internally when discussing the heights related to this one.

We know that the historic preservation piece is going to push development to the western edge of the property.

Um, and in considering those heights, um we wanted to just take a look at you know ensuring that tall buildings aren't unduly burdening particular, you know, homes or um, you know, unit typologies.

And so for us, it was actually really important that these tall buildings would be casting shadows, generally northward, which is the street, the train tracks, and the you know um union specific properties, so not onto some of those low-scale traditional residential neighborhoods of coal where we have the like high levels of involuntary displacement.

We don't want to also burden those people with undue shadows, right?

That's all.

Yep, nope, thank you.

I don't have any other questions on that.

Okay.

Oh, back.

We're gonna go back in to the public hearing.

Councilmember Lewis.

I'm so sorry.

You gotta be an auctioneer.

It that made me think about the engagement that you all spoke about.

Was there any engagement on the other side of the tracks with the GES community?

Um there was um we've reached out several times, and then we also conducted a tour uh specifically with some GES folks.

Okay, and then this uh second question I had for you all regarding the community meetings.

Um was there interpretation available at those meetings?

Yes, there was.

Beautiful, thank you.

Councilmember Watson.

Um I did a a quick back in because um one of the uh longtime um neighbors, Sandy Douglas, was having some difficulties with coming on.

I have a question for her about community process.

So, Tim, are we able to promote Sandy?

And Ms.

Douglas, um uh while you're being promoted, I hope you can hear me.

My question for you is to talk through the uh community process.

I think you were the Arnold president for 20 years, uh or maybe longer.

Uh talk me through your engagement uh in this process and your thoughts on the community informed process, Miss Douglas.

I know I exaggerated with a 20 years.

There I am.

I can hear you a little bit.

I can see you now, Ms.

Douglas.

At least I could.

We can hear you.

You can you can hear me.

We can hear you.

Thank you.

I've been trying to get on for two hours.

Um I'm Sandy Douglas, Sandra Douglas.

Um, um I love at 3725 North Gaylords Street uh in the Cole neighborhood.

I've been here just about 40 years.

Um, and I I love Cole.

Um, maybe two or three years ago I was taken on a tour of um of that site and just blown away the potential of it and what it can do for community.

It's just it's just wonderful.

And even the thought of possibly having the grocery store, having more housing is just it's so exciting.

Um, so I'll definitely support it.

I've been to a number of the neighborhood association meetings where we discussed it i'm very clear um i appreciate your um you're allowing me this time are there any do you have any questions of me miss douglas the only question i had was really your thoughts on the community process you have been uh someone who's uh been a leader in this community for a very long time for you just really to share your thoughts on the community process oh they they seem to have done everything they sent out um cars or surveys they had it seems like every meeting had a a segment of it was was about this project um in the meetings were informal they were a little bit unusual in that in that way because it allowed for all of the people to to ask questions um there were representatives from the city there uh along with the developers so it was just wide open um i don't know what range the the surveys went out but it was a lot of them because i got one in my in my mail so it's it's a it's uh an open process and not just this immediate process as i said two or three years ago i worked with a uh project in this neighborhood and in our group went over um and we were just fascinated by the the size of that site and the closeness to that little park around there so um so it's been kind of published we've been talking about it a long time so when the neighborhood association got really involved it just kind of completed it so yes I think it's been very involved involving community excellent process it was like they really wanted not just a yes or no for rezoning but they wanted people to know what was happening because sometimes you can have these things like this of this magnitude going on across the street and you just get involved in your life and never really think about it.

So they were trying to make sure everybody knew or as many people as possible would know about it.

Well Ms.

Douglas it's so good to see you thanks for uh your sticking to it and sticking on so no further questions um president pro tem.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay I'm gonna pause going once going twice.

Actually I think this is the third time the public hearing is closed comments by members of council on council bill 25107 Councilman Watson.

Uh thank you council president pro tem uh I want to first start um by um uh thanking Tony Latuga and we just had experience the Latuga effect um on the thoroughness of not only your presentation but the um uh the multiplans the five uh different plans and ensuring that we are seeing that this meets the three criteria and that those adopted plans uh were the central theme of uh this rezoning process uh I want to definitely thank um the applicants uh for your due diligence I know we began discussions on this even prior to me um running for office and getting elected um back in 2022 um we began our discussions on what is possible um and so thank you for sticking with it and as Ms.

Douglas stated uh the meetings that we had held initially um way back uh several years ago weren't just simply stating uh just tell us yes and support us it was really a process to be uh to inform community but to get informed by community and to respect them uh those uh tours that were provided to manual students, Bruce Randolph students offered to folks in the other schools surrounding, as well as uh the GS community, the Cole community, and the Clayton community, tens and tens of tours, I think were an amazing testament to your willingness to open up this process and allow for feedback.

That is not the norm in these large, extremely complex uh processes, especially one that's coming on the verge of uh I think third or fourth try of redevelopment and rezoning.

Uh oftentimes those get closed out of fear that um something's gonna come up in those meetings that will stop your ability for the rezone for moving forward.

Uh I want to thank the neighborhood association and Reed Raskin as a new uh president of the ROM and someone who's lived in the community.

Uh hosting each and every one of those meetings are not easy.

Uh those are big discussions discussing complex um information that some of the neighbors may not have had a feeling of understanding fully the context and the content, um, but you led meetings that allowed for folks to ask any question that they wanted.

I appreciated that openness and our willingness to listen to all voices.

Um Rachel and team for the community benefit uh agreement process.

Uh not all of us have uh attorneys within our neighborhoods that can help lead not just on the board but also the CBA process.

Um this was important.

We wanted to make sure that the CBA is was inclusive of all the work from the development plan to the work that Tracy's gonna be discussing next.

Um we wanted to make sure it was inclusive of all of those things, as well as employment, and we'll ask a few questions on that as well.

But your team did a fascinating job with having the skill set to do the negotiations one on one.

Then also you had the apitude, aptitude to bring it back to community, provide that complexity of that CBA, and seek feedback over and over and over.

Thank you all, and to the Cole neighbors and the Clayton neighbors that may be watching and viewing this and saying hallelujah, we're coming to the end of what was almost a decade or more of discussions, community meetings, hopes and dreams, and then oftentimes outside of this process, uh, those hopes and dreams on falling um and being broken.

Um, thank you for sticking with this.

Thank you for making sure that your voices are heard uh within this process.

I want to thank uh the family, uh Byron Lice um and his family uh for maintaining this property for throughout the um the many many decades of your family's ownership of trying to find ways in which you engage with community, opening the doors of that historic site uh to make sure that it felt um as a place that community can be involved in and always seeking that final um development opportunity uh that can activate not just the site but also reflect the neighborhood and truly provide more space for community members to be able to stick in coal.

We appreciate you and your family and your continued uh focus on this.

I know this is this process isn't done, uh many many more years of work, but you have stuck with this for decades, sir.

And I want to thank you and your family for all that you have done and the ways that you have been a steward of this, what I consider one of the cornerstones of uh Defying District 9.

Um with that uh this meets uh overarching to the letter uh the three criteria um that Tony and everyone has described, and I encourage my colleagues to join me in a yes vote uh on this rezone.

Thank you, Madam President Protev.

Thank you.

Um and thank you for um a long and thorough process, um 56 slides of thorough process.

And I think uh Councilman Watson, you might have coined the phrase the Lachuga effect.

I think we will all be using that in the future.

Um with that, madam secretary, roll call on council bill 25-1071.

Council members Sawyer, aye, I'll be the Flynn.

Gonzalez Cutieres.

Aye, Heinz.

Hi, Cashman, Lewis, Parity, aye, Torres?

Aye.

Watson.

Aye, Madam Crotem, aye.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

11 eyes.

11 ayes, council bill 25 1071 has passed.

Okay, council member Lewis, will you please put council bill 25 1079?

Approving.

Sorry, I gotta get over here, approving the proposed contract between the city and county of Denver and the Oliver Buchanan Group, LLC development of approximately 6.69 acres located at 1717 East 39th Avenue in Council District 9 on the floor for final passage.

I move that council bill 25, 1079 be placed upon final consideration and do pass.

It has been moved and seconded.

The required public hearing for Council Bill 25-1079 is open.

May we have the staff report.

Yes.

Good evening again for the record.

I'm Tony Lechuga with community planning and development.

This one is seven slides.

So yeah, I'm here to talk about the uh rock drill development agreements.

And I wanna begin by acknowledging that while I get the pleasure of standing before you to talk about it.

Uh CPD are the stewards of development agreements when it comes to land use in the city.

Um, but we work with a number of departments across the city that all weigh in on this process to put forward their department's priorities when it comes to development.

Uh and the goal is to strike a balance between what is developable and what the city needs in terms of uh outcomes from all of these different uh departments.

And so I do want to acknowledge the hard work of many of my colleagues, some of them are here tonight to answer specific questions if you have them.

So the development agreement associated with the rock drill property, in summary, has really three required pieces that we're gonna talk about individually.

Those are an affordable housing agreement, uh, agreements related to economic development and opportunity, and agreements related to landmark preservation.

And then the fourth piece is actually why we're here tonight, asking council to vote on it, and that is the vesting question.

A property requesting vesting uh must have uh approval of council.

Otherwise, development agreements are usually uh administratively negotiated and approved by city staff.

Um so let's dive into that.

So um the development agreement has an affordable housing plan, and as Laia mentioned before, and I mentioned in the previous presentation, it is a high impact development compliance plan, which is a required outcome of the process because of both of its size and because of the unique financing agreements associated with the property.

And so what this has is a requirement that 10% of all developed units must be income restricted at a maximum of 50% of the AMI, and those would be restricted for a 99 year term.

And then as Laia mentioned, we have additional requirements that require 15 of the 15% of those to be two bedroom units or larger, and at least 5% have to be three bedrooms or larger.

Um importantly here, we are expecting mixed-use development with robust commercial uh development.

So we those commercial spaces will still be subject to the standard linkage fees, and so would have to pay in additional funds to the city's general affordable housing fund.

And then one really important piece to both the city and the community is that they waive the right to the fee and loo option for compliance, which means that all of those units will be required to be built on site.

They can't simply pay their way out of building them and put that burden onto a different neighborhood or a different property.

Um I do want to notice a couple of things just for the record, and because this is a public hearing, we should make sure that the public are aware of these things.

So per the Denver revised municipal code where the standards for affordable housing live, um the base requirement for affordable housing in all development is 8% of units at 60% AMI, or 12% at an effective average of 70% AMI.

That means they could include some that are 90%, but then they'd have to balance those out with some that are about 50%.

And in order to achieve incentive heights, like this developer is asking for, EHA base says 10% at 60% AMI, or 15% at that effective average of 70% AMI.

I know I'm throwing a lot of numbers at you, but the ultimate uh reason that I bring these up is to show that a high-impact development compliance plan requires that the plan either meet or exceed the base standards.

And this does by providing 10% of units, which is equivalent to the EHA incentive height or incentive percentage, but it's requiring them at 50% AMI, which is 10% lower than is required of base EHA, and they are required to provide these two bedroom and three bedroom units.

So by requiring those additional factors, we are actually exceeding the base EHA incentives in a number of ways that are really important to this particular site and neighborhood.

The second part of the development agreement relates to economic development and opportunity, and it notes that the developer will continue to evaluate the feasibility of certain community serving uses within the project.

And that largely mirrors the requirements that Dura will present after this presentation that requires them to pursue a small business enterprise utilization plan.

So they will be required to consider what community serving uses in the form of small businesses would look like.

And then the second part of this is that prior to commencing any new construction, they will work with the Department of Economic Development and Opportunity to study the feasibility of locating a child care facility on site.

There's a desperate need for more of these throughout the city, they are often hard to locate, hard to finance, and this is a good faith effort by the developer to show that they are willing to consider what that would look like for this site.

And then the third part of the development agreement that was extremely important to city staff and the community, as you heard, is landmark preservation.

And so everything that you see on the map in purple is either a building or a building feature that they are required to preserve through the landmark designation process.

As you can see, that ends up being almost half the site, if not a little bit more, once you take into account that they will have to build a north-south road through the site and an east-west road through the site.

So what ends up being left for development potential really is sort of that western half to one-third of the site.

And so the developer will have to provide immediate short-term protections for those buildings and features.

They need to make sure that they continue to stand, and any work they do on site will have to comply with the design guidelines for Denver landmark structures districts.

And in the long term, they will have to apply for local designation of historic buildings.

That's every one of these buildings and features, and they will be designated through a single application at a single time.

And they have to do that before they are issued their certificate of occupancy for any of the new buildings within the property.

And then finally, the reason that we're here before you and asking for your vote is that they are asking for vesting.

And for anybody who doesn't understand the word, that's perfectly acceptable, it's a weird one.

Vesting means that they are gonna take pieces of the Denver zoning code and they're gonna lock them in place for a set amount of time.

And the two things that they're asking us to lock in place today are the incentive heights associated with the CMX 16 and the CMX 12 zone district, so that if five years from now we change the rules about how you achieve incentive heights, they can still comply with these rules in order to help provide some economic feasibility assurance that they can achieve those, and the open space standards.

So for a size of this site, um the Denver zoning code outlines that they have to set aside a minimum of 10% of the site for open space.

Um this again assures that if we change that five years from now, they will still be locked into what they agreed to today.

Um and they are asking for those to be locked in place for a term of 15 years.

Again, the 15 year term uh is due to the fact that there is gonna need to be some site remediation, there is gonna need to be the landmark designation process, so it might be a while before they get to those new buildings on the western half of a property.

And with that, CPD recommends that city council approve the related development agreement.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

Applicant team is here, representatives from host, uh, as well as um our landmark preservation staff.

If you have questions for anything.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have one individual signed up to speak this evening, Jesse Paris.

Please go ahead.

Go ahead.

Yes, good evening, members of the count for those watching at home.

Those in the council chambers, my name is Jeff with Sean Paris, and I'm representing from Blackstar Action Movement for self-defense.

As well as the party of power on the Northeast Denver Residence Council.

And I was not at the CPS on my fill off.

And just a good time.

Um this sounds good.

I'm not defense.

Or this neighborhood.

Thank you.

I don't see how even do anything to mitigate the already going.

In the leaf.

It's all pretty followed at this point.

Eight units.

Only 10% of them are very most 15% of them.

Oh my god.

Oh, I'm glad we got in the neighborhood for a minute.

But uh this is not affordable.

I cannot exit part of the proof of it.

Thank you.

And I'll see you on the next one.

Thank you.

There we go.

Thank you.

That concludes our speakers.

Question from council members on council.

Questions from members of council on council uh number 251079.

And we will start with Councilman Watson.

Uh thank you, Council President.

Pro Tem.

Uh John Deffenbaugh, if he's still here.

Um, do you mind coming forward?

Uh I have a quick question for you on landmark.

Um uh process, if you don't mind introducing yourself.

Um, uh hi, thank you.

My name is John Deffenbaugh representing Historic Denver.

John, do you mind providing any additional caller on kind of the landmarking historic designation process that Tony Lechuga just shared with us specific to this property?

Sure, absolutely.

I think you know, this this has been a really long time coming.

Economic conditions have changed over the duration of of this development period.

I first got to know um the Denver Rock Drill uh when I moved here in 2017, and there were wonderful images of uh new construction um safeguarding existing buildings at that time, and we thought that uh it was going to be imminent back in 2017.

Unfortunately, like so many other developments across the city that fell through.

Um, and we're just so excited about this outcome.

Local landmark designation is the gold standard of uh building preservation, it's the only tool that prevents a building from being demolished.

Uh, national and state level designation just provide honorary uh descriptions, but no actual protection.

So we are very excited about this local landmark designation, but also need to acknowledge that adaptive reuse uh through landmark designation can be more difficult.

Um retaining and adaptively reusing an existing building is infinitely more sustainable from environmental and community perspectives than you build, but we need to acknowledge that there is a cost challenge attached to that.

So that's why there are appropriate financial tools, such as the ones you're hearing about tonight, which can uh fill that cost delta.

So uh you know it's really wonderful that the community development agreement is in place, the rezoning is in place, but uh the financial piece of the jigsaw is really what we're seeing across the city, is what is making or breaking uh actual development proposals.

So, yeah, thank you for calling on me, Councilman Watson.

Uh Historic Denver and the preservation community is hugely excited to see this move forward.

It's something we've been looking forward to for frankly decades, and the financial component is absolutely key.

Thank you so much, John.

No other questions.

Uh Council President Pratem.

Thank you.

Councilmember Torres.

Thank you so much.

Is anyone here from economic development?

I'm recruited to recruited.

Represent them.

Unfortunately, the staff member who negotiated the development agreement from Dito is no longer with this.

Recently lost their job.

So great.

I will be representing them.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Tony.

And maybe for the development rep as well.

Just some information.

These two sections that are in the economic economic development and opportunity are I think the weakest part of the development agreement.

They're basically feasibility studies for two things.

Where is there going to be more flesh to these two commitments around community serving uses and child care?

Can I start with the the talking points that our staff put together?

Yeah.

So the first of them to study community serving uses really is just a reflection of the requirements that will be that Dura will put upon them.

So that's why it's sort of weak in the development agreement is that we are sort of leaning on Dura to enforce those requirements through their small business enterprise plan.

So this language is not something that like we as city staff will be enforcing in any sort of way.

And then the second, um, you know, Dito acknowledged that the language around studying the feasibility of locating a child care facility, it is not a requirement to build one or to locate one, um, but a development agreement is a voluntary process that the developer and applicant team enter into.

And so we we cannot require them to build it uh if it's not something that they agree to.

Um and so this was language that both sides found we could agree to.

And with that, I will sort of kick it to the applicant team to explain why feasibility uh is where we landed on language.

Okay.

Um, I'll speak uh at least directly to the child care facility specifically.

Um when we look at some of the existing buildings on site, which will cover, you know, as Tony said, roughly 50 to 60 percent.

Um, you know, we have a lot of environmental issues that we'll have to deal with.

Um we also, because we have just to witness the rezoning of the property, do not exactly know what the buildings will look like, at least new construction.

Um, and so until we have gone through a complete design process, be able to know exactly what those buildings are gonna look like, um, only then can we kind of determine if we can meet the requirements for a child care facility, which I'm sure you know that have some serious issues, access to outside space, they need to be so big, um, depending upon how many kids, and so with the lack of kind of information that we have currently is why those things may seem a little soft, um, but we will continue to explore it as we go down this road.

Um when it comes to um the Dura component, um, the business uh small business enterprise plan, um, did Dito bring up any um like job requirements or um like permanent jobs over a longer period of time, um, anything like that.

Uh they did not.

It's it's purely at least at this point aligned with um Dura requirements, um which those are a part of that um first source hiring.

Um so that will be not only for um construction industry jobs and um the companies that are gonna be working on site, but also um any future retailers, uh office space, um, all of those jobs will have to be posted locally first before they go anywhere else.

Um, and that's an agreement that's in place.

Um, uh I believe it it's it's either 10 years or the length of the the Dura process as well, which is 25.

Okay.

Um, just a bit of feedback for me.

It sounds like what is in the agreements are like the base requirements that would be required, even no matter what, but you're getting vesting for 15 years.

Um, and uh like that there just seems to be some imbalance there in my eyes.

So the other thing that I want to make sure that you know we kind of bring to light, it's been touched on a little bit, but um the landmarking and the adaptive reuse and the um reuse of the buildings on site um is incredibly significant.

Um we're talking about potentially, I I I have not double checked this, but I believe it is um the largest historic adaptive reuse project um since Union Station.

Um this is a massive community benefit that I think we're all really excited about having and kind of opening it up and giving it back to the community.

Um, and that will also provide jobs, uh open to access uh public space um and really just have some really fantastic benefits to the public.

I appreciate all that.

What's inside the buildings I think still matters to you?

Council members, is that a question?

Are we we're in question, right?

Or no, we're not in okay.

We're in question.

Yeah, we're we're no questions about the development agreement.

Um so it what's inside those buildings is also a benefit to the community.

But what's local, what's locally sourced, what are local hire, are those things that are in the Dura agreement, but not in the development agreement.

Um that is correct.

They are in the Dura Agreement.

Um, there are also some components of that in the community benefits agreement as well.

The local hire?

Yes.

Okay, all right, thank you.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh, pro tem.

Thank you.

Um Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you.

And thank you, uh Council Member Torres, because I had those exact same questions.

I only have one question for you regarding the um the vesting.

Can you give me an example of when you all have made an exception similar to this previously?

Yeah, so vesting has um is not something that comes up often, but it has come up with these large-scale developments, um, where we anticipate um a longer than normal construction timeline due to you know burdens like you know uh site remediation and you know the landmarking preservation process.

Um so for example, um the the most recent one I can think of is like the the Ball Arena project um had a request for a vesting period that was um something like 25 years, um and a lot of that did have to do with also asking for like can we maintain the incentive heights, can we maintain some of the open space standards for that 25 year period because they anticipate sort of a 30-year build-out timeline?

Um so it is a tool that's used rarely, um, but one that we found to be appropriate under these circumstances given the onerous nature of the preservation process.

Okay, thank you.

That's it.

Thank you.

Um, I do have a question um from your slide about the development agreement for the affordable housing plan.

Um there's percentages in here.

Do we have an estimate as to how many units we anticipate coming?

Yes, the uh that that's part of the process for negotiating these things that um that Laya and her team do.

Um but the applicant team when they put forward an initial idea was somewhere between potentially 700 and 800 total units on site.

Um so we would see somewhere between 70 and 80 income restricted units, um, and then the percentages associated with two and three bedroom units.

Um but I also want to note that um our rules require um a proportionate number of bedrooms um in the market rate dwelling units.

So if for whatever reason they decide to build uh significant number of two bedroom market rate units that is in excess of 15% of the total units, they have to match that in the income restricted units as well.

So this these numbers really are a minimum of that number.

So, uh so if I understand correctly, if they're building, if they're doing one of the buildings or a tower, they can't, you wouldn't just build a tower of all um uh market rate and then build another tower of income or income restricted units, it would all be combined together in one building.

Um so that is true.

Um they have to be integrated into the building.

But um the point that I was trying to get across is that the 15% of bedroom un income restricted units uh that have to be two bedrooms, that 15% is a minimum.

So and that's in the income restricted.

If in the market rate, it turns out that 20% of all market rate units have two bedrooms, they actually have to up that in the income restricted units as well so that they are proportional.

Okay, thank you.

All right.

The public hearing is closed.

Comments by members of council on council bill 25-1079.

And we will start with Councilman Watson.

Uh, thank you so much, uh, Council President Pro Tem uh for this um uh uh this uh development plan and the discussion on what's included.

Uh one of the things I want to share that I I find um really helpful is that this speaks to and ties in the community benefit agreement as well.

As Council Member Torres asked uh on um the requirements for employment uh to ensure that we have um folks who live and work in uh these neighborhoods actually not only helping to build um this site, but actually long-term employment, and that those are tied in.

Um, and as we speak to the very specific um small business um enterprise requirements, the um that the door plan also has that will also have an overlay on top of very specific uh community benefits um that the community required, the community negotiated, the community agreed to, within as a development plan, very specific uh requirements for what types of um factors um uh retail, etc., can be in this very um uh catalytic development, and then overlaying what what we will be discussing discussing next next, which is the Dora plan.

I think this is a complex but smart um plan that ties to each other over a long term, providing affordability, providing work um for folks that live in the community, not just for development but for the long term, and also insisting on access to open space, the commitment to additional uses, um, and reflecting on the need for child care, reflecting on the need for a grocery.

Um I think this um fills uh a lot of gaps that some other development projects may not be as explicit in um identifying.

Um I want to thank the team, thank Tony once again and everyone else involved for your due diligence, and I encourage my uh colleagues to join me in supporting um this proposal.

Thank you, madam secretary.

Roll call on council bill 25-1079.

Councilmember Sawyer, aye.

Albidas.

Aye.

Lynn.

Aye.

Gonzalez Cutieris.

Aye.

Heinz.

Cashman.

Aye.

Lewis.

Aye.

Parody?

Aye.

Torres, aye.

Watson.

Aye.

Madam Pro Tem.

Aye.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

Eleven ayes.

Eleven ayes.

Council Bill 25-1079 has passed.

Councilmember Lewis, will you please put Council Bill 25-1222?

Approving the rock drill urban redevelopment plan, the creation of the rock drill urban redevelopment area, and the rock drill property tax increment area and sales tax increment area on the floor for final passage.

I move I move that council bill 25122 be placed upon final consideration and do pass.

Great.

It has been moved and seconded.

The required public hearing for council bill 25-122 is open.

May we have the staff report.

Thank you.

Good evening, Madam President Pro Tem and members of City Council.

My name is Tracy Huggins, and I'm the executive director of the Denver Urban Renewal Authority here this evening requesting council's approval of the Rock Drill Urban Redevelopment Plan to facilitate the development of the Rock Drill Urban Redevelopment Area.

As most of you know, when I come up here, I'm usually quite scripted.

Um, given that you've heard an awful lot about what this project is about.

I'm gonna have a very, very light touch on most of the slides that I have here, uh, but really do want to be able to call out those items that are specific to the urban renewal plan itself.

So, as we've already been through the previous presentations, you are very familiar with the uh location.

I do want to note that the size of the urban redevelopment area is slightly larger than the size of the property that was just rezoned.

That's because the urban redevelopment area picks up the adjacent right-of-way to the same area that you uh just affirmatively rezoned.

We've already been through the history of the site, so we are not going to touch on that again.

But I do want to speak for just a moment as to the importance of the condition study and one of the findings that council needs to make in approving the plan, and that is the finding of blight.

So we did undertake a study that was completed in May of 2024.

I do want to note that the boundaries are almost exactly the same as what the rezoning had, again, with the exception of including the adjacent right-of-way, specifically wanting to note that the study area did not include the condominium project that was already um previously described as being excluded from the rezoning.

So the results of that condition study did find that there were five of the statutorily defined factors of blight, both present and limiting the developability of the site.

Those include deteriorated or deteriorating structures, deterioration of site or other improvements, buildings that are unsafe or unhealthy for people to live or work in, environmental contamination of buildings or property, again, as described in the earlier presentation, as well as the existence of substantial physical, physical underutilization, and vacancy of the site's buildings or other improvements.

The finding of blight is a legislative finding by City Council based upon the condition study, and that condition study has been previously provided to council.

The objectives of the urban redevelopment plan are to reduce or eliminate the blighted conditions and to stimulate the continued growth and development of the area.

The other key objectives of the urban redevelopment plan are to encourage the reuse of existing buildings where appropriate, including historic preservation and adaptive reuse, to promote a diverse sustainable neighborhood economy, including mixed use and commercial development opportunities, to encourage the participation of existing property owners within the area in the redevelopment of their property, to assist the city in cultivating complete and inclusive neighborhoods, and to achieve the goals as outlined in the adopted city plans.

As you've heard an awful lot about tonight, there is a significant emphasis on the adaptive reuse and historic preservation of the existing sawtooth structures, as well as the creation of a mixed-use development to include market rate and affordable housing, retail dining, office space, and a grocery.

Actually, it's on this slide.

I just needed to advance it.

So Tony commented on this just a moment ago, but I do want to draw your attention to both of the schematics on the left-hand side of the screen as well as the uh that on the right-hand side, starting with the one on the right hand side.

So, from a color standpoint, again, everything that is shaded in the dark gray is intended to be adaptively reused.

So that is really where the focus of the historic preservation and adaptive reuse is going to occur, with the western portion of the site being largely demolished to make way for the other vertical uh development.

If you can see on the bottom here, it does describe the proposed outcomes for the site, including uh 700 to 800 residential units, 40,000 to 60,000 square feet of office space, 100,000 to 150,000 gross square feet of retail space, potential for hotel rooms, uh parking uh to accommodate the development on the site, as well as 71,000 gross square feet of publicly accessible open space.

I know that was questioned a couple of times previously.

So just did want to speak to the development outcomes that are currently being contemplated.

We've spent an awful lot of time talking about the project and the area's conformance with the various city plans.

Again, if you can think about sort of a triangle with uh plan 2040 at the base, then further refined by Blueprint Denver, then further refined by each of the neighborhood plans that Tony already spoke to, and then the urban renewal plan sitting really on the top of that and being able to pull out the specific uh components of each of those as defined by the project that is looking to be undertaken.

That's how we can get comfortable that this urban redevelopment plan is in conformance with the uh city city approved plans.

Do you want to note that this was presented to uh the Denver Planning Board who voted unanimously to find the plan to be in conformance with plan 2040 and its adopted supplements, and a letter to that effect has been submitted as part of the record of this hearing.

Tony already did a fantastic job in summarizing the equity concepts that are found in Blueprint Denver specific to this area and how the development program seeks to address those.

And this is a project that is in fact requesting tax increment assistance, and so part of the plan will be uh the approval to use both property and sales tax increment in order to address the challenges that the site is experiencing.

So this is a total project budget currently of just under 585 million dollars.

As you can see, the projected projected use of tax increment would be the reimbursement of eligible project costs up to just over 39 million dollars.

I want to call out that the vast majority of those amounts that we would be looking to reimburse are about 32.5 million dollars or 83 percent of the total amount of the tax increment that is being eligible for reimbursement is attributable to the rehabilitation of the historic buildings.

So, as John noted previously, it is so important that the historic preservation occur, but it is challenging and it is also expensive, and that's really where the tax increment is coming in, in large part to address.

The financing gap, like I said, will be addressed through the reimbursing of these costs through both property and sales tax increment generated from the area, and that we would not be in a position to capture that for more than the statutorily limited 25 years.

Another significant finding is that Dura has entered into agreements with the other property taxing entities because we are requesting the use of property tax increment.

So those entities that we have entered into the agreements with, I'm gonna start at the top of the slide, include you, the city, through the city cooperation agreement, which was uh which will be voted on at the conclusion of this public hearing.

And I want to really use this as an opportunity to call out that not only does the cooperation agreement provide for the city's collection of and then remitting to Dura of the incremental taxes, but it is in this document that the city requires Dura to impose our Dura's uh programmatic requirements on the redeveloper.

So there is the connection here through the cooperation agreement with Dura that we will include those policies.

And I want to take just a moment to step through each of those as well because they've each been talked about, and I want to make sure that there's clarity on their application.

So our first source hiring program is the program that requires that any new job that is created as a result of the project for a period not to be less than 10 years, be first made available to low-income Denver residents.

We do this through a partnership with the Denver Housing Authority, who uh is able to, with the information that is provided by the redeveloper, take those new job opportunities, uh put them out into their network through a variety of sources to be able to ensure that those first opportunities are made available to low-income Denver residents.

Our SBE program is our small business enterprise utilization program.

It requires that 23% of the total project budget, exclusive of the land acquisition, be made available to qualified small business enterprises.

This is on the construction side.

So the developer is required to put together an implementation plan that they submit to us with the intention that if they if they follow that plan, they will meet that goal of being able to have, in this case, if I'm doing my math about right, about 120 million dollars of contracting opportunities be made available to qualified SBEs.

Project Art.

Dura's project art program requires that 1% of the amount that we Dura are committing to reimburse would be used for art that is publicly accessible within the project area.

So again, it's one percent of the 39.1 million dollars that we would be committing to reimburse.

And then as it's noted here, prevailing wage, and then parenthetically as appropriate.

That is a requirement that if there would be improvements that would otherwise be subject to prevailing wage because the city would be undertaking them, you can't circumvent the requirement for prevailing wage simply because you're working through Dura.

I don't believe at this point that there are any such costs included in this project program, but if there were, it would be subject to prevailing wage.

Then to the Dura City Cooperation Agreement, we have entered into an agreement with the Denver Public Schools, who is allowing us to collect and fully utilize the full amount of the incremental taxes attributable to their mill levy.

They did uh undertake an impact study and has and they have concluded that the monetary impact to them is approximately 1.3 million dollars, and so that will be paid to them over the term that we are collecting the tax increment area beginning in 2027, or collecting the tax increment beginning in 2027.

We've also entered into an agreement with urban drainage and flood control district, who is allowing us to collect and retain all of the increment attributable to their mill levy.

And then we have also entered into an agreement with the Rhino Business Improvement District, where very consistently with whenever we overlap with the business improvement district, any incremental taxes attributable to the bids mill levy, we will, upon collection, remit over to them so that we can continue to work in parallel with our efforts and theirs.

But because it is contemplated that they will, in fact, put themselves in a position where they are able to do that.

At that time, we will enter into the agreement with them.

So now to the listing of other legislative findings that I just need to make sure are read into the record here.

So those in uh we've already talked about that it constitutes a blighted area.

Also, are asking council to find that the boundaries of the area have been drawn as narrowly as feasible to accomplish the planning and development objectives of the plan, that if any individuals or families are displaced, or if any eligible business concerns are permanently displaced as a result of the plan, that a feasible method exists for the relocation of those individuals, families, or business concerns in accordance with the Urban Renewal Act.

That written notice of this public hearing has been provided to all property owners, residents, and owners of business concerns within the urban redevelopment area, and written notice of this hearing was mailed on August 12th of 2025, at least 30 days prior to this hearing.

That no more than 120 days have passed since the first public hearing before City Council on the plan.

This is the first consideration of an urban redevelopment plan for this site, and thus the city council has not previously failed to approve an urban redevelopment plan for this site.

The plan will forward maximum opportunity consistent with the sound needs of Denver as a whole for the rehabilitation or redevelopment of the area by private enterprise.

The plan does not consist of any area of open land which is to be developed for residential or non-residential uses, nor does it include any agricultural land.

The city and county of Denver can adequately finance, and agreements are in place to finance any additional city and county of Denver infrastructure and services required to serve development within the area for the period during which the incremental property taxes are paid to Dura.

And the plan allows for cooperative agreements between the city and Dura to address additional infrastructure requirements should they arise.

And then finally, no acquisition by eminent domain is authorized by this plan.

It has been long requested of council that all items concerning a project come to you at the same time for consideration.

While you may hear some of the same things several times as each of these presentations have progressed, I do think it is very, very helpful and very clear and indicative of the coordination that has occurred between and among the city, the developer, the community, and lastly, the urban renewal authority to be able to take what is currently a while lovely, very underutilized site and really seek to transform it into the very exciting mixed use, historically preserving, adaptively reusing project that it is intended to be.

With that, I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you.

We have three individuals signed up to speak this evening.

Yes, hello.

Thank you so much uh for allowing me to speak this evening very much in favor of this project.

I first toured the site about 10 years ago and was just taken by the character and the history.

And I know there have been a series of uh red lights, green lights, and it's been an evolution to get to this point.

Um I am speaking as the interim um executive director of the rhino arts district um and uh the bid.

Um, and a couple weeks ago I ended up touring with with Byron and with Brian.

Um, and it just brought back so many memories of 10 years earlier of being in that space.

Um, I after the tour um did my due diligence and called Reed um at the at the Cole RNO, and was kind of taken aback uh at how full-throated of a support and how um impressed he was of the engagement and the community outreach process that um that the developer had gone through.

Um, and I uh I really took that took that to heart.

Um I think this is gonna be a uh a very transformative project um for the area.

Um, and I can't wait to see this really come to life.

Um I think the developer has been very intentional in how they have thought about this project, and I think that mix of affordable units and retail and placemaking um is uh is really going to um really be a game changer for for that area.

Um so hereby I I give my full throated support um and can't wait to see this all come together.

Thank you so much for the time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is John Deffenba Deffenbaugh.

Uh hi, thank you.

Uh John Deffenba again, uh historic Denver.

Um, most of what I was going to say is covered in my comments and previously called upon.

But what I did just want to offer is that I could talk all night about the benefits of building preservation to society and to communities, but those that is only deliverable if the economics of preservation stack up.

And from the many previous attempts and failed attempts at redeveloping this site, it does feel to us that uh in this case what you're hearing about tonight is very necessary to enable the preservation of this site, and Historic Denver is supportive of this proposal.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jesse Paris.

Yes, last one of the night.

Bells in the council chambers.

My name is Michelle Paris, represented from Star Act.

Positive asking commercial sustaining.

As well as the Unity Party or Colorado, the North Denver residence council, North Denver, the rear, police, for the list goes on and on.

Five district known as the uh was disturbed on this time.

Um again, I cannot cool with this resolve tonight.

Um, this is very ambiguous or salacious, how you uh put this all together.

I would like to know how this really will benefit us.

I really don't see it benefiting us.

Yeah, maybe we read it.

Maybe we read it.

Oh, you need to reread it again.

You need to reread that community benefits agreement.

Um study or whatever that equity study.

Oh, I don't see how this is gonna better the the neighborhood.

I really don't, I don't think I'm gonna stop these information that's already going on in coal.

I don't think it's better the public answer of those that are off this neighborhood home for over 15 are recording years.

I'll see how this is going to be in the least.

About what guarantee is gonna be affordable, 50% AMI, 2% of the US, 50% AMI, the 75% or 70%, 15%.

If somebody can just explain to me how to public interest, I would really appreciate it because I just see another Denargo Village or the Narvo market with this redevelopment.

So I can tell you that's change your mind.

I go through with it anyway.

I put another recording and then the final now on the coffin.

I'll see y'all next month.

That concludes our speakers' questions from members of council on council bill twenty five twelve twenty-two.

We'll start with council member Flynn.

Thank you, Madam President Pro Tem.

Tracy, could you tell us a little more about why about 56% of the anticipated eligible costs are dedicated to or assigned to the rehabilitation of the Southeast Sawtooth building?

That's exponentially more than any of the other um scopes.

Is that because of the size of that structure or but the whole site is is kind of large as well.

That seems like a lot in that one building.

Is there something about that building that if I may I'm gonna try to if you still see this?

That was on slide 10.

So again, the the scope and scale of those buildings that are going to be preserved is significant.

Yes.

Almost almost half of the site.

Um and I'm also going to uh look to the developer to answer some of these questions as well.

But our experience in in addressing other historic buildings, particularly buildings like this, that quite frankly, we have not had the opportunity to work on those saw sawtooth buildings with the uh the really unique um roofline as well as the glass components.

Anytime you are needing to address these historic buildings, particularly those that have been vacant for a good number of years, can be very expensive to make sure that you are doing everything necessary as you are going in to make those adaptive um reuse improvements.

Uh do it the right way.

It is an expensive undertaking.

So it will be roofs, it will be the exterior skin, as well as addressing any of the additional superstructure necessary to make sure that the buildings are operating as as they are ultimately intended to be.

And if the developer would like to add anything more to that, you should feel free to join me.

Um no, I don't have too much to add.

I just want to kind of reiterate what Tracy said.

Uh the sawtooth building is I believe it's about 77,000 square feet.

Um there's a lot of environmental contamination in that building and some support and structural support issues.

Um, and so that kind of represents what you're seeing there, I believe.

Okay.

Is that true about the southeast building, but not about the others?

So this is different than the others.

It's just such an enormous allocation, more than 56% of the total.

And I actually I think if you look at the distribution of the square footage and the costs associated with it, it's about in line.

Okay.

Is the are the eligible costs applicable only to the historic buildings or to the entire 6.6 acres?

So the costs that we are looking at are environmental remediation that can occur across the site.

Demolition and abatement.

Exactly.

So those those may be across the site.

Okay.

But again, the the vast majority of the costs are specific to the adaptive reuse and historic preservation.

Okay.

That just seems rather high on one building.

And I've been in almost all these buildings in the past.

It just seems a lot for that one building.

And again, just like we we talked about on the project that we brought forward last week.

What we seek to do is to um take the total development budget, identify what the financing gap is, and in this case it was just over the 39 million dollars, and then really seek to make sure that the costs that we are reimbursing are as directly attributable to those factors of blight, so that we can demonstrate the mitigation of those blighting conditions as well as those that have the public purpose.

So we are very intentional in this instance where we are taking those costs from the development budget and putting them into these categories.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

That's all, Madam President.

Thank you.

Councilmember Hines.

Thank you, Madam President Pretem.

This is actually for uh Councilmember Watson.

Um, I think Director Huggins had a compelling um presentation.

However, it was lacking the latuga effect.

Uh thank you, Madam President Brotin.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Torres.

Thank you.

I'll just um clarify that was a comment, not a question.

Right.

It just got on.

Um Tracy, um, couple clarifications.

The small business enterprise percentage, I think you said 23%.

Was that evaluated based on something specific to the site, or is that a number that Dura always uses?

That is Dura's standard um baseline requirement, that that is that is the goal that the developer is to uh do everything they can to both achieve and ideally exceed is 23% of the total project budget exclusive of land.

Okay, thank you.

The um prevailing wage component, what would it apply to if it was on this site?

So on this one again, I I can imagine that there is one, but let me see if I can make one up just to say what it is.

If uh if there were publicly owned streets that the city was requiring the developer to do, but the city would normally do that.

The city can't say, Oh, you don't have to pay prevailing wage because you all are doing it, as opposed to the city doing it.

And it really is more of the regional infrastructure, more so than any local infrastructure.

Do we still see that kind of stuff even with Met districts?

I feel like Metro districts handle a lot of that.

That is that is absolutely accurate, and there are requirements most typically in the service plans of metropolitan districts that they have to follow prevailing wage.

So it was just really when we put together the Dura prevailing wage just to make sure that there wasn't a loophole that could otherwise result in it not being addressed.

Super helpful.

Okay, thank you so much.

The um uh as far as any job requirements, it's the first source that Dura has the agreement on for um that sounds like jobs to build the site as opposed to permanent jobs later.

It's actually it's both.

Both of them, and what we really find is that it is those permanent jobs that are much more likely to have someone uh through the first source program be eligible and actually get those jobs.

So it is it is both, but the vast majority of the success that we see is in those permanent jobs.

And that agreement exists as long as the urban renewal area is in place.

It exists for a period of not less than 10 years from when we execute the redevelopment agreement.

I will add that there have been some projects that have found it to be such a great resource for them that they keep participating even though they have no contractual requirement.

Okay, okay.

Want to make sure you heard that.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Pro Tem.

May I also add that that was one of the benefits of having, or not one of the benefits, one of the um less than desirable outcomes of having all of these presentations is I had to follow Tony.

So yeah, thanks.

Thanks so much for calling out.

Tracy, I think you did a great job.

Thank you, Councilwoman.

Um, I actually did have one more question.

Um, Tracy, the TIFF amount versus the reimbursable costs.

Yes.

Um, is that is the difference the amount you're paying DPS?

No, what's the 1.7 million?

What we typically do in the redevelopment agreement is we will have a list of eligible costs that always exceeds the amount that we are willing to reimburse.

That allows the redeveloper to move between line items, and if something comes in less and something comes over, it gives that flexibility.

So that list is always greater than what we ultimately um commit to reimburse.

Okay, so they can't max out those numbers in each of those areas all at once.

No, okay, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Perte.

Thank you.

Um I did have a question about the Dura DPS intergovernmental agreement.

Can you explain a little bit more about the 1.3 the impact to is it the collection of the money or impact to community?

I'm trying to figure out exactly that I have impact right.

Like what are we impacting?

So when whenever we are using property tax increment, uh, we have both a requirement and even before it was a requirement.

We always work with DPS to make sure we understood that the use of the tool would not um impact their ability to deliver services.

And so the way that that works now is we notice uh DPS and say we are looking to use property tax increment to support a project that has the expected outcome of 700 to 800 residential units.

We also include in there the expectation as far as the uh type of housing, whether it is for rent or for sale, as well as the level of affordability.

DPS then takes that information and they calculate a student yield, if you will, that the um the site is expected to deliver.

They lay that up against the capacity of the schools in the area, and then they also do a mathematic um uh determination of uh that is tied not only just to the student yield but also the value of the property, and calculating that total total impact.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

All right, the public hearing is closed.

Comments by members of council on council bill twenty-five twelve twenty-two, and we will start with council member Watson.

Uh, thank you so much, Council President Pro Tem and Tracy.

Um thank you so much.

Once again, for this process.

Uh your team walks through not just your Dura um uh requirements.

Uh you sit through and work through the entire process from end to end.

So each of these steps uh your team has been engaged in, which is um a lot of of work that you and your uh folks in your uh department uh do, and uh it is appreciated.

Uh the thoughtfulness of the uh the workforce piece um and the SBE requirements uh once again uh provides an opportunity for this catalytic uh development to ensure that our communities specifically the coal community has benefits well beyond any um stated community benefit agreement, as well as it has the power of your office and your department, no matter who's in there, uh, to enforce those requirements.

Um I think the the SMART process that you've done with the DPS mill levy provides the opportunity once again for that DPS to not miss any of that property tax and for them to continue to build and provide support for our student and student leaders in the years to come as this development continues.

Um this is another one of those uh that I consider to be a very intricate but smart process, a very involved community uh process.

The many, many, many briefings that you provide in my office and myself.

Um, I appreciate it.

Uh I appreciate your collaborative process with the developers as well as with the applicant and the neighborhood attending community meetings to make sure the neighborhood understands the importance of your process um as an umbrella to all the good work that they're doing.

So thank you so much for your your leadership on this and your presentation tonight, making it very clear why your role is important.

Um I encourage uh my colleagues to join me in supporting uh this agreement that really uh roots the final step of ensuring that this project um as John Deffenbah describes adaptive reuse is great.

We all want it in this development and many others, but that sometimes is the part that that breaks some of this um development from occurring is the lack of availability of funds or the capital stack to be able to meet the needs for what's being proposed.

Uh Dura and her and Tracy and her team is providing that in this presentation, and I encourage my colleagues to join me in supporting this.

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem.

Thank you.

Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill 25-1222, Councilmember Sawyer.

Aye, Albivarez.

Aye, Flynn.

Aye.

Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Heinz.

Aye.

Cashman.

Lewis.

Aye.

Parity.

Aye.

Torres.

Aye.

Watson.

Aye.

Madam Pro Tem.

Aye.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

10 ayes.

10 ayes.

Council Bill 25-1222 has passed.

Madam Secretary, please put on, please put Council Bill 25, 1221 on our screens.

Council resolution 251221, a bill for an ordinance approving a proposed cooperation agreement between the city and county of Denver and Denver and Denver Urban Renewal Authority for the Rock Drill Property Tax Increment Area and Sales Tax Increment Area to establish among other matters the parameter for a tax increment financing with incremental property and sales taxes in Council District 9.

Councilmember Lewis, will you please put Council Bill 25 1221 on the floor for final passage?

I move that council bill 1225 1221 be placed upon final consideration and due pass.

It has been moved and seconded.

Comments by members of council.

Thank God.

Anybody?

Okay.

Madam Secretary, roll call on Council Bill Twenty Five Twelve Twenty One.

Councilmember Sawyer.

Aye.

Albitrez.

Aye.

Flynn.

Aye.

Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Aye.

Heinz?

Aye.

Cashman.

Aye.

Lewis.

Aye.

Parity.

Aye.

Torres.

Aye.

Watson.

Aye.

Madam Pro Tem.

Aye.

Madam Secretary, close the voting and announce the results.

Eleven ayes.

Eleven ayes.

Council Bill 25-1221 has passed.

There being no further business before this body, this meeting is adjourned.