Lafayette City Council Workshop: Pocket Park, Water Supply, and 2025 Workplan – April 22, 2025
Lafayette City Council Workshop – April 22, 2025
The Lafayette City Council met in workshop on April 22, 2025, at 5:30 p.m. to receive presentations on the 701 Pocket Park project, the water supply and project update, and the 2025 work plan update, followed by council new ideas. The meeting was informational; no formal motions or votes were taken.
701 Pocket Park Project Introduction
- Economic Development Director Bridget Keating and Parks and Open Space Manager Dennis Warrington introduced the proposed 701 Pocket Park at the corner of Kim Bark and South Public Road, south of Emma, describing it as a catalytic investment to fill a gap in activated public spaces and draw people from South Boulder Road to Baseline.
- Demographic context noted: about 19% of Lafayette residents identify as Hispanic or Latino; within a quarter-mile Old Town buffer the share rises to about 30%; about 6% of the city's housing stock is manufactured homes within walking distance of the site.
- The site is 6,283 square feet, purchased by the Lafayette Urban Renewal Authority (LURA) in 2019. Demolition of the existing building is slated for spring or early summer 2025, pending utility disconnects and Xcel approval.
- The project aligns with the comprehensive plan and the Old Town Tomorrow Action Plan. Guiding principles include enhancing public gathering places, celebrating Lafayette’s creative identity, creating passive recreation opportunities with integrated play features, ensuring accessibility and inclusivity, and prioritizing sustainability and low maintenance.
- Timeline: community visioning and outreach begins now; design RFP is expected late May or early June 2025; design work will continue through 2025; a construction RFP is planned for early 2026; completion is targeted before the end of 2026.
- Outreach plans include a Lafayette Listens project website in May, appearances at Art Night Out, the farmers market, and Lafayette Music Festival, plus focus groups and board/commission touchpoints. Staff emphasized reaching Spanish speakers, youth and seniors, arts/cultural institutions, the business community, nonprofits, and the adjacent mobile home park community.
- In council discussion, staff confirmed there is no site design yet; LURA-funded streetscape improvements for the 700 and 800 blocks of South Public Road are underway. Council members asked about board/commission engagement and possible food truck or pop-up programming; staff mentioned a possible Kim Bark roadway cut for food truck parking and potential Downtown Development Authority partnerships for ongoing programming.
Water Supply and Project Update
- Public Works Director Jeff Arthur, Water Resources Manager Carrie Bischoff, and Water Resources Analyst Mitch Zombeck presented a system overview. No immediate council action was requested, but staff said vigilance is needed and decisions may come later in the year.
- Staff noted that about 80% of Colorado's precipitation falls west of the Continental Divide while about 80% of the state's population is east of it. Lafayette’s supply is surface water: about 80% originates in the Boulder Creek Basin and about 20% from the upper Colorado River Basin through Colorado-Big Thompson (CBT) and Windy Gap participation. Water rights operate under prior appropriation; Lafayette owns senior rights including Lower Boulder Ditch (1859) and Howard (1860). Last year, from mid-August through October, those were the only owned rights in priority.
- Future projects: two additional Goose Haven Reservoir cells will come online in summer 2025, doubling available storage there; Chimney Hollow Reservoir will provide 900 acre-feet (1% ownership); the Gross Reservoir Environmental Pool (GREP) is a 5,000 acre-foot pool with 3,000 acre-feet for Lafayette and 2,000 for Boulder, with completion uncertain due to a challenge to Denver Water’s permits; and the Northern Integrated Supply Project (NISP) is a 40,000 acre-foot yield project from which Lafayette would receive about 1,800 acre-feet, with phase 1 expected complete around the end of 2030.
- Current conditions: total system storage is 82% of a one-year supply; CBT is just under full and its quota is 70%, about average; Baseline Reservoir storage is 3,430 acre-feet versus 5,027 acre-feet on the same date in 2024; snowpack is 80% of median; precipitation year-to-date is 94% of median; streamflow forecasts are near average; drought conditions are minimal in Boulder County and moderate in the upper Colorado headwaters; the seasonal outlook leans hotter and drier than average. Demand is tracking near average, but staff noted a trend of irrigation starting earlier in May and lasting longer into October. Staff are not recommending demand reductions at this time.
- Existing permanent restrictions limit irrigation to three days per week between 6 p.m. and 10 a.m. This year residents are asked to avoid running irrigation Monday, Wednesday, and Friday between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. to reduce stress on the treatment plant and distribution system.
- Staff are developing an integrated water efficiency and drought response plan, described as the first integrated plan of its kind approved in the state. A state grant covers about 70% of development cost. The plan is expected to come to council late in 2025, followed by a 60-day public review, council approval in the first quarter of 2026, and state approval from the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
- On rates and fees, staff explained utility enterprises under the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), developer water-right dedication or cash payments (cash over 10 acre-feet goes to council; roughly $45,000 per single-family unit), and an ongoing rate and tap-fee study with Raftelis. Staff used a hypothetical $150 million water plant to illustrate that financing would cost about $15 million per year for 20 years versus about $15 million in current annual customer revenue, underscoring the importance of tap-fee policy.
- Council questions covered river calls and headgates, GREP operations, Goose Haven storage being for Lafayette only, CBT share acquisition (generally auction-based, often involving developers), the absence of an in-house water model, reliance on federal data from agencies such as USGS and NOAA, and drought-plan triggers.
2025 Workplan Update
- Assistant to the City Manager Alex Nelson and the city manager presented the 2025 work plan update, including how work plan items are defined, project status, and a new board and commission work plan engagement process.
- Staff explained that departments range from project-focused to operations-focused. Examples: the IT team of seven had about 70 open support requests on a recent average day; the Fire Department has about 40 FTE, only three of which are administrative.
- Staff will begin providing a multi-meeting look ahead in May. Known 2025 cadence items include the May 6 ADU ordinance, May 20 land use code update and spring board appointments, May workshop capital bond engagement and poll findings, June financial update, August budget introduction, CIP tour, and October budget hearings. This look ahead is tentative until agendas are posted.
- Completed work plan items include a citywide training plan, a new employee handbook replacing the 2012 version, and the Old Town Tomorrow/LURA transition with the Downtown Development Authority seated.
- Significant in-progress items: 119th Street/State Highway 7 intersection closeout; ADA transition plan; development review and permitting software; fiber backbone installation; Starkey building renovation opening in June; recreation fee study; the city’s first inclusion, diversity, equity, and access (IDEA) strategic plan, which held more than 15 sessions in March; land use code rewrite with about two-thirds of updates drafted; and the integrated water efficiency/drought plan.
- New work plan additions include the 701 pocket park, capital bond exploration, a facilities strategic plan, Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) climate action funding implementation, climate action plan high-cost item costing, an in-house greenhouse gas inventory, community services department transition, police collective bargaining, and strategic plan alignment.
- All 13 boards, commissions, and committees were asked to provide 2024 accomplishments and 2025 priorities; those memos were included in the council packet. Staff noted the process is new and will be refined.
- Council feedback: Councilor Samson praised memos that showed impact and results, citing the human rights board and library board examples, and reiterated that the public art committee should be incorporated into the Lafayette Cultural Arts Commission (LCAC). Another councilor asked that future memos reference connections to council discussions. A staff liaison said boards had been asking for this type of process for a long time.
New Ideas
- Councilor Samson raised the city sign code, asking whether it has had a legal review to ensure alignment with recent court rulings; some sections were last updated in 2019. The city manager responded that the sign code is being updated as part of the land use code rewrite, module two, and that an attorney on the project team is involved; council was asked to share any specific legal concerns.
Key Outcomes
- No formal motions, resolutions, ordinances, or votes were taken during the workshop.
- Staff will proceed with 701 Pocket Park community outreach, design RFP, and board/commission engagement.
- Water staff will continue monitoring conditions and will return later in 2025 with the integrated water efficiency/drought plan and rate/tap-fee updates.
- The work plan update will include a new council look-ahead cadence, continued project tracking, and a refined board/commission work plan process.
- The sign code will be addressed through the ongoing land use code rewrite.
Meeting Transcript
All right. Well, we can go ahead and get started here. Um go ahead and open up the uh City Council workshop for April twenty second, twenty twenty-five. We have a few items on a few items to address tonight, uh, including the uh seven oh one pocket park project, a water supply uh update, as well as an update on our work plan for the year of twenty twenty-five. And then we'll end off the council meeting uh with any new ideas that counselors may want to bring up during that time. Um but uh we can go ahead and just get started with the first item tonight. Uh, this is the Seven O One Pocket Park Project Introduction. Uh, we do have our director of our economic development director here, Bridget Keating. And are you going to get us started? Yeah. Great. All right. Well, there's Councillor Samson. We can go ahead and get started. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Mayor and Council. And I'm also joined here with Dennis Warrington, the Parks and Open Space Manager. And so we're really excited to be here tonight to kick off the 701 Pocket Park Project. So setting the table for the presentation this evening, I'm gonna we're gonna do a joint presentation between the two of us. So we're we'll start off with an overview of the property and then dive into the strategic outcoming guiding principles, talk about the project approach and schedule, look through the communications and outreach strategy, talk about some next steps and open it up to questions and discussion. So for the property overview, uh we wanted to zoom out first about where this is located within Old Town. So the 701 Pocket Park project is located on the corner of Kim Bark and South Public Road. Um you can see here that north of or north of Emma, you we have a lot of beloved uh city assets such as the Festival Plaza and the Collective, but south of Emma, we kind of see a gap of some of those activated um community facilities or amenities. And so we're really excited about this project for filling that um gap that we see on public and really helping bring people from South Boulder Road up to baseline. The other thing I wanted to highlight with this map is there's a blue dashed line right next to the pocket park location. Laura is funding streetscape improvements along the 700 and 800 block, and so there'll be new landscaping and public art and make it feel similar to the treatments that you see uh north of Pub or north of Emma. And so we're really excited about both these two projects really providing an activation for the uh an investment in the South Public Road and really seeing this as a catalytic project to bring more people throughout Old Town and state for longer periods of time. The other thing that I want to highlight as far as um the project context is where this is located within Old Town. So in thinking about Lafayette's overall demographics, about 19% of our residents identify us as Hispanic or Latino, and then when you zoom into the Old Town area, about a five-minute quarter mile buffer from the old Old Town area, it jumps up to about 30%. And so we just want to be cognizant of um who is in Old Town and who may be using the park. And then we also wanted to highlight that 6% of Lafayette's um housing stock is manufactured homes, and that's all within walking distance of uh this new pocket park area. So I'm gonna turn it over to Dennis to talk about how this relates with some of our uh green spaces within uh the project area. All right, good evening, council. Uh so what we've got here, the green dot of the middle is where uh 701 Pocket Park is, and what this is showing is a what would be a 10-minute walk in any direction uh from that location. The Trust for Public Lands does advocate for there to be green space for residents in any community to be able to walk to. Um, what this is highlighting here, you can see from that location, you can get up to Romero Park in about 10 minutes to John Borough Park. Um, East Simpson is just outside of that. You can't get to get to the Nature Kids uh Discovery Zone at Sancho's, and then just touch the corner of Lamont Dose Park. So this will be uh we we believe a really uh big asset for East Old Town and that area to have a green space to go to. Um see next slide. So uh this flexible green space and uh how we are coming to get uh 701 South Public. Uh it was purchased by Laura in 2019. Uh it's a small lot, it's 6,283 square feet, which if you're familiar with Spruce Park at the corner of Centaur Village and Caria. Uh it's gonna be just a little bit smaller than that one. Um the city manager last year approached Laura about uh purchasing and developing this into an into a green space. They uh later on in the summer entered into an agreement uh for this to become a green space, and uh demolition for the building that is currently on the site is slated for uh spring, perhaps early summer uh this year, and uh we are waiting on some utility disconnects to happen, and as soon as that is done uh and approved through Excel, then hopefully that will happen. Great. So then we're gonna move on to some strategic outcomes and guiding principles about how this project will achieve some of the things that we're hoping through our comp plan and also our downtown plan. So we're familiar with the comprehensive uh plan wheel, and through that we have goals for a strong economy, environmental stewardship, community character, and connected community.
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