It's time for a special session of City Council's Planning Board Working Group.

Join us for City Council's Planning Board Working Group.

Starting now, we're going to get our own.

Kevin Flint, Southwest Denver's District Two.

Amanda Sawyer, District Five.

Melissa Mejia, Planning Board.

Hi, DV Chair, Planning Board.

Paul Cashman, South Denver District Six.

Fred Click, Vice Chair of Planning Board.

Alicia Conheuman Planning Board.

Hi, everybody.

My name is Sebastian Montenegro, Planning Board.

Hi everyone, Andrew Webb, Community Planning and Development.

And Rob Haig, uh CPD staff.

Dear Drew Host for Planning Board.

Well, okay.

Well, um, are we gonna start with a presentation?

Sure.

Yes, I'm I'm happy to go ahead and get started as as people are walking in.

That's what we'd like to do.

Wonderful.

Um, can you just check?

And I think so.

Okay, great.

Sound good?

Okay.

All right.

Well, thank you again uh for taking the time to meet with us.

Uh Andrew and myself are going to give a quick presentation and update on the unlocking housing choices project, and then hopefully give uh a lot of time for discussion on what we're planning to share today.

Um during today's meeting, we'll provide a quick reminder of what the project goals and strategies are, then we'll recap what we discussed in our last joint uh meeting as well as some other recent meetings that have happened uh in between our last meeting.

Uh, and then we'll share uh some of the the preliminary uh financial feasibility findings.

Um as a reminder, uh uh unlocking housing choices goals were developed using our adoptive plans and are uh to provide additional housing uh that's more compatible with the neighborhoods and more attainable to more Denver residents and is more plentiful by uh providing uh an improved supply.

Uh the project will have two phases, and in the first phase, we are focused on missing middle housing approaches that center around uh affordability and preserving existing homes.

Uh, phase two will then expand on these missing middle housing opportunities, but we're really excited about these strategies we have in phase one that we're developing.

Um, as a reminder, these first phase strategies will reduce the mass and scale of new residential development in our low-scale residential neighborhoods and enable missing middle housing when an existing house is preserved, or when one of the uh new units uh is uh uh housing unit.

Um quickly to recap on some recent meetings.

Um during our last advisory committee meeting uh in early February.

Also, during our last joint session with this group, we shared our phase one strategies that we had that previous slide showing.

We got some great feedback on these strategies, including some potential unintended consequences and concerns about some of the plan guidance.

So now we hope to build on that conversation and share what we learned during some of the preliminary financial feasibility study and those findings.

So what is an economic feasibility analysis?

So our financial feasibility study is being conducted by our consultant team for this project, which is Arland Studio Seed and Root Policy.

Some of those members of those teams are here today to help answer some of the questions that might come from this group.

And this study looks at the inputs from construction costs and land values derived from developer interviews, case studies, and other work into their proformas to test a variety of scenarios to understand what can be built and what would be built under current conditions, current zoning regulations, and proposed zoning rules with our three strategies.

This financial feasibility analysis helps us determine whether individual property owners, conventional developers, and affordable developers might pursue the new housing options under our proposed rules.

This study is focused right now on what we're going to look at the results of today on the urban context.

And we're continuing to work on the urban edge in suburban context.

But as we move forward, the assumptions that were made when we look at the locations, land values, lot sizes, all of that is based on the urban neighborhood context.

So first we'll look at the economic feasibility impacts of our proposed form changes.

These are the changes that we're looking to make to limit mass and scale of new residential development in our low-scale residential neighborhoods and how these relate to both single unit and missing middle housing development that would be allowed under the proposed rules in these areas.

So the first part of this strategy limits growth floor area based on lot size and based on lot size, the number of provided units and neighborhood context.

And in this case, we are specifically looking at urban neighborhood context.

We are also proposing changes to the building forms that address compatibility, like how third stories need to be built.

This would help new development fit better into existing neighborhoods.

But this also is balanced to ensure that two or more units still fit within this house scale form.

So as shown here within single unit and two unit neighborhoods, the profitability of large homes and duplexes has been slightly reduced under the proposed zoning rules.

However, this also this helps neighborhood compatibility while also slowing some speculative development.

But these these housing types are still still possible, still feasible to be built.

But by increasing the allowed floor area for each additional dwelling, the financial feasibility is lowest for new single unit homes and increases for that builder for with each individual or each additional level unit.

So looking at that a little bit more closely, this limitation of gross floor area reduces potential returns, but there's still a positive return for single and two unit homes.