Welcome back to this biweekly meeting of the South Platte River Committee of Denver City Council.

Join us for the discussion as the South Platte River Committee starts now.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to the Wednesday September.

October 8th.

It was budget week.

Meeting of the South Platte River Committee.

My name is Kevin Flynn.

I represent Southwest Denver's District 2, the headwaters of the Platte in the city and county of Denver.

I'm chairing this committee on an interim basis because our chair and co-chair are uh not present in the room.

Um I don't know if one of them is online, but we'll find out.

Uh do we have anyone online?

Oh, no.

All right.

Thank you.

Let's uh do introductions of other committee members and start over here on the right.

Chris Hines, Denver's Perfect 10, home of about 207 contiguous feet of the platform.

And that's it.

Rora Alvidres, Lucky District 7.

We have more than that.

Absolutely.

Uh Darrell Watson, Councilmember, representing the fine district nine.

Thank you.

It's a good thing we don't weight our votes on the committee in accordance with the length of the reach in the district.

Actually, and Councilman Watson, you represent the outflow from Denver.

I am on South Platte somewhere.

There you go.

We have uh one action item and one briefing.

Uh, and we have one item on consent, uh, one of the standard uh uh dedications of city uh parcels, and it's part of the right-of-way down on uh Evans and uh bannock, I think.

Uh that'll go forward if no one pulls it off.

Uh let's start with the action item.

Uh Will Prince from uh CPD.

You are presenting us with a rezoning in Council District 3 on North Grove.

Yes, uh good afternoon, council.

I'm gonna present the application for rezoning at 890 North Grove Street.

It's a request from ESUD to ERX 3.

Uh today we'll go over the request, the location and context, the process, and the review criteria.

Uh, this property highlighted in red in the middle there is 6,250 square feet.

It is a vacant corner lot.

Again, the request is a rezoned from urban edge single unit D to urban edge residential mixed use, three stories, with the goal to develop townhouses.

Uh, this site is uh adhered to the West Area Plan rezoning memo that was released just about a year ago and has a concurrent affordable housing plan as part of this rezoning uh application.

Continue on to the location and context.

This is located in Council District 3 with Council Member Torres and is located in the Villa Park neighborhood.

Uh again, the existing zoning is ESUD, which is the majority of the area, uh, right up against EMX3 along federal, and there's ERX3 further down just on the same block of this site.

As for the existing context, uh for the land use again, this site is vacant, and the majority of the area is single unit.

Uh we have a mix of industrial and commercial along federal and uh public quasi public with Eagleton Elementary down the down the street on 9th Avenue.

As for the building form and scale, you can see the vacant lot here on the upper left corner, and the typical one one and a half stories residentials along the street.

Again, this site is uh applicable for the West Area Plan rezoning uh rezoning implementation memo, and that memo outlines issues related to displacement, increased development pressures, and implementation of the West adopted plans in West Denver.

And from that, uh the key point is that potential rezonings are not consistent with further intent of plans until further stabilization programs, tools, and regulatories are in place.

Uh we look at this as an interim uh tool until a further citywide approach is uh defined.

And with that, uh with the memo and with this site, uh we have a concurrent affordable housing plan that the applicant is voluntarily signed with host.

Uh, this includes a negotiated alternative to the mandatory affordable housing requirements.

And the housing plan requires that the greater of 20% of the units are at 110% of the area media income, or essentially in this case, one of the five units, and this income-restricted unit will have at least three bedrooms.

Um we can review this further, and we also have a representative from host to discuss this as if there are any further questions.

Continue on to the process.

Uh, this received its informational notice in August and was heard last week at the planning board public hearing with the recommendation for approval.

We're here today at the South Platte River Committee, and we are tentative for the November 10th City Council public hearing.

As for public comments, there have been two received.

One was with the application itself and support.

And we had one comment of moderate support with concerns of height that was received last week.

You hopefully should have received that updated.

But there have no been there have been no RO comments to date.

Continue on to the review criteria.

I review each of the criteria starting with consistency with adopted plans.

And for this site, we have Comp Plan 2040, Blueprint Denver, and the West Area Plan.

This rezoning will meet several goals of the Comprehensive Plan 2040, including equitable, affordable, and inclusive, strong and authentic neighborhoods, as well as environmental resistance resistance, resilient.

By increasing additional housing units and allowing more building forms, especially on an infill location where many are accessible, such as transit and nearby schools, and so we find this uh applicable for comprehensive plan 2040.

Continue on to Blueprint Denver.

This is identified as urban edge, which contains elements of suburban and urban context.

Small multi-unit residential and commercial areas are typically embedded in one and two unit residential areas, and block patterns are generally regular with a mix of alleys along the way.

As for future place type, this is identified as high medium residential, which is a mix of mid-scale and multi-unit residential options.

Some neighborhoods serving mixed uses may be appropriate, especially along arterial streets.

And buildings are generally up to five stories in height and provide a transition.

As for future street type, ninth and grove, the immediate sites are uh local street type.

And also with Blueprint Denver growth strategy, this is identified as all other areas of the city with 10% of job growth and 20% of housing growth by 2040.

And lastly, with Blueprint Denver, we have some additional policies that speak to reducing vulnerability to displacement.

And we find that in particular, housing policy number two, diversify housing options by exploring opportunities to integrate missing middle housing into low and low medium residentials areas fits this rezoning goal.

And this paired with the affordable housing plan is consistent with the blueprint policies and recommendations.

Moving on finally to the West area plan.

This was adopted in 2023.

Following blueprint, this is also identified as urban edge for the context and high medium residential for the future place.

And this has a recommendation of up to five stories in the West Area Plan.

And as mentioned with the memo and without the plant with the plan, there are additional priorities out of this rezoning will meet, including uh E2 to explore strategies to affordable housing is available everywhere by implementing approaches that promote a diversity of affordable housing options within all neighborhoods in new development, as well as policy E3, expand diversity of housing types and affordability to support households of different sizes, ages, incomes in all neighborhoods.

So with those policies as well as the affordable housing plan, we find this rezoning is consistent with the planned recommendations.

And continue on to the final review criteria, public interest.

This will benefit all Denverites by uh providing uh affordable housing and uh providing uh will help implement excuse me, we'll help implement our citywide plans, including the West Area Plan, and is also consistent with the neighborhood contact zone district purpose and intent and will follow the regular regulations of ERX 3.

So, based on the information provided in the staff report and provided here today, CPD recommends to move the application forward, finding all review criteria have been met.

Uh, happy to answer further questions, and the applicant is available virtually.

Oh, okay, thank you.

Thank you, Will.

Um, before we go to questions, I just want to welcome council members uh Torres and Parity, who are now attending virtually.

So welcome.

Uh and uh Councilmember Torres has uh first questions.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Hi, have five folks.

Um thank you, Will.

Um, what's the applicant's name?

My questions are probably be for him.

Uh uh Charles Keener.

Mr.

Keener, are you in?

Or Jesse Donovan.

So they're promoting him now.

Okay.

Great.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, Council Person Torres, how are you?

Hi, good.

How are you?

Um, curious if you can um just give me a little rundown of um uh ownership of the property.

Do you own it already?

No, we do not.

So we are we are acting as applicant for the property owner.

Okay, and who will build?

Uh we don't know that yet.

Um, all right.

Yeah, we're well, the our current project will kind of dictate what happens on this particular lot.

So yeah.

Um for the zoning that you're seeking, which is Rx, um you were you've you've rezoned a couple other properties in the West area, is that right?

Correct.

Yeah, we did the one the caddy corner lot uh on eighth and grove.

Was that one Rx as well?

Yes, it was Rx3.

Okay, okay, thank you so much.

Um, and tell me a little bit.

I know that one on Grove, um you had uh particular design in mind.

Do you already have that in mind for this property?

Yeah, it would it'll be more or less identical.

The lots are you know, it's almost the same exact situation.

Uh the lock configuration is a little bit different with right-of-way dedication, but the product that we're planning with the affordable housing component is exactly the same.

Got it.

Okay, thank you.

Was it five or four units?

Five.

Okay, and will they all face um ninth or will some face three will face ninth, two will face grove.

Okay, yeah.

Thank you for that.

Um, and can you remind me or is if is host available just to remind me what the housing commitment is?

Yes, uh John.

John, hold on, we'll have someone up here.

Introduce yourself.

Hi everyone, everyone.

I'm John Collarelli with the Department of Housing Stability.

The Affordable Housing Plan here is identical to the ones that we had at uh 8th and 5th, so it's 20% of units at 110% AMI.

They cannot pay the fee in loot to get out of this commitment, and it will be a three-bedroom unit at least.

Okay, excellent.

Um, and just really quickly, um, outreach that was done for neighbors.

What did that look like?

Um we are knowing as well as uh kind of the status of our other project uh concurrently.

Uh I forget the last meeting.

I don't have the exact date when we were there, but it was a couple months ago.

Okay, um, and then neighbor conversations, anything because nothing's been there for quite a while.

So I was unsure if um folks were expecting anything.

Yeah, other than what Will had presented in his presentation, we haven't had any other feedback from the neighborhood.

Uh it's been positive.

Oh, we did have it.

We did hand out leaflets.

That is right.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um thank you so much, uh, Mr.

Chair.

I don't have any other questions.

Thank you, uh Councilmember.

Um, next up is uh Councilmember Alvipernes.

Thank you, committee chair.

Um, I do have a question that I've been wondering.

I was looking at the property online, and it doesn't have sidewalks on part of it.

And I know typically any new development is required to put in sidewalks, but with the new sidewalk fee, does that become our responsibility?

Or are we still requiring people to pay the sidewalk fee and to put in a new sidewalk?

So I know what the sidewalk it will go through the site development, site development review process, and that will probably be incorporated as part of that.

As for if you, the fee goes to and so forth.

I'm we'll have to look into that further.

Can you give me an answer on that?

Sure.

Great, thank you.

And just for clarity, it's if the owner or if it's the city, or is that.

So the question is will this new development require them to put in a sidewalk?

And then they'll still have to be paying.

They're assuming they have been paying the fee and they will continue to pay the sidewalk fee.

I'll look into that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I suspect the answer is yes and yes.

They'll have to put it in, pay for it, and pay the fee for sidewalks.

Yes, the rebound.

Wow.

Okay.

Thank you.

I have a uh sort of not a theoretical question, but I understand that the proposal here, the applicant proposes to build five uh townhome units, but with RX, uh, they can also develop a shop front form.

Uh I'm not overly familiar with shopfront because I don't have any uh RX in my district.

Uh so we'll would in a shop front building form, while the ground floor can be commercial retail, anything above that would be residential.

Yes, it's going to be required.

But could it also allow the development?

And I know that's not the proposal here, so I'm I'm I apologize.

Uh if I don't want to give that impression that they're gonna build anything but the townhomes, uh, but could they just build a one-floor, one-story commercial building under Rx, without residential at all?

A one-story commercial.

Um understanding that when we vote on the rezoning, it's granted that they would have that entitlement.

Should they not build a town hall?

Again, understanding the town.

I believe so.

I believe uh, commercial use of this it's um X is where we use our primarily commercial corridors.

RX is kind of that transition and uh primarily residential, but I believe it could be uh I believe it could be, but it's not very common that that is what happens.

Okay, thank you.

That'd be a good thing, I think.

All right.

Uh thank you.

Uh Councilman Hines.

Thank you.

Councilmember Flynn.

Um, I just want to echo my interest as well.

I mean, what we vote on is the rezoning, not the what the developer says he's gonna put there, or she because um, you might change your mind.

So uh, yeah, I'm interested in the question as well.

Or the answer to the question, okay, thank you.

Okay.

Um, it looks like an attendee has raised their hand.

Yeah, we don't usually take testimony here.

Uh uh, Councilmember Torres, do you know uh Jesse Donovan?

Oh he's one of the applicants.

Is that he's one of the applicants?

Okay, he might have an answer to your question.

Okay, okay, thank you.

Uh he has his hand raised virtually promote him and ask him uh what his uh statement is.

Hey everybody, can you hear me?

This is Jesse Donovan.

All right, so I just wanted to answer that question.

Um, I do have an answer for you.

You are allowed to have a commercial component, but in the RX district, you are required to have a residential component as well.

So you could not have just a wholly commercial project.

Good to know.

Thank you.

Appreciate you clearing that up.

Um I see no other questions in the queue.

Uh does anyone have a motion to make to take this to the floor?

I'll second it.

I see.

I see Councilman Watson did it behind his back.

I'm supposed to interpret the uh he's looking at the camera.

I move.

So move.

We know move.

So Watson and uh readers.

Thank you.

Uh Council members parity and Torres.

Are you okay with moving this forward?

Perfectly.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Then we go to the floor.

We'll see you in in November.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Somebody should write a song like that.

See you in November.

I'm sure they have.

Next up is a briefing on waterway resiliency from uh uh Dottie and uh Ashley Grace.

You and your notebook move.

I'm sorry, but uh, go to the no-show.

She doesn't have time.

It's a very busy man.

I want to move this through the process as fast as possible, that one second save.

It was a non-verbal motion.

It looked really cool from where I was saying.

So I that's why I seconded it.

This guy knows what he's talking about.

We should have done this for a second.

Save us, Ashley.

We're all in this.

This is fun.

I like this program.

Well, thank you for having me back.

I'm Ashley Grace.

I'm the director of the waterway resiliency program and with the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure.

And awesome.

Here to just provide an update on where we're at with the program.

So I wanted to give you an overview of just the program in terms of kind of where we sit within our timeline and schedule.

And also speak about something that I'm pretty excited about, which is that we're taking pretty big steps as a program to help mitigate some of our biggest risks, which will allow us to hopefully move forward with the program more meaningfully, and then give you an update on some of the great work being done in the project space because while we're working on some high level risk management, there's some important work happening at the project level that I'm excited to share as well.

So I'm going to start with the program updates.

So this is an updated version of a graphic I've shown in some form or version in the past, but it kind of shows you where we're at.

And I'll speak to most of these lines in more detail.

But the first is just, you know, we continue to work on program management and control, standing this pretty large program up for success, knowing that there's a lot of nuances and complexities that we need to ensure we have really good controls for, whether it's document controls or risk management, et cetera.

So we continue to do a lot of work in that space.

The big thing that we're going to talk about is we've been working really hard in partnership with our Army Corps team on an effort to amend our agreement with the Army Corps.

So we'll talk more about what that looks like.

But if all goes well, we're hoping that that amendment process will come to a conclusion in the coming year.

A lot of that is dependent on kind of where we sit from a federal perspective in terms of our federal partners' abilities to participate in these conversations.

But that'll be a really huge moment for us if we're able to make this amendment go through or get this amendment through.

Because if you can see, if you look down, there's kind of this cascade effect in which when that amendment, if there is an amendment to our agreement, it really allows a few other pieces of this program to kind of break free.

But in the meantime, we're making great progress on Weir Gulch.

There are four segments in Weird Gulch, so We're Gulch Reach One, we're getting ready for construction, which we'll talk about.

And we've been moving through 30% design of the remainder of Weird Gulch, which we call segments two and three, two, three, and four.

And uh, you know, while we haven't made as much of a plan, uh we haven't really moved into design for most of the South Platte.

The good news is because this project and program have been around for so long, um, as we've moved really great projects like Hair and Pond forward, uh, we are able to actually achieve some of the habitat unit benefits that uh really count towards our program in partnership with the Army Corps of Engineers.

So as Heron Pond gets towards construction or completion, there's plenty to celebrate, but among those would be some of our first habitat units for the program, which is pretty exciting.

Uh, and then we continue to do some due diligence in planning for the South Platte and looking into our environmental risk and other things along the South Platte to help us continue to support planning in that space.

So I'm gonna dig into that um second bar there, though, that amendment.

So, what am I talking about?

So, first of all, um, as a reminder, our agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers is very unique.

It's the first of its kind, it's a pilot program with the Army Corps of Engineers.

Uh, and we pursued this agreement because we wanted to really play a leadership role in the delivery of this program.

It has massive um impacts for our community and major opportunities and benefits associated with it.

And so we sought out a very unique authorization within the Army Corps of Engineers to help us take that lead in project delivery.

That agreement is a cost-share agreement, and it allows Denver to access the federal funds that have already been appropriated at the federal level via a reimbursement process.

All great things.

However, given the novelty of this use of this agreement, um, there is a lot of risks that come along with it.

And since the execution of that agreement, we've been really learning a lot more about the magnitude of those risks and making sure that we, before we take anything too far at the city, we want to make sure we've done our best to really mitigate and manage that as best we can.

So the risks really stem from a couple things.

One, um the agreement is based on what we would consider maybe 5% design.

So we don't really know a ton about the true costs of this project or really too much detail about the scope of this project.

So that lack of design maturity has we've realized comes with a lack of cost certainty.

Another piece of the agreement that we've been kind of really diving into a bit deeper is just there's not a ton of clarity on the obligations that we have as a non-federal sponsor they're a little bit vague and ambiguous and as a result some of the applicability of the Army Corps remedies one of the ones we've maybe talked about in the past specifically is a remittance clause or a clawback clause it's been a little unclear how that could be applied.

And so we wanted to make sure we had more clarity in that space as well before we start digging into those federal funds.

So we've been taking we've been really I think making great progress in trying to manage this risk and so I'm gonna skip to the bottom first.

We've spent the last 10 months working in partnership with the Army Corps to figure out how we would amend our agreement within all the rules and regulations of within the Army Corps to help us manage this risk better.

And so we've spent roughly 10 months developing an ask to amend our agreement and that's involved conversations not just with the district level of the Army Corps but um you know there's multiple levels a lot of hierarchy in the corps but we've been able to work across those various levels from the district to the division to the headquarters even and have even been talking to headquarters attorney office on this.

And it's also been a really collaborative effort within the city we've had a lot of leadership support from both the Department of Transportation Infrastructure as well as finance and the attorney's office helping us figure out what exactly is the right approach to amending our agreement.

As far as how we're going about it the strategy is to really request technical changes which I'll describe in a moment to our agreement and the supporting documents and that's very important because by making technical changes to our agreement what that does is it means that the authorization we need at the federal level is at the assistant secretary of the Army Civil Works which is the head of Army Corps work and what we do and that's important because it's not triggering congressional action we wanted to avoid that at this time because that would really extend kind of what this would look like among other reasons.

So a little bit more about our request.

So one of the big things that we wanted to really dig into and one of the lessons learned again we are a pilot program and in fact two other non-federal sponsors have learned this lesson from us is that we need to we need to redefine our separable elements and that's because in our agreement the majority remedies appear to be tied to our separable elements and so right now and separable elements is a is a term that was defined in legislation that the definition itself of separable elements can't necessarily change however the way separable elements are defined for a project are defined within that agreement which is why we are proposing this amendment to the agreement and so our agreement currently defines our separable elements as the entirety of the South Platte so six and a half miles of eco restoration on the South Platte roughly three miles of flood risk mitigation along Weir Gulch and a non or a voluntary flood risk reduction program in Harvard Gulch.

And what we're proposing and this is developed in partnership with the Army Corps is that we redefine those separable elements to align more closely with the FEIS the original study that serves as the foundation for our program and we we believe that that is something that the core we know that's something the core would support because it's actually those reaches and subreaches we believe meet the definition the legal definition of what a separable element is.

And so hopefully this makes a little sense.

It's a little bit wonky and technical, but the idea being we would go from having three separable elements to 14 separable elements.

So really breaking this project up into smaller chunks that are far more manageable for us.

And so to kind of get into that a little bit more.

So as we're looking to amend this agreement, the asks that we really have are that we really clarify within the agreement itself that the non-federal sponsors' obligations and any associated remedies occur at that separable element level, not the entire scope that was authorized by Congress, but really any remedies available to the court could be applied at that separable element level.

And that those separable elements are not three, but they're 14.

And the other kind of major component to our ask is that we want to make sure it's very clear that our commitments from a financial perspective are to the federally appropriated dollars, our match to the federally appropriated dollars, which right now is 350 million dollars.

And that's important again because we don't truly know the full cost of this program, and we need to be able to put a rough cap on what our match is so that we can plan for this program and we can deliver this program.

When we don't know the costs, we don't know, as you all probably know, project costs tend to continue to grow over time.

They rarely go the other direction.

So we need to find a way to really put a cap on that.

And so that's one of our other asks with this amendment.

And finally, one of the things we wanted to make really clear through this amendment request is that you know, I think most projects that the Army Corps delivers, they're they're in charge.

And so they have a lot of tools and resources available to them, and that those tools and resources weren't very clear to us as the non-federal sponsor.

And so there's some language that we've added into our request that really articulates the fact that the city and the core are going to work together to manage scope and budget, and it's not a unilateral effort, it's a partnership.

And so we wanted to make sure that was more explicitly called out within the agreement as well.

And the benefits of all of these asks that you know bundled together is it really just reduces our risk exposure as a city, right?

I mean, I think the crux of it is we want to make sure that as we begin to deliver on a separable element, we have a path to completion so that we can mitigate those major remedies and risks that come with uh delivering this project.

And if we, you know, are trying to deliver a smaller sub-reach, it's far easier to find see the end and how we get there versus if we're trying to deliver six and a half miles of restoration on the South Platte River.

So it allows us to reduce that risk exposure, and it'll allow us to start to move on this project, and specifically on initiating design on the South Platte River, which will help drive towards cost certainty, which is really important.

It allows for flexibility in how we plan the project and how we sequence the implementation of this project, and it allows us to develop plan or plans and finance at smaller scale, so at that separable by separable element level as opposed to the entire thing.

Um I just want to call out is that footnote there, which again, our commitment, our financial commitment is to that 350 million dollars.

As you can see there, it says our commitment is to our share of the cost share, plus whatever you know are more local costs, specifically environmental remediation, for instance, is an entirely, is entirely the city's cost.

There may be other costs such as public art that wouldn't be covered by the federal dollar.

So those are the other kinds of things.

Again, we'll we'll learn more as we continue to advance design.

So where we're at with that is that we were able to successfully submit our request to the Army Corps of Engineers on Friday, September 26th.

It was submitted by Amy Ford, our executive sponsor of the program.

It was submitted very intentionally before the end of the federal fiscal year.

We haven't been able to draw down on these funds because of the significant risk associated with it, but we wanted to make extremely clear to the federal government we are committed to this program.

We're taking steps to manage our risks so that we can start to look towards when we can start to draw down on those funds.

So the next steps is that we will move through negotiations with the Corps.

As I mentioned, we've actually already met multiple times with the Corps and their headquarters legal team, so I think we're a good chunk of the way there, and the negotiations will hopefully be streamlined.

Unfortunately, I will caveat this with it depends on when headquarters staff is able to work on this.

I was made aware this morning on a call that they are definitely starting to stand down due to the shutdown, so that could definitely impact how quickly we're able to move through these negotiations.

If they are successful, the next step is similar to how we moved the agreement through, we would move this amendment through our legislative process.

So it'd be coming back to you all with more specifics on that amendment.

And then if that is successful, where we go from here is that we start setting up a path to drive towards cost certainty on the South Platte.

So similar to what we're doing on Weird Gulch, we move the South Platte into that conceptual 30% design, which gives us far greater understanding of costs, including Denver's match with greater clarity.

It allows us to develop plans of finance again at that smaller scale, and it allows us to start seeking reimbursement because it's important that we actually start drawing down on those funds.

We would only seek reimbursement for the separable elements that we have that clear plan of finance for, and right now that's Weir Gulch Reach One, which I'll talk about in a moment.

So we would actually have something right out of the gate we could start seeking reimbursement on.

So I have a few more slides that just give you an update on while this has been going on.

Our project team has been making great success moving things along.

And so I'm going to talk about that.

So as I think I brought this to you all in the spring of this year, but we've really been prioritizing Weir Gulch.

It's a smaller separable element as currently defined in our agreement in one week and at least get quicker and greater clarity on costs so that we could start to move forward on that.

Also, we had begun Weird Gulch segment one design before we even knew if we'd have federal funds for this program.

And so, because of that, we're really excited to announce that we will begin construction on the first segment of Weir Gulch in a couple weeks, less than two weeks, segment one, will begin on October 20th.

So again, this is a project that's been in the works since 2020 in partnership with Mile High Flood District.

We are at 100% design, we have our FEMA approval, which was huge.

We got the Army Corps to approve of our construction documents, which is another huge milestone.

And so while we kind of midstream introduced this partnership with the Army Corps of Engineers, we were able to stay on track and get us to this construction date this fall, which is pretty exciting.

And I'll say that the core and Mile High and the city were all at the current time rowing in the same direction, which has been quite a feat, but we have a great partnership there.

We had a pre-construction meeting last week.

Councilmember Flora Alviderez, you were there, thank you for joining that one.

It was, I think there are a lot of good questions, but the intent was to make sure the community was aware of this project.

And one thing that's not called out here, but the reason we've prioritized is that constructing Weir Gulch Reach one or segment one, what it does is it removes the floodplain designation from Sun Valley, which is huge.

Right now there's a temporary fix in place, but we need to make sure there's a long-term fix to addressing that.

And in doing so, we're not just addressing the flood risk, but as you can see, we're adding a real, I think, amenity to the to the area with a much more approachable space to engage with for the new residents or the residents coming back to the Sun Valley area.

That construction will be pretty fast.

It'll start again in October and it should be wrapping up mid to late summer of 2026.

There will be impacts, which we shared with the community.

We are turning Decatur into a bridge, which means we have to close it completely down and rebuild it, but that's a much safer condition for folks in the area.

So the Ninth Ave Decatur area will be closed and there will be trail closures, but we will we are working very closely with the Sun Valley Redevelopment efforts as well as the Sun Valley Park Project to make sure we're trying to coordinate those as best as we can.

These are just some of the ways that we've let the community know they can stay up to date on the project where we're at.

If they have concerns or questions or issues, they can let us know immediately.

We have a whole team of folks ready to address any questions or concerns that come up from the community.

And then the final thing on Weir Gulch Reach One or segment one that I wanted to let you know is that there will be a Sixth Amendment to our IGA coming through our legislative process.

It's a very standard amendment to our agreement.

When we partner with Mile High Flood District, we typically create an IGA and intergovernmental agreement at the beginning of the project, and then as the project progresses and as both parties dedicate more funding to the project, we amend our agreement to reflect those new funds.

And so there will be a sixth amendment coming through.

Again, it's very standard amendment.

It'll reflect that Mile High Flood District has dedicated 6 million of their 2025 budget to this project, and that the city over the course of 2024 and 2025 have dedicated about 7.5 million from our wastewater capital project or capital program.

Again, those are not new monies.

This is money that's already been committed to the project, and we just want to make sure it's it's clean and clear in our IGA as well.

And that will complete the capital stack for construction for Weird Gulch Reach One.

So we'll have the funds needed to finish that.

So that right now is in our contracting system in process and should be probably making its way to you all shortly.

And then the final couple slides I have here are about Weir Gulch design for the rest of Weir Gulch.

As I mentioned, we began design on Wear Gulch segments two, three, and four earlier this year.

Again, we're partnering with Mile High Flood District and their project partners program to do so.

And there's a couple reasons.

One and one of the most important is that we need to better understand what we think the costs of the project will be.

But two, we want to make sure that we've taken that three to five percent design that was led by the Army Corps and really brought that to life with our community and in the local context with us at the driver's in the driver's seat of that effort.

So as we've gone out to the community, you know, there's a couple key things I just want to make sure you're aware of from a context perspective.

One, you can see the flood map, right?

What we're trying to address is there is tremendous risk that exists right now for the Weir Gulch community and the neighborhoods that reside alongside it.

In some places, we may see three to five feet of flooding in less than an hour if we have a hundred year event that hits this area.

So there's definitely risk that exists that we want to address.

We also know that each of these segments is very unique and different.

So segment two, you can see the majority of that segment is captured within the barn and park.

So there's challenges there.

We know that these parks are heavily utilized, they're huge assets to the community, so we want to be very thoughtful about any design that would impact the park there.

Segment three is one of the most challenging, of course, because the a good chunk of the gulch is underneath, you can see it's in some streets and some right-of-way, but there's a lot of it that's also underneath properties, etc.

And so it's a very small undersized pipe that unfortunately cannot carry any sort of major event.

And as a result, again, we would, if there were an event, we would see flooding in the neighborhood or the properties adjacent to the gulch, and also that spill is really what leads to that spill carrying all the way to the east side into the Alverde before it makes its way into the river.

And so there's definitely some challenges in reach or segment three.

And then segment four is also its own level of fun and complexity.

That you know, the you can see the water, the natural point for the water is it wants to snake its way through the neighborhood.

But given current infrastructure that's in place and engineering, we believe we can bring it down to First Avenue, but that of course introduces its own level of complexity because First Avenue has a lot of utilities underneath it already.

So trying to build a huge pipe in between all of that will be its own level of challenge.

So as we've gotten into this design, again, we've been working with Mile High Flood District, their project partners.

Denver has been kind of helping ensure that our Mile High Flood District partners and their contracting teams have the resources and support they need, also bringing in the Army Corps to make sure we're all aligned.

Mile High Flood District has a tool that's called the Urban Stream Assessment Procedure.

It's really a way to look at these different complex urban waterway projects and make sure that the design is really sensitive to the context in which it's being designed.

So it's not a you know one size fits all, it's what what makes sense where.

And so you can see it looks at both the hydrology and hydraulics, a very standard you know, factor in evaluating how to improve uh stormwater or to address stormwater and flooding issues, but it also looks at geomorphology, it looks at vegetation and it also takes into account community values is another really important piece of how we evaluate the various alternatives that are being developed.

To the right, you can see these are just kind of the tools in our toolbox.

Um, one that's not on here that has been also looked at is detention.

That's really where we go first.

Are there any major areas where we can help detain, slow the flow, before you know looking into kind of these more impactful types of infrastructure?

But we looked, we've been looking at everything from can we carry the flows in the street and pipe?

Because sometimes that is definitely what makes the most sense.

Although when you do that, when you put things in pipe, one of the biggest challenges with putting things in pipe is that it typically means that infrastructure is less resilient in the future.

If you know our rainfall changes, and you know, our 100-year event grows in size, it's very hard.

I mean, in order to increase capacity, you got to dig up that pipe and make it bigger.

Um, whereas when you go all the way to the bottom to those natural open channels, there's a lot more room for that resiliency, that future resiliency if if storm sizes change, etc.

And so we look at this whole smattering of options and tools in our toolbox, and they all have different trade-offs, pros and cons associated with them, widths as well as amenities and assets that they can provide.

And so our team has been digging into a lot of these and getting a lot of great feedback from the public on all of these.

And I just uh want to touch on our engagement before I tell you where we go or where we're at in next steps.

But in addition to I think having a really cool approach working with Mile High, their urban stream assessment procedure, and kind of all the things I just showed you.

The other thing that we've we've done a little bit different, and something that I think is already paying off is that we've really invested in our public engagement.

This project has the potential of major impacts to a community, and we didn't, we are not taking that lightly.

Um, you know, you can see that that quote there from Albert Einstein you can't solve problems with the kind of thinking we employed when we came up with them.

And this was used to kind of reference that our old school approach to engineering is maybe not the be-all end all, but we can think about things differently.

Um, and one of the ways to do so is to really make sure we're involving the community as we develop these alternatives and really are hearing from them.

And so we've partnered with the Engineering Change Lab, which is actually a group of engineers who said, hey, maybe we can do things a little differently.

And so they've been kind of piloting various approaches to how we can have more meaningful engagement with the public, also engaging with an appreciative inquiry approach, and that's really just a new way of kind of framing how we talk to our community members instead of saying, hey, we have a problem, we have to fix it.

Here are the engineers to save the day.

It's more, hey, we have an issue.

How do we work together to solve it to make our community better?

What is what is good look like?

What do we want?

What is the best community we can imagine, and how can we use this as a way to get there?

And so we've had a lot of really intentional conversations with the public, three community um stakeholder meetings, two public meetings, a lot of RNOs and pop-ups and lots of flyers, ways to engage online, lots of um, we we definitely speak quite regularly with council member Torres' office.

And it's really already, as I mentioned, paying off.

We've definitely heard a lot of themes and values coming out, which has been great.

We know there's a lot of concern about just safety along the gulch itself.

Um we know that there's a ton of pride in stewardship in this area, which has been really, really cool to hear.

Uh, you know, they definitely value being heard and feeling like the engagement is meaningful.

There's a desire to preserve and enhance our natural systems and ecology, increase connectivity, create those neighborhood places, and of course, um, you know, folks are definitely concerned.

What does this project mean for me?

Is it going to impact me?

Are there going to be acquisitions?

And when will I know?

Can I invest in my home now?

Should I wait?

What does that look like?

So that's definitely been a part of it as well.

But I can say this has been a very meaningful way to engage the public at our meeting just last week.

We heard some of our stakeholders come and say that they've been talking to all their neighbors, they've been reading the FEIS, they've been learning a lot about how what is flood risk, how what steps can they be taking?

And and we've had a lot of good but hard conversations.

There's a number of folks who reside directly on the gulch itself who are a part of our stakeholder committee, and you know, I think that no one wants to lose their home, but we're able to get beyond just please don't take my property to well, what are our options and and what happens if properties are taken, et cetera.

So we've had some really really great conversations with the public.

I know there's many more ahead, but I feel like we're building a good foundation.

Um, and so where we go from here, and this is my last slide for you today.

But um, as a you can see we're in the alternatives development, and what I mean by that, we're developing roughly three alternatives per reach.

As I mentioned, each reach is a little unique and different.

Um, we're creating what we're calling tip to tail or end to end or start to finish options that we'll be bringing to the public for feedback for review and evaluation.

So we have a public meeting on November 19th, where we'll be showing these options to the public, and they'll get a much clearer sense as to what these options may mean for the community.

We'll be collecting feedback on how well these options are resonating with their values and their priorities and their concerns.

We'll also be bringing that to our leadership team, and we have a really great multidisciplinary team, both from the city and the Army Corps of Engineers and Mile High Flood District that are all evaluating that with the goal that before the end of the year we can select one concept, and that concept then gets to 30% design, which then gives us that real clear understanding of costs, which we should have by the end of Q1 2026.

And from there, depending on the cost, depending on the concept, we'll figure out where we go from there.

Do we keep with this bundle?

Do we split it out?

There's a lot of decisions to be made, but I'm sure I'll be back by then to let you know where we stand on all of that.

So that is where we're at with the water program.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir, very much, Ashley.

Very comprehensive.

In the queue, we have uh council member Torres first, and this is Weirs in her district.

So Councilmember, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you so much, Ashley.

Um I just you did such a great job summarizing a really complex and really big project.

And I think it was in the Hickenlooper administration that I was first made aware of some of the discussion with the Army Corps and with the flood risk.

So this has been three um technically four mayoral administrations since that time, and it's gonna take a lot longer.

So I I I love the um level of engagement, the intentionality that you come into the Barnum and Sun Valley communities with and Valverde as well.

Um and just want to thank you for all of that, and just want to let my colleagues know.

I think the amendments that will be coming forward to create more separable elements is so important, uh, because um right now I think if we began and opened up the spend on the Army Corps dollars, we would have to do all of it.

Otherwise, we'd have to refund all of it if we manage to stop at any point or um or you know, sever the project.

Um I think this gives us a lot more flexibility because it is gonna take more years, and we want to make sure that we're telling community and have a sense of cost as the project moves forward.

So really appreciate Ashley.

You guys having these this discussion with the um the core of engineers and that they're open to uh those amendments and those changes and that we can do them.

So um I think that's a huge win.

So thank you so much for coming today.

Uh, thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, thank you.

Uh Councilman High, thank you, committee chair.

Also, thank you so much for here today.

Um, having us lead the Army Corps or having anyone but the Army Corps leave an Army Corps project, as you say, is very non-standard.

How um is it is it possible to answer whether um the core's tapping a uh financial liability of a partner?

Um is that is that standard?

Um, you know, then like the request is City of Denver wants to know what's the largest amount of money that we would have to pay.

Um is that is that a standard thing to ask, or is it this is so in uncharted waters that we don't know the answer to that?

It's a good question.

Um, I mean, I think what we're trying to really clarify is what is our obligation via this agreement.

It's not necessarily capping what the project could cost, but it is capping what we have agreed to, right?

Our understanding of our financial agreement here, because I think that's what was pretty vague, and and John, our attorney is probably even more um good at more good.

Wow.

That's really good.

It's good or speaking oh goodness.

Um but I think what I mean, it's definitely um the way that the projects usually happen is that the core and the non federal sponsors come together, they agree to deliver the project, and as they learn more, they'll update their understanding of cost estimates and more more often than not, the project funding from both parties kind of comes in over the lifespan of the project.

It's very rare that you have these huge federal funds right out of the gate.

Um, and so there's a lot here that's just new.

Um, I don't think we're necessarily capping what we can contribute, but we are capping what this agreement is committing us to, if that makes sense.

And would does that make sense, John?

The difference between can and must.

Like, this is capping what we must contribute theoretically, but we could maybe contribute more because we're it John Phil, do you have anything to add to that?

It's very complicated.

John McGrath City Attorney's Office.

So I think I think you you're on to something.

Yes, it's a can and must situation.

We are looking to be clear about what our initial commitment is to the entire program, and we're and we're adding additional refinements on that with this breakup of the reaches.

Is something that's that the core requires to give uh the program, the project, the partnership, some off ramps if as we learn more, et cetera, and getting more cost certainty will help us to there is a whole process that the core goes through to rescope a project.

Once you have an authorized program or project from the core, there are opportunities to revisit that and to change as things move forward.

But we're in a unique environment.

As you said, the core is used to being the boss, and um I think there are benefits and risks to having the city lead a project like this, and one of the risks is even though it's a partnership, it's not a true legal partnership.

There is some unilateral um authority that the core has to manage the program, and so that's a risk.

They can say all the nice things about we'll rescope this, we'll we'll let you off the hook if if we learn something that we don't know today, but unless we know we have solid contractual rights to uh implement those kinds of changes, that's part of the risk mitigation.

We need to have more certainty there.

When if council Torres was saying um if we stop in phase two, and we've been we've given the green light to phase four, we may have to pay all the money back.

That sounds that sounds like a whole lot of risk we want to mitigate too.

Um, you know, the $350 million, if we get 175 million dollars through and it just becomes unfeasible, then we would have to pay the 175 million dollars back.

Well, that's why we're trying to isolate it into smaller bytes.

Um we've got 14 um separable elements instead of three.

That's really a fundamental change to the original uh uh structure of this arrangement.

So the remittance risk having to return the money.

If we start drawing down on reach two of South Platte River, and um and for some reason or another can't deliver it, we've isolated the remittance risk to whatever we've drawn down.

And what Ashley's saying is with more cost certainty, we will not begin reach two of the South Platte River until we have a very solid and reliable plan of finance to get to the end of it.

So I don't know if that's that answers the question.

It does.

I mean, the we've we've got a um a federal government that's closed right now, but when it's open, we have a federal government that um treats contracts differently than any other federal government that I mean you know in my lifetime at least.

So we want to we want to have uh the option for more off ramps so that the federal government just doesn't off-ramp us without our knowledge.

Yeah.

Um, so yeah, I mean, I think that's true of the federal government in general, and maybe even more specifically the core.

The core has their way of doing it, and and and they're stepping well outside of their normal comfort zone because they realize their limitations on the way they've delivered projects in the past and they want to do something new here, but you know, it's been a learning curve on both sides.

I think the partnership is still good, um, but we've identified these risks, and we really need to try to manage those as we go forward.

Got it.

And how much have we spent so far?

That the city, not the core.

Uh to deliver uh the work on Weir Gulch is I think we're in the mid 30 million dollar range, but again, we were going to deliver that with or without Army Corps funding.

And then our design is uh for Weir Gulch 2, 3 and 6 is um around two to 2.5 million.

Um, is this too big a project for you to come up with a calendar estimate?

Like so there are four phases.

Do we have a sense of what the completion date would be a phase four?

If I mean, obviously we might discover a dinosaur or you know, something along the way.

But um, but you know, if we were to just if if things were based on the assumptions that we have now, is there a.

We definitely have a lot of versions of a schedule.

Um, there's so many ways it can be changed, but the core anticipated it would take them 20 years to deliver this entire program.

Um, and part of the point of the type of agreement we have with them is to accelerate delivery, which the core would like to see as well, and so you know, if we can get this amendment through and are able to move things forward, it could definitely shave off five plus years at least.

Um, and again, this amendment allows us the flexibility of sequencing on the river.

You can't sequence as much on Weir Gulch, you have to work um downstream to upstream.

You have to increase capacity in order, but um it definitely allows us flexibility on the South Platte as well to kind of move around where we see other opportunities because I think there's just so much movement on the river corridor itself, we'd really like to be able to be very nimble and um kind of work with whatever the opportunities may exist on the river, got it, which this will make far more feasible, and then finally a comment in your last slide.

You had the QR codes, and you could see that our city council link is very long, like the um the QR code, it's got a whole bunch more squares in it just because we had it like because our our URL is so long, it had to make the square smaller to fit the entire URL.

Oh, so the size, I didn't know that.

Yeah, so the complexity uh the more complex it is, the smaller the squares, the more data that has to be stored in the QR code, and so I think so much today.

Yeah, so it's just like man, if only we could get um a website that didn't span an entire page.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, uh Councilman Watson.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Councilman.

And I'll be I'll do brief.

I just I don't want to say anything, I want to be careful in my wording.

Um, so first I want to start by saying I think the the partnership with the Army Corps of Engineer, I think your team, them and the city, I think that is a uh a valued partnership, and obviously um having um the south flat running through parts of district nine going up to uh GES, it's extremely important that we complete those those separable um stages of the contract.

So I think this um having some clear understanding of cost and separating those phases um in a contractual process where you can actually um work those differently than the four phases of whatever it was initially or is now I think it's a smart um move.

My one question on that is having the separable uh phases clearly define um cost out priced out.

Does that provide additional opportunities for um our partners federally to claw back funds if we don't move based on the timeline there?

What's the risk of loss of revenue based on whatever factors um any of our partners come up with if we are they uh do we do we have more risk of losing funds or any of that that's ringed in 50?

Um I mean, again, I think we all probably know that this new administration is kind of capable of doing things that we haven't quite anticipated.

But um, I mean, the way that our the funds have been appropriated were via the bipartisan infrastructure law.

So technically it would really require an act of Congress to move them elsewhere.

Um, however, of course, I'm sure there are things that I haven't thought of that could happen.

Um but I think the what we're trying to do here is again could the 350 be taken potentially.

I don't have a crystal ball there.

But assuming we are able we are successful here, and and that doesn't happen, what it does is it again just allows us.

Oh, I don't have it up here, but this one, yeah, and I I love the idea of what you're you're doing.

Um my curiosity was the risk analysis of the separate separable phases.

Um, doing a cost analysis of each, doing separate timelines instead of having a whole project was part of the risk analysis, and it's stickier to do this way than the wire, as far as speeding as well.

Sure.

And what it really does is we still will be planning for the program as a whole, and and we'll be working with our Army Corps partners to plan the whole program.

But again, um a term that uh uh John used was kind of this independent utility, and that's really to the earlier question.

That's how the core typically will deliver a project is they'll deliver, and if they get to a point where budget is not sufficient to deliver the entirety of scope, they ensure they've gotten to that independent utility point where they can kind of sever the project.

And so this pro this agreement has never been used because it was really meant for our nonfederal sponsors to go out and deliver a project and ask for funds after the fact essentially.

But because we want to use it as we move through because of the magnitude of these dollars, um, we have to help the core realize the importance of building these off ramps in because we as a non-federal sponsor don't currently have those available available to us like the core would if they were to deliver.

So it's really trying to bring us almost on par to how the core would be able to deliver this program if they were leading it.

Well, I'm excited about it.

Thank you so much for for presenting.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you.

Um Ashley, just uh two quick questions.

We submitted this uh to the uh Army Corps of Engineers on the 26th of September before the close of the federal fiscal year.

Uh I don't know if it was necessary or not, but did the Corps acknowledge receipt before October 1st?

They did.

They did, yep.

Okay, it's not not that that would be a necessary.

Yeah, they had even lined up several meetings internally to discuss this, but unfortunately, here they're starting to get pushed up.

That's good enough.

And then uh we have uh the uh construction contract award expected mid-October with construction starting on the 20th.

Does that award, does that have to come through council?

No, so we actually the contract is run through Mile High Flood District.

Sorry to say that.

So Mile High Flood district will own that contract with the contract.

So they have a much faster process than uh, everybody has a much better.

No, the core slower, I will say that.

Okay.

Well, goes up step by step.

Yeah, district, city federal.

Yes, got it.

Okay, that was all I had.

Um any other uh questions from uh the committee?

No, just kidding.

Can I pull off that?

Thank you.

Um well, onward and upward, and it looks like a very good approach and wish us luck.

All right, thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to miss brief.

The one item on uh consent is gonna go forward, no objections, so we are adjourned.

Thank you, everyone.

Good job.