There will be no study on any ideas.

And we'll start with the first one.

So our land use code update.

I'll turn it over to that.

Yeah, great.

Thank you, Mayor and Council.

So um short agenda, but long presentation.

So we're really excited to be here as we are kind of approaching the finish line for our land use code update to give you updates around it.

It's gonna be a three-part presentation.

Um starting off with kind of kicking off with our um long-range planning manager, Phil Kleiser, who's been leading this project, and then we'll turn it over to Clarity and Associates, and then road policy, and then economic and planning systems.

So each section will kind of have a pause for questions.

Um, but as always, feel free to ask as you see fit.

So I will turn it over to Phil Click.

Thank you, Mayor, members of council.

It's great to see you, and thank you for dedicating your first workshop in twenty twenty-six to our projects.

We appreciate it.

Um so we're here, we have our full consultant team with us today.

Um Elizabeth Garvin from uh Claring Associates, Molly Fitzpatrick from Policy Research, uh, and uh Prosser from Economic and Planning Systems or EPS.

Um, as um mentioned, we'll be having we'd like to split this up into first hour land use code, second hour um affordable housing, and with the code, we'll you'll hear from Elizabeth about the general updates that we've made over the past year and developed and released to the for the community to respond to.

And then we'll get very specific into some code that's not yet um fully drafted and released, and that's specific to form-based codes.

And so those will look at um how to create complete walkable new neighborhoods.

Um, it'll look up how to preserve old towns of character, um, and how to guide mixed use development along our major corridors.

And Molly and Matt will help us walk through a conversation about potential policy options for affordable housing, including potentially reinstating an inclusionary housing ordinance, development incentives, and updating our affordable housing impact fee.

But first, just as a quick just a couple of notes policy context wise, you know, they have the Can I ask a logistical question?

So I can't see behind me.

Can we take Kyle off the screen so we could also have it up there?

Or should I move or what would be the thing?

I think they're planning to put the presentation on both once.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Does that sound okay?

Perfect.

As policy context, the legacy lafayette comprehensive plan sets that long-term vision for the community over the next 20 years.

And it also guides a lot of different city decisions ranging from city budgeting, uh, department plans, strategic plans, capital investments, and specific to tonight development regulations.

The comprehensive plan was adopted back in 2021, and you can't see these, but we've adopted several other plans since then, including the economic development and housing strategic plan, our multimodal transportation plan, the wildlife plan and the climate action plan, as well as others.

And so one of the big components of this project is looking at those policies and implementing them through this land use code.

We've developed the draft code in three parts what we called modules.

We've released those to the community pretty much shortly after we've gotten them from the consultant.

And so we've kind of taken a transparency first approach where we get it out there quickly.

And we've and we've um briefed council three times each time we've released those modules over the past year.

And to get us to that point where we are today, we would be remiss not to mention and think the land use code working group, two of the members of which are here on council this evening.

Um they've been a big part of getting us to where we are.

Just as a reminder, that group includes the planning commission, uh, reps from city boards and commissions, and five community members with different expertise and backgrounds.

We've met a dozen times, um, and they've got given us some really helpful um advice and practical advice on specific code sections on just topics in general of looking at different options as well as advising on community engagement.

Uh and speaking of community engagement, so we really focused on the working group on that first part of the project just to get something developed.

And so with these projects, it's most helpful when the community has something to respond to.

Uh, and so we've um kind of since then, more recently in the fall, we've turned more towards the community at large in terms of engagement.

And so in the past month, you may have received a postcard mailing that we sent to addresses in the city.

Um, we have a community-wide survey that's currently live.

Um, and we've also done other events specifically targeting folks that don't necessarily get involved, so trying to get some new faces in the mix.

Uh, those have included new ideas like land use code bingo, which in the brewery, which was really fun uh and unique.

Uh, an open house last week, a lunch and learn.

We did some early engagement with our mobile home manufactured housing communities partnering with Together Colorado very early in the process just to hear their concerns up front, and that helped develop the module one of the code.

Uh we've done some one-on-ones um uh pop-ups like at Art Night Out, Coffee Chats, and so on.

And otherwise, we're really trying to try to get a well-rounded view of where the community is on these key topics.

Uh, the lastly, before Elizabeth um takes the mic, um, is that there is a community survey that's live right now.

We've gotten uh I think over 800 responses at this point.

Um, the uh survey will be live till until February 16th.

Um, and just a note on that it's it wasn't an easy survey to um to create, and we appreciated all the input that went into it.

Um, you can in this project, as we talked about, really have hundreds of different questions around the several hundred pages of code, and so we really tried to narrow it down to like the two dozen things we think the community is going to be most interested in talking about.

And so that's what the survey ultimately tried to address.

Um, in terms of initial observations, we have initial data, but what we are seeing a large proportion of the respondents are homeowners and they they live in a single unit detached home.

So that's one of the things that we're noticing, and so we might do some extra outreach for renters.

And so uh speaking of that, if you have constituents or those in the community that you would like to share the survey with, um, please feel free to do so and reach out if you need any information.

And with that, just wanted to kind of set the table, introduce the project, some of the engagement, and hand it over for our land use code presentation.

Thank you.

Before we before you move on, I I heard you say we could ask questions in the middle.

Well, you know, we got some feedback from somebody that that community survey wasn't scientific, we should disregard it.

And I'd so I'd just love to know how this compares to when we do outreach for other things in the city.

Is this similar to what we normally do?

Or you know the fact that it isn't a scientific service.

I mean, we have people come to council all the time and talk.

They're not necessarily representative of the whole community, but they have strongly held opinions and beliefs.

So I'm just curious how you would respond to somebody who says this is you know not worth much because it's not scientific.

It's another data point for council to consider.

So prior to releasing the survey, I think we had over well over a thousand recorded comments on the project so far that we'll need to go through.

And so um I think it's not typical for us to always do scientific surveys.

Um in this case, um, we opted not to.

Um, and so I think when we get the results, what we'll start to see um they are starting to kind of align with what we've heard in some of our other meetings, some of the things that there's strong support on, like support for sustainability for wildlife measures, um, but then things that are more mixed in our in our physical in-person meetings.

We're also seeing mixed in the survey.

And so I think when you start comparing the two, it'll probably be helpful and provide some insights.

The survey also is really beneficial because like at an open house, we can't really get into the data, whereas in the survey we can say if you own a home, these are the folks, this is how folks are feeling versus if you rent a home or the age group or what's which side of the city you live in.

And so it's just another data point that can be a little more fine-grained than posted on a poster board.

So I mean, just piggybacking off of that.

You know, we for the comprehensive plan, we did do some pretty significant survey, and like breaking it down by region that someone lives in and all these things.

And so I I think it could be useful to have that similar kind of breakdown if there are you know large themes that we're kind of seeing in the comments just to be able to track that.

That makes sense.

I will go ahead and hand it over to Elizabeth.

Mr.

Mayor, Council members, I'm Elizabeth Garvin with Clarion Associates.

Um, so of the consultant row that we have going here, our firm is um working on the land use code update.

And um, we work with Molly and Matt all the time, and so we've been talking about how all our pieces come together, and that's something um that we'll talk about this evening.

So if you don't mind, I'm just gonna be rude and reach right over to you.

Okay, so our um our part of the presentation tonight, we're gonna overview where the land use code project is, um, talk about this piece that we've um been working on.

Uh we finished drafting and we've been revising the form-based code.

Um, take questions.

We can take questions at any point.

We also have a few questions teed up to ask you all, um, and then tell you what our remaining tasks are as we start pulling the um full full adoption version together.

There is a copy of the consolidated draft on the project website, um, and it's been up for a while, so um people have been invited to take a look at it.

So, just a little more detail about this part of the project.

So, Phil said that we drafted in three modules, and so you can see we did that um as we restarted the project in 2024, and then across 2025, and we updated the districts and uses the development standards um and the administrative procedures, and then pulled them all together into one consolidated draft.

Um, there is an attachment to your memo that gives you a summary of the big changes that were made across this drafting process, so you can um see um kind of the list of them.

And what's important about that attachment is it also tells you why we made the change, it tells you the source.

So, did we do it because of legacy lafayette, or do we do it because um we wanted to put the city in line with the best practice, or um, because of another plan or policy in the city?

So that information is there for you to take a look at, um and we'll stop on it in a minute and see if you had any questions as you were reviewing it.

You can see now in the green um part of the calendar um that we're really engaging with the public.

We drafted a full code um and now we're doing the in and out feedback and listening to comments and figuring out what places and we may need your guidance about or um which things we might need to revise still.

So um our big question um as we do this project is how are we implementing legacy lafayette, the city's comprehensive plan?

Um you can see on the left that we have a list of key priorities that we were working from, um, along with a whole longer list of goals and strategies in the plan.

But um top line, we were keeping our eyes on expanding the range of housing options in the city.

Um reevaluating land uses, so that is like here's your building and you have a use in it, and how are we making it easy to allow uses to change?

Establishing contextual standards, so thinking about the place in which infill and development go, and so that when things need to fit in the community, we've established standards for that.

Incorporating natural resource protection standards across the multiple plans that the city has created.

Creating place oriented standards for integrated development.

I should have an award for how much planning jargon they have in that sentence.

So what does this mean?

So Lafayette wants to be a city that has places we can go to that we can walk around or bike around, where we provide a place to live or a place to work or a place to eat or some other commercial establishment.

And so it's integrated, it's all pulled together and it's pulled together in a way that makes sense for Lafayette.

So that would be sort of eclectic, a little fun, a little funky, some inside, some outside.

And so that's a big piece of what you see threading through this code.

And then finally, uh last but definitely not least, um improving process predictability and efficiency.

Um so thinking about in the in the process where an applicant brings something in and city staff is reviewing it, how does that go?

Is it going well?

Have we streamlined it?

Is it efficient?

You can see in the box on the right, these are these are just the big chapters within the updated land use code.

Um, and so again, you're um invited if you haven't as of yet to go in and take a look at those chapters.

Oh, I'm doing it on my computer, but that's not going anywhere.

Um a few things about the update that we wanted to focus on and just reflect that we you know we know what we heard from the community um and that this um table is in the attachment.

Um so the zoning districts, uh and that's chapter 262, zoning districts and use changes were designed to allow a wider range of housing choices and price points.

Um we have expanded infill and redevelopment opportunities and made it really clear in the regulations if you're doing uh an infill project or redevelopment project, how the code applies.

So as you can see, kind of in that top right corner, we know that the city wanted to see improvements in process, and we get to improvements in process by improving the entire code.

We we get jammed up in process when there's not enough and the or the regulations are unclear, um, and then all of a sudden we're stopped because we're negotiating, and negotiating a project takes longer than bringing a project through a set of um set of uh objective and some subjective standards.

So we went in and we looked at how do we get some of these things done so by the time we're at the process, it's fairly clear and that it complies or doesn't comply with regulations.

We started the process of quantifying sustainability.

Um, there are lots of different sides to sustainability, lots of different aspects to it.

Um, so the pieces that we've pulled in are sustainability standards, uh, creation of a water body or repair and buffer, um, some clarification on how outdoor lighting works, um, and we have um another, I think another piece or two that we're still working on how that fits into the regulations.

Um, and then in terms of process improvements, um, this also it was outlined in your memo.

Um, high high topics are um changing out things that are now special uses and to make them easier to approve.

Many, many uses can be approved, sort of more than the by right category if they have a set of standards.

So, our example is you know, usually if you want to put in you know doggy daycare and it's gonna have an outdoor run for the dogs.

It doesn't need to be a special review use for you guys to set that outdoor run standard every single time.

We can say the run is the size and it needs a fence around it, and the noise levels have to be limited to this.

And so we as we went through the code, we tried to specify what we could do to move things off of your agenda and from special review into a more straightforward review.

Also, we went in and filled regulatory gaps in the processes to improve consistency, and then finally um to kind of you know uh put a line under all of it, we established baseline development standards.

So those are the parking, the lighting, uh, the landscaping, which um came in from Western resource advocates.

Um the um what other pieces am I missing?

I'm going through my list and I'm blanking.

All of the things that take place with development.

I've got my site, what else do I need to do after I build my building?

Um so the goal is to get to a code that is clear that is understandable, and that applicants start a little ahead of where they would be under the current code.

So under uh sustainability standards, is there a walkability score or something like that that would be part of the process?

No, we didn't do a walkability score.

We did a section called access and connectivity.

And so when new development goes in or redevelopment at a certain level goes in, that those sites have to be connected internally to make it safe to move around as a bicyclist or pedestrian.

And then they have to connect out externally to certain things.

So like if they're close to a multi, if they touch a multi-use trail, they have to connect to that.

If there are sidewalks coming in from other places, they have to connect to that.

So the goal of that is to kind of lot by lot build all of the connections that you can.

So the same it's the same with bicycling.

So you can the city can review through site design and say, have you you know met all these connection requirements, um, internal and external?

Are they safe and are they well designed?

But it one the initial values slide from the beginning, we talked about, or you talked about more mixed-use development, right?

And so even if it's got accessibility to other things, if it's a single use kind of development that doesn't have opportunity for people to walk to shopping or places to eat or whatever, it seems to me it should score somehow less than uh a project that does include on site places that people could walk to uh or live in if it's a commercial site where you could you know walk to where you live, and and even if it's connected, that still doesn't answer that question about you know are there ways to get around in this neighborhood without a car?

Is really you know the the issue.

Can we reduce VMT through the way this develops?

And I would want to know that, you know, and and connectivity isn't the same as that question.

So I I think I hear what you're saying, and what I hear is um so how are we ensuring um that we are looking at more than just those connections, but the overall development pattern because the bigger picture is how are we building a community where people can do those things, not just how are we putting in enough sidewalks?

Okay, so um that I think that question is answered by the different um land use classifications in legacy lafayette.

Some of the city should be mixed use, and when we get into the mixed-use districts, and we're going to talk about a couple of them this evening with a form-based code, um, there is that sort of what is your place, what is your structure, what is your mix going to be aspect of it.

Um I have to say I haven't seen uh a walkability score built into land use regulations simply because um that walkability score also relies on things outside of the property owner's control.

Um so how about if we put a pen in your question and we go through the districts we've got tonight and see if that satisfies some of what you're concerned about, and if not, let's back up and have that bigger picture conversation.

Does that work okay?

Okay, thanks.

Anybody else?

No?

Okay, so go to the next one.

So um so we wanted to talk about um the form-based code.

So this is where we're jumping into.

So the drafts that we've shared with everybody have been um conventional or traditional zoning, which is um here's your lot, and you have some dimensional standards, but you essentially it creates a box, and within your box, you can build the things that anything that the uses allow.

Um, form-based regulations are a little bit different because we want to take a look at the character of area that we're defining and that we're building.

And so instead of saying here's your box, we say um more along the lines of you know, in this part of the community, we want to see this this character, this type of development.

It could be pedestrian scale development, it could be um redevelopment of big box areas that we're gonna talk about.

Um, but we are invested as a community in the importance of design in these areas, and so the regulations speak to the building type and form, um, the public realm.

So, how do we um interact?

How does the building interact with the public?

How does the building's residents interact with public?

Um, the neighborhood and area context, so are we building new or are we retrofitting into existing areas?

Um, and then um in the adaptable mixed use, how are we doing change over time and getting to the places where the community wants to be?

So why do we do this?

Why do we do form-based for some areas and not for other areas?

We do form-based for some areas because some parts of town, like Old Town, have a character.

And so we what we don't want people doing is coming in and scraping buildings and then building something that's out of scale and that doesn't really fit, and that kind of takes away from that character.

Or we want to provide detailed instructions for new development or redevelopment.

So we have some form-based code neighborhood districts in our list, and so those are kind of more of what you're talking about.

Some of it is houses and a variety of houses, and when you're developing at a certain scale, you're also going to put a commercial center in there, a neighborhood commercial center.

So getting to that walkability.

And then finally the adaptable mixed use, which I've got a few slides about, so we'll talk about that.

So we're going to focus on the structures and civic spaces for future development.

So the form-based code districts apply within the land use classification.

So in legacy Lafayette, there's the future land use map, and it's the different colors are different types of development areas.

And we've got we've got uh blow-ups of most of these when we go through the rest of it.

So we've got a couple neighborhood districts, they will go in housing and in neighborhood mixed use, and then we've got a neighborhood commercial district that can go in the mixed use and the adaptable commercial.

We've got old town with its own special districts, and then we've got the adaptable mixed use, which is a range of new commercial and redevelopment.

Next slide.

So one of the things that we wanted to work on keeping clear is whether or not these districts apply to new development or redevelopment.

And that that matters because the standards change with these districts than the way the community has developed over time.

And we're asking, um, we're asking a certain amount of new development that you're not gonna see in existing development.

And we want to be clear with folks, nobody's coming in and um you know raising your neighborhood and telling you to redevelop.

Some of these standards are going forward only.

If you are redeveloping voluntarily, then these standards may apply.

So we we want to be clear with that because as we rewrite regulations, let's go ahead and do the next one.

People feel like, oh no, you're doing that to my house, and that isn't that is not the case with the new code.

So, okay, so we have these form-based code neighborhood districts.

So if you as you if you picture a more green field development, this is it's not developed right now, it's big enough that we're doing multiple houses in here, and we've got three different areas here.

So part of this is just neighborhood, uh, form-based code, neighborhood general, and so that can be houses.

Um, what we have done in this code, and we got on the next slide, is we are requiring a mix of either housing types or lot sizes based on the size of the original parcel, the parent parcel.

Um, and so this is to implement legacy lafayette and start looking at that, um, making sure that we're having more mixed development, more opportunities to do smaller lot development or to do duplexes or you know, triplexes or something along those lines to broaden out those choices.

The second area that we have is an edge, and that's gonna be where one neighborhood abuts something else could be a different neighborhood, could be some sort of commercial or industrial, but what we tend to do is build in a buffer there, um, usually smaller lots, and we have a similar mix of unit types in there.

So, again, um, someone is gonna need to build a variety of things depending on the size of their original lot, and then finally we have the neighborhood center.

So, here we have it drawn kind of conventionally in the center.

Um, if you think of you know some of the new developments that we've seen, and I can't think of the name of the Longmont or Prospect.

Thank you very much.

I was gonna go with Lowry, but that's down in Denver.

So that's that idea of we've got the commercial area, and then around it, we're doing the residential development.

So let's go to the next slide.

So this is and I'm sorry, we got a lot going on on this slide, but this tells you roughly the breakdown that we're looking at in the draft.

So if I'm doing that neighborhood general, um and my lot, my original lot is less than two acres, I don't have to provide a mix, but as soon as I go over two acres, some at two to four acres, um, and applicants can be asked to provide two different um building types or lot sizes, um, either one can help us get to some level of affordableness, affordable like lowercase affordable.

I'm gonna Molly's gonna take everything that's uh capital A affordable, um just just the lowercase over here.

So for at least 25% of the loss, so we're trying to create a meaningful standard here.

Um that is measurable.

So as you can see, as your development gets bigger, um, your mix increases.

The mix um is pretty simple to figure out because we've listed building types in here.

Um, and so um the next thing that we need to do that working group helped us realize is we also have to identify what a um meaningful difference in lot size is.

We we don't want someone coming in five inches smaller and saying, I got it.

So we're gonna go ahead and do that.

Um so same for the neighborhood edge, and then if your original lot, if your parent lot is 20 acres, um then you're gonna do a neighborhood center.

Um, and you can have an exception if there's one off-site that's within a safe 20-minute walk, um, or if there are topographic constraints on the site that prohibit use of more than five acres or more of your site.

So we're we're trying to do the the build-in here and come back with developments that um are gonna provide a mix of um housing types or lots.

Yes, this is uh there's a direct policy about varying housing types and price points in our current comp plan, and I think there's also one in the previous comp plan with the same language.

So I think this has been a real long-standing policy goal of the city that's finally kind of getting some teeth in a code, which is exciting.

Before we move on, can you go back?

Um I want to just talk a little bit about neighborhood center and kind of you know the the 20-minute walk kind of rule of thumb that you've got here.

Where did the 20 minutes come from?

And how does neighborhood centers apply currently in the city?

Like what is considered a neighborhood center?

So the 20-minute walk or the 15-minute walk, it depends on which expert you ask comes out of um, I think the urban design school of compact development and human behavior, most people will walk about 15-20 minutes after that, they're probably gonna get in their car.

Um, I can't tell you off the top of my head if anyone has done more um in-depth studies.

I'm guessing they have because there's an entire field related to walkability.

Um, but that's kind of the rule that we work by of what people will do.

Um in Colorado, we could probably go a little longer because people will walk, but we want to keep it comfortable.

It's also for you know, kiddos, um, and you know, making sure that we have people with different levels of mobility that can get to the things that they need to get to or want to get to.

Right.

Kind of on that, like is 20 minutes too long.

You so what we're also trying to work with is um this the size of the buildings that we're putting in, and so if if we if we close down the walkshed too tightly, we're going to um impact how the development gets laid out, and it's going to kind of have domino effects on the cost of doing the construction and the size of the buildings, and so if if we stick with a predictable standard, like 15-20 minutes, most developers have been working with that in front range communities, and so that um should be something that they would expect to see.

Yeah, I I guess my my other concern with that is you know, for some of these parent lot size of 20 acres, it takes more than 15 minutes to walk across the lot, right?

And so, like how does that factor in?

So I think that that is it's when you think about it that way, it makes the 20 minutes a form of measurement for laying out the site.

Yeah, right.

So it means you can't if you're if you got a site of enough size, you can't actually like put the neighborhood center where half the site can't reach it because you're not gonna meet that 20-minute walk.

Okay, which is it translates roughly to a quarter mile.

Um that it can be brought down from 20 minutes because like I could speed walk, and you know, my kids do not, and so it's about a quarter mile.

So it can also be used for site plan review, you know.

Have you put this out of reach for everybody?

You gotta think about it again.

That's great.

And then just for context, what would qualify as a neighborhood center in the city currently?

I think a few examples that come to mind is like 95th and a Rabajo, like Forest Park, probably to that surrounding area, all the subdivisions around it.

It's another good one.

Um tacos yeah, I got neighborhood center that I could.

Is that how you that's your walkability circle there?

Yes.

Okay, yeah.

So it's usually smaller scale, it's a level down from like the jacks and the Walmarts, it's just the more neighborhood scale commercial and so forest park, we all always get compliments about um from residents and area.

Yep.

Thank you.

So um this issue of limited mobility and our raised rising senior population and accessibility to neighborhood centers.

I live at 95th and Arapaho, but can't get across the street, and there's no sidewalk, there's no crosswalk, and there's no light.

And there are lots of seniors in my neighborhood that get in their car to go to the one, including me to go to the YMCA because there's no safe way to do it.

So I guess I'm asking if you're talking about neighborhood centers, and you've said within a safe 20-minute walk.

I know the reason we haven't done anything at that uh 95th and Arampo is because it's a state highway.

Yeah.

And we have a lot of complexities around building on a state highway.

And I'm wondering if you know, 287 is also a state highway, and and then baseline is the state highway at different spots.

How does those state highways and our inability to make improvements related to those impact this whole thing that you're doing?

That's why the word safe is in there, actually.

So if someone owned property on both sides of 287, they and you couldn't get a safe pedestrian crossing, they couldn't put the neighborhood center on one side and say it serves the other side.

Where the applicant's gonna need to show that they are making it safe for people to cross.

And then I think the what is not in the regulations but is in the engineering standards are what what are what is how do we define a safe crossing from an engineering and you know life safety perspective?

That's outside of the code, but it has standards.

So in my neighborhood, then the neighborhood center, which is near, but not very accessible.

Yeah, would it even count as a neighborhood center given my neighborhood doesn't really access it very easily?

I think so.

At this point, it's a neighborhood center because it's still a neighborhood center, but going forward, um, there would probably be a discussion about who who can properly access that neighborhood center, and if the people over here can't access it, that means they're still short a neighborhood center.

Um, you know, how we do two neighborhood centers in that kind of proximity has a market um aspects to it, but um knowing that that has to be in place going forward should help some site layout decisions, but may also impact the conversation that you guys have around the table when applications come through.

And and how does it impact in-field development in the sense that that shopping center saws room to grow?

There's there's places there, and if you we were approving something to try to create more mixed use in that area, would it be a requirement of the new development that they have to do something to create better access in the future, or how would that work?

So I think that I think some of it depends on CDOT.

I mean, there's there is that barrier on a state highway.

Um, I think you know, in I don't know how you as a council would take that up in terms of a negotiation with an applicant.

Um, but if there is you know flexibility in the regulations and it could happen, that could be a discussion you have or ask your staff to have.

Um we do have standards for the addition to or the redevelopment of the existing neighborhood center site, so any adaptable reuse there.

This does include standards for that.

I don't know that I can get this code to jump the hurdle of a state highway.

Um, but anywhere else that is on the table for discussion as development takes place.

I'll walk over the capital.

I was just I would just add that like once we get a development that's along a state highway, all the frontage on that highway does get developed as part of that application.

So all the sidewalk improvements, and then depending upon the scale of the development, we might have traffic lights that have to go in.

So there's there are tipping points where we are triggering um access and connectivity improvements.

The trick is like when you try to get something across the street or you know, something broader.

We're we're typically getting, you know, just what's immediately adjacent to that property, so that sidewalk might get built and then not connect to the property adjacent to it if that hasn't developed yet, so or redeveloped yet.

Before we move on, I just want to make sure there's no other questions from council on this.

I mean, how many 20 plus acre parcels that are greenboard buildings in the outside round the city?

Um that's a great question.

I think it's all going to be annexation negotiations at this point.

So it's it's only a few, you know.

Yeah, so I mean, I think that's to answer your question, basically, right?

Like a multifamily or a mixed use that we put in a 95th and Arapaho, first of all, would not be would not be in this category.

It would be a different code that would write, and then the ones these are big ones that are building from probably nothing or coming through and redeveloping.

So it's I don't know.

It seems like to me, I love this idea, but I feel like we're 20 years too late with the idea, quite honestly.

Um, which is you know, I think uh something that I want to talk about later on of just like how do we it feels like we're doing really right things, but are we looking at sort of like where Lafayette is in terms of our development?

I'm sure you'll get to that a little bit later, but I'm just thinking through this of like this conversation specifically, it's a good one, but we can't change what happened with parcels that were developed commercial, developed residential, and then now there's no city center and they don't connect well.

Yeah, right.

This is our most forward looking.

This is like our spaceship.

The next two districts we're gonna talk about are a little more closer to Earth at this point.

Love it.

Yeah, and if I could just jump in very quickly from audio, uh Counselor Fridland, I've been nodding vigorously over your shoulder.

Um I I love where this is going, but I guess to put maybe a slightly finer point on it.

I wonder are some of our conversations here a little bit round about talking about how we would like to, if an annexation occurs, if development occurs, what we would like those parcels to look like because uh as counselor flipped and just noted, like we're talking about a very small number of potential areas we could apply uh this code to.

I just want to put up put a point on that and some worthwhile conversation, um, but I do want to make sure that we're clear um since we have very few areas that we could actually apply some of these concepts to I'm sorry, my hearing A just couldn't somebody translate.

Yeah, no, it was a really good comment um um that we have very few areas left to actually apply this.

Those few areas though are mainly on the the east side of the city, the west side of the city, and some kind of on the north, and they're larger areas, so there are opportunities probably to have several new neighborhoods built through this um formula apply to redevelopment of a large scale as well.

Yeah, so let's say like JAX, that were to be redeveloped as a kind of a pretty big parcel possible this could have that might fall into the more commercial side of things, but yeah, what you're what you're saying, if there's a large-scale redevelopment, then they may be eligible for this and can ask council for a zoning for it.

Okay, yeah.

And I would estimate we have close to 200 acres that are still annexable and developable in Palafa.

So it's not nothing, it's just you know, it's and I don't know what percentage of that is, you know, relative to what we have existing development, but we're getting to the redevelopment and existing development portions of the code still in the presentation.

Thank you.

Random question for me for Steph.

Is there anyone watching Councilor Boullier?

Just so we can you just flag with me when he raises his hand.

Perfect, thank you.

Cool.

I think we're all good.

We can move on.

All right.

So let's look at Old Town.

Um, so the the little clip map that you see up here it are the boundaries of the old town mixed-use districts, and this comes from Legacy Lafayette.

And so what when we when we do this form-based zoning for old town, what we're really concerned about is the scale of the buildings that is that defines the character of old town.

And so we want to um we what we want the regulations to do is make sure um that we are not um we are not allowing scale that's too big, but also to make sure that we're not sort of crushing the um kind of eclectic or funky development that's going on in old town.

So we we don't want to take away the you could build a house and it can be commercial.

That can still happen.

If you want to build something um that's more along the lines of a two-story building, this is kind of the scale that we're looking for in old town.

So we've got two districts going for old town, and they they reflect that a lot of the development um phases north and south public and East Simpson and baseline.

So those are kind of our main streets in this area, and so that is certainly the more commercial or um could be the mixed use development, but we also have a few um east-west corridors that come off of uh um north and south public.

And um we we have some sort of downtown, sort of old town mixed um old town development there, um, but it could get a little broader.

We could go for more housing there.

That could be where the two-story apartments go or where something else goes in.

So one of the things you guys will see when when you see the zoning map, and if you're um nerdy students of zoning maps, normally zoning comes in big splotches across the map.

And when we do form-based codes, we get a little more nuanced.

And so there will be zoning along north and south public, and the half a lot, the lot behind it may be a different color because we're looking at where those buildings face and how they interact that way rather than a splotchy area of do some development.

I'm sorry, could you go back to where that was that you were saying could so we're at the the buildings facing north and south public, East Simpson, and somewhat on baseline.

South side of baseline.

Yeah.

Okay, good.

Sorry, I was on the wrong side of the DDA.

Yeah, yeah.

You're like, what is she doing?

Like that's not gonna work.

Totally old town, yes.

Got it, got it, yeah.

Thank you.

That's just a land use map out of the comp plan there working on the the zoning, the actual zoning map.

I I did have a question about the other end.

Yeah.

And how I put this the form-based code is the like old town has its own form.

Yeah.

Um the form-based code that we would use for redevelopment or uh new development.

Yeah.

Is not old town's form.

Yeah, like if we if we're asking someone to redevelop, they're not asking them to create old town somewhere else.

So we're if we're asking if someone wants to redevelop in old town, what we're giving them are the appropriate dimensions.

We're not telling them like what the building has to look like or what they do in the building, but we're saying that an old town building is usually about you know two or three bays wide maximum.

Um, it doesn't loom over stuff.

It may have green space or civic space in front of it.

Um so there is there is no old town, there's not like it's you guys aren't, you know, that sort of here are our rules, and everything looks like this.

It's it's a little more give to it.

But the so we define what the give is.

So, you know, you have to have this much lot frontage, but really not more than that.

Um, so we kind of if we see redevelopment, it slots in and it meets the design elements or the form of what's there, but it can still be its own sort of you know, whatever um that property owner wants to do that's in keeping with what their building might be or their use might be.

Did that answer your question?

I'm not sure I did.

So that is if you're redeveloping in an old town.

Yeah, if there's redevelopment in and y'all forgot the 7-Eleven on Caria and baseline, that's that's like a city center right there.

You don't hang out there, it's good stuff.

So if you wanted to put as long as we don't get a car.

So if that is like a place that becomes a city center, you know, yeah.

We get silos over the finish line.

Uh that's actually for too far away the silos number one.

Um we don't want it, we're um just to be clear, we're not trying to make an old town there, but we're trying to make something that is similarly guided as the Centaurus one and the 95th and Arapaho one.

Yeah.

Um okay, I just want to make sure understood that.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're not trying to make it something it isn't, but we're also not letting someone lead the way to make it something it isn't.

Love it.

Yeah.

Okay.

So it might be what you were gonna just help me better understand the difference between the core and the corridor and say again what you said about fronting cross streets.

Yeah.

So um the core faces essentially north and south public.

Um East Simpson for the probably just for the first lot along those.

But you can see from looking at our little blobby image that we're gonna have some second lots in there, and that on some of the cross streets as they come across, not the Simpson, but a few of the other cross streets.

If if you think about it the way we've been talking about it, like you might be walking down South Public and turn a corner, and there's like there's maybe a house here.

It could, because of the way the lots work in Lafayette, there could be enough lot there that you could put another house on it, or you could convert your house to something commercial and you know, add an ADU that's a rental or something along those lines.

Um, and so we we want to take those around the corner lots into consideration, but because they aren't fronting north and south public, Simpson and Baseline, they can have a slightly different character, they can have a little more wiggle room in what they do.

Okay, yeah, so particulars would be the mixed core, but around the corner of the post would be the corridor, right?

Yep.

Thank you.

Okay.

Then we have a third set of districts, and this might answer some of what you all were jumping to earlier in a very good way.

How do we redevelop over time?

And um, so this could this could be new development.

This is intended to be um larger lots, and so it could be new development or it could be redevelopment, and this is where like Sea Lafayette has a sequential layout of how we walk through a site that like a site that right now might have a big box on it.

Um big box has a lifespan to it, goes it then, you know, Walmart knows it's gonna go out of business in X many years, and so the thought is we we want to be this city of neighborhoods.

Um, this is great opportunity to do some neighborhood making.

So, where do we go with it?

Again, like the downtown, we have we have centers and cores here, and centers and corridors here.

Um, and so um, if you look at the little map, and I'm sorry I made those maps so small.

Next time we'll do big maps on its own slide, those are the adaptable commercial locations in the city on the comp plan.

So some of them are pretty skinny and like run along 287, and and so those would be a corridor, so a corridors where we're really only gonna have a certain amount of depth, and we're not gonna expect redevelopment to be an entire neighborhood, but it could certainly be um something mixed use or something along those lines, and a center is a larger lot, um, either where there is existing development or where there will be new development over time.

Let's go to the next one.

So yeah, sorry.

Uh I heard Walmart.

What we're talking about all of Walmart's gonna go out of business is that you said um I'm okay with that.

Um if that's a life cycle of a big box, yeah.

Um and when we're looking, I'm sorry, I ask this every time, it's hard.

But if we're looking at whether place uh a city is that build out or a redevelopment, it sounds like there's no real clear to say, like, yeah, we just hit that uh redevelopment or you know, point in our history, especially if we have something like that that's turning over.

So it sounds like we're always considering redevelopment even as we're developing.

We yes, exactly.

Then that's kind of the point.

Um, because we're still gonna likely see new development now that comes in that isn't a neighborhood, but it's on a site that could be over time, and so these set of standards.

So let's go to the next one.

This is where we think about how how do we make a neighborhood?

What are the building blocks of a neighborhood?

So, how do we put the streets in?

How do we put the open spaces or the civic spaces in?

Where does the residential go?

And so, in the in the plan, it has kind of this identified progression over time.

And so, if we if we go back to Walmart, I like Walmart, I shop at Walmart.

Um, but Walmart knows what their lifespan is, and if their model is still the same as when I was growing up as a planner, it is cheaper for them to move out of that building and build a new one someplace else.

That's what they like to do.

And so that's cruel.

They don't they may yet become the Walmart that adapts, which should be fine.

Um, but so we've got the site and so it's current site, and then so we're looking at the replacement of first the box, um, and we anticipate in this market that's gonna go residential because we want and need residential pretty much everywhere.

Um, but then we we're out in the parking lot, and so we we see we've got some pad sites out there, some um standalone buildings, we can start rebuilding um one or both sides of the parking lot over time until we get to a place um where we've converted what was at its time a functional big box stepwise into a neighborhood.

If we know that's where we're going, so the second part of your observation, when we think about new development that is um doing boxes and pad sites, we we want to conceptualize it in how might it change over time.

So, are we getting the fundamentals in place?

So big box, great, it's working for us now as a community.

Um, but as it changes over time, how do we make sure that we've left ourselves with some um aspect of conversion?

This is I when this first was dropped, I was like, there's no way.

But I had no idea that form is not restrictive of time.

So the form, the code's loose enough that you can actually modify it through this growth.

And is it an artifact, or is that plot keep getting bigger?

And the each one of those are bigger.

Is that is that expected, or is it just no, no, no, I did that to show that was just to get them to show differently on the slide.

It is they're all the same size.

But it's front to end.

I just want to make sure that wasn't an imminent domain.

No, and I didn't think that's okay.

Just no, same size, same side, good question.

So the form doesn't, the form doesn't speak to the architectural design at all.

Um, it speaks to how the buildings are sized and how the lot is laid out.

Okay.

Well, it's kind of to your point earlier that you know, what are we doing to integrate these uses and creating these more sustainable, walkable?

This is part of that building block.

And so both on the residential front and on the commercial front, we're talking about integrating land uses.

So you'll see in our code, it's mixed a mixed-use zoning for certain things, and then there's neighborhood centers, you know, but so we're interintegrating commercial into residential areas, and then here where it's traditionally a commercial area, we're integrating uh residential areas or residential development to get to that.

But it is an evolution over time.

So I just have a question about kind of timing of the adoption of the code and applicability of the new code versus old code.

You know, because we have you know some annexation applications in front of us, we have land that's not under annexation application, we have land that's undeveloped but within the city limits already, kind of what applies where and when the conversation we've been having with the lovely city attorney behind you.

And um so there are different ways to make the new code apply.

Um we can, you know, we can say if your application's in the pipeline, um, then you comply with the old code.

And if you apply after this code has been adopted, you apply with you comply with a new code, or you can voluntarily opt in to the new code.

Anyone can do that after it's been adopted.

Um communities um when they know, and I'm not saying this is Lafayette, and um, but when they know a new code is happening, they put a moratorium in place and they say we don't want to see development that's not in compliance with this code for the next few months.

Um, and then some go in the other direction and they say we're putting the new code in place and we're giving you four months or six months to get the hang of it.

It takes effect as of this date.

Um, so there are lots of different ways to do it.

I know that I just answered your question with it depends.

Um, but that's a policy choice on the council's part, um, provided that we're in compliance with Colorado law.

100% agree with that.

Those are that basically is the menu of options that you will have when we get outward adoption, we would work that into the ordinance, and I think it's definitely a discussion we'll have prior to when you're adopting the ordinance in council as to how we want this to apply in this LRM thing for that.

As Elizabeth said in that we've already started talking about what options are and we're keeping in mind those animalizations.

Thank you.

Counselor Jensen, I saw you had a question, but we'll go to the skills of spoken yet, so why don't you let her that's where I was going?

Oh, sure, thank you.

Um, so I was just curious, based on this illustration here, if there's one that's specifically AMX one versus AMX2, or is it based on location?

Location.

Okay, it's location because um the AMX2, there are gonna be there are a few narrower strips along 287 primarily, where you might have one fast food restaurant that that's as deep as it is, but you could see some more connected redevelopment over time.

So that's how that applies.

Thank you, thank you.

So this is very exciting to me, looking at this evolution of the way development begins, and I I guess I'm curious about how tied this is to the current state of economics, because I don't know if big boxes are gonna be around in 20 years, you know, and if we're presuming that we will have big box retail, or maybe we won't have small retail unless we have big box because they need an anchor to be successful.

I don't know what the answers are, but I I wonder how we tie this to the sort of sort of current state of economics.

That's one question.

And then the second question is if we are doing something where we're involving residential in a commercial area that is sort of planned for future changes.

How do the residents who move into that place have a sense of what's going to happen to you so they don't feel, oh my god, you've changed everything and I feel the rug was pulled out from under them.

So how does a procedure like this interface with the residents who are moving in, maybe in the early stages of the process?

So the way the code is set up, the entire site, so the smallest one on the left needs to be planned from start to finish.

It may be you know over a multi-year horizon.

Um, but in order to get from the first figure to the fourth figure, you it you can't let that be haphazard.

Um, so there will be a site plan document.

I think one of the things we we do want to keep in mind for a development that could take years to develop, is we don't necessarily want to lock it in.

Um, we do want to allow some flexibility in there.

Um, you know, um, just to say maybe we do figure out it's like, okay, we we have to have the big box, it's anchoring everybody else.

So we want to be able to adjust to the market, but still get to the overall intent of where the city wants to be with an integrated neighborhood.

Like getting from one of these phases to the next will require another development application and a public, probably a public process for those residents to be notified and you know participate in what they do or don't want to see next to them.

And and is it typically the same developer that sticks with this project from left to right, or might there be different developers in the process?

Could be different developers in the process, probably most likely, but we have some properties out there that it's the same individual in the same original development that's coming in to develop the next property within that, and a certain amount of time has passed for sure.

So you get both, but are there examples in Denver Metro where this is happening or has happened?

So, yes, there are examples of where this is happening, and I was afraid of that question because the one I came up with off the top of my head was Belmar.

But that came to my mind too.

Yeah, yeah, it was a more that was a more conventional mall that got redeveloped, but it's that same sort of you'll be doing some change out, some teardown, and some moving around.

Do you guys have any examples?

There's another one that's in South Denver, and I don't remember the name of it, but it's it was very similar.

It's a real dated sort of strip mall plus a big box site.

Um, it's a single developer that purchased the whole site.

They're sort of moving a little bit of the retail to kind of almost exactly what this one looks like on the far right side, and then there's a YTEC affordable housing anchor on one component for residential, and then they're also I think maybe doing some townhomes.

So there this is happening.

I don't know, I don't remember the name of the one.

I just have talked to the developer about it.

Um, so we get we can find out what that is, and I can kick it your way.

Yeah.

Smaller scale flat iron malls also kind of redeveloping over there in Broomfield where they're adding a bunch of residential units to help support the commercial that they already built in the mall.

I could throw a number at you, so you can tell me to stop when you don't want me to.

But close to home in Louisville, the Lucky's market that was a larger commercial center than redeveloped into half residential, half a market that sort of an evolution or example of that.

I would say Buckingham Plaza Mall and Aurora is uh development that's kind of in this phase, and that it was a mall, became a power center with a number of anchors as well as residential, and then I think it's getting to the point where some of those pads are starting to not work as retail, and so maybe we're in phase three here in that process.

Um yeah, like I can keep going.

Yeah, there was something in the post yesterday that someone just bought half of streets of South Glenn to take it out and put in more mixed-use multifamily.

Yeah, I think a key takeaway from this is that the current market conditions might be might give us an application on the far left, but we want the code will make sure it doesn't preclude the future phases from happening, which will be really critical as time goes on.

Okay, my time's up.

Um let's just kind of cruise through these.

So just to give you guys some bearings when you take a look at this, so you'll see that there are specified building types that are allowed in each district.

So this is a big change from the traditional zoning.

One of the things that we think this does, and I'll move off the slide in a second, is also helps applicants see that there are a range of housing types that they could be building.

It is right here in front of you.

Do not have to imagine it.

The rest of the code does that too.

Um, but this spells it out.

Let's go to the next one.

We have photos, um, we have illustrations.

So we we really want to be clear that you know, kind of the door is open for a lot of different types of development residentially in Lafayette.

Do the next one.

Um, something that's a little different here.

You'll hear the term frontage type.

This is the place where the kind of the building meets a public space, and so a frontage type on a house is a porch.

It's pretty simple.

Um, but we do have different frontage types for different commercial uses or for um office uses because the interaction of that building with the public might be a little different.

Um we want that frontage space to be purposefully designed, um, and in some cases, let's do the next one.

It's gonna connect with civic space.

Um, so this is um kind of that last piece of what makes great design.

Um we have we have our building, we have our building's relationship to the world, it's frontage, um, and then a lot of times we have uh an open space, either on each lot or in an aggregation of lots.

And so we we know we want to activate spaces, we can do it with a playground, we can do it with a pocket park, and we can do it with a shared yard.

Um, and so this is a piece of making sure that the design captures all of that.

These civic spaces are different than uh public land education spaces, PLD spaces, but um, we are setting this up so they can be private ownership with public access.

So we're kind of trying to cross that line there.

Um, so if we go back to old town, this is really applicable.

If your building is set back here and it's already got green space in front of it, that's great.

We got you covered.

So if you want to rebuild but you don't want to move it forward, then keep that as a green or a common yard.

The code says that's a good thing to do.

So let's um so let's do we want to go on to the questions that we really need their guidance on, or do we want to come back to those later?

Probably.

So we have um could probably get going with Molly's, but give you a quick preview of these, and if time allows, we can circle back on around on them.

Um do you want to just really quickly so we got three places um where we need some guidance from the council?

And so legacy Lafayette calls for um neighborhood commercial in existing neighborhoods, which I actually didn't think of was the partial answer to your question.

Missing middle housing in existing neighborhoods, and then height flexibility for new development and redevelopment.

So the land use code, because it applies to the entire city and incorporates best practices, best practice approaches, accounts for some changes to existing neighborhoods.

Um we're getting mixed feedback in three in these three categories about um where we're going with the code.

So uh for the missing middle housing where the plan calls for soft density infill, we have drafted standards, um, and some of you guys may remember this conversation we had in an earlier meeting that say in certain locations in a lot located on a corner or a lot that is along a collector street or already has attached town homes, um, you can take down a single home, or you can take down the townhomes and build more on those lots.

Um, so we we want to confirm that in heading in the direction of the plan, um we're heading in the right direction.

Similarly, uh we have this neighborhood serving commercial, um, and so within existing neighborhoods, the idea is you could convert an existing house in some locations into a neighborhood cafe or retail sales.

Um, there are limitations on the amount of square footage you can have and where um where this can be located.

Um in the types of neighborhoods where it can be located.

Um so there are some limits on it, but again, in keeping with the plan, the idea is to say in some neighborhoods we might see this conversion, we want to allow this conversion.

And then the last one is height, um, the third rail in Lafayette.

And so this is height outside of Old Town, and the community has expressed some concerns about height above three stories.

The thing is that that's currently negotiated.

When the city does planned unit development, you can negotiate a height difference, and you've done that in Willoughby Corner and Medtronic for successful projects.

But because we're moving away from that sort of negotiated development, we are putting in absolute heights.

And so it is easy to see where the code says you can go up to four stories.

And for people to get concerned about how that might impact their neighborhood.

And so we've shown you a clip from the survey here that Phil was talking about.

It's it's really in that you know 6040 area of yes or no.

And we think it would be beneficial and in keeping with the plan to allow an extra story or two in the right location or for the right project.

If you think about that integrated development, that could be something interior to the project.

You could have four stories on the inside, but three or two on the outside, and it changes how it impacts the surrounding neighborhood.

So those are those are our three questions where we're looking for your input about whether or not we're heading in the right direction.

Do we ask?

Did I phrase it all right?

Yeah, and perhaps we should pause here in that um, you know, we have these um three topics that if if council members had um any thoughts or input that you'd like to have or questions.

Um we are getting the most mixed signals from the height flexibility, you know, outside of old town, you know, the the 287 corridor primarily.

Um and so you'll also hear that this is an incentive.

So to make like if it's an affordable housing project or something else work, there are other incentives that Molly will talk about later in the presentation that don't deal with the height of a building that you'll hear about.

But this might be a good quick stopping point just to see if there's any any any input or thoughts or questions that you would have about this.

Again, we're these survey results are fluid, and so we'll keep getting these.

But um, generally speaking, the missing middle housing, the neighborhood commercial are more favorable in these in-person meetings and in the survey, the height has always been mixed when we go to the community, and so we're not getting a clear side one or the other.

So, just to be clear, we're gonna go over these policy considerations.

You want guidance from council as to whether this is the road we should go down.

But before that, does anyone have any questions on anything we just looked at?

Well, definition of missing middle, and I know I've read it, but if you could refresh me on the definition of missing middle in this line, we're looking at duplex, triplex, and townhomes, probably four units max, depending on the lot size, likely to see more duplex than anything else just because it's simpler to build than the other two.

But that is that's the limit.

So four units, it could be, you know, could be stacked units, it could be front and back units, but it's the number that we're focused on.

And are we also talking about home ownership primarily or rental?

When we say missing middle.

So that's a conversation we've been having as staff.

It would depend on the city's comfort level with some creative subdivision outside of changes to the construction defects law.

Um so that's that's kind of the holdup, making it owner-occupied, but you could certainly create a condo for any of it and do it as owner-occupied.

Um, or you could more simply do a duplex and do a lot split.

Um, so that would be a very clean way.

I suppose if you did like townhomes three in a horizontal row, you could do lot splits between those.

If someone did a more creative, you know, one unit up, three units down, you might have a problem with that.

So to answer your question the very long way, it could be a mix.

We hear some about tiny homes, and I don't know where this applies in the code, but I feel like this is a place where it could fit.

It might be, you know, maybe we would call them single family detached, but they're a thumbprint size, you know, they're 800 square feet, two stories, 800 square feet.

Um to me that fits in the same kind of category, but they are not a duplex.

And so I want to know is this flexible enough to include something like that?

Yeah, if the lot size is big enough, you can do two regular detached houses on it.

It wouldn't even have to be tiny homes.

So that well, all we want to do is make sure the code gets out of the way of letting somebody do that.

Okay.

Counselor Billier.

Thank you so much.

Just a couple quick clarifying questions before we we go on to the elements that you asked for guidance for.

Um, one, am I correct that that much of this, what you just share, would not apply to the HOAs.

Yeah, so most of the areas where we'll be talking about missing middle housing and this neighborhood serving commercial will be covered through either an HOA or a restrictive covenant.

Those covenants are more restrictive for this neighborhood serving commercial than it is any kind of missing middle housing types.

And so about a third of those would restrict these.

Again, but those are private covenants, and so the city can still allow it.

The HOA could amend those rules in the future, and the state of Colorado has a law that did pass in 2024 that does override some of that for the housing piece.

I mean I just want to piggyback on that.

So if we can come back when you go go right ahead now, Adam.

I'll I'll questions for my heard recently from some HOA members concerns about this.

So we can just make that clear that like the existing covenants take precedence to those folks to kind of relay their fears.

Yeah, thank you.

And then a question, you know, the the four maps should showing the progression from sort of big box uh parking lot to more of a mixed use.

Um, you know, there's a lot of pavement, a lot of roads, a lot of parking on those.

And I wonder, have y'all considered, or is this maybe not um for for this moment in time?

Have you all considered incorporating uh more electrical docking stations for EVs or bike lanes, bike parking, et cetera, considering it looks very over reliant on gas combustion engines, or maybe I'm misreading the map.

And then uh while I have the con, just sort of one more question, you know, on the the height question.

I guess something that you know, and I've heard from a couple residents, and I know we've received as council we've received a fair amount of feedback.

Um, given what we said or heard at the beginning of this conversation in terms of um maybe an overindexing from uh single detached home owners responding to the survey.

Are you guys worried um that some of the feedback you're getting comes from maybe a disproportionate portion of the population, or is it your understanding that the concern over height reflects the entire community?

Thank you.

Those are great questions, and um we we've seen with the height issue, it's it's it's a pretty mix, both in in in-person events as well as um the the survey that's currently active.

We are seeing kind of also a split in age, and so there's age, there's probably gonna be a split in like renting versus not renting, how long have you lived here, things like that.

And so those that's things that we can dig into when the survey closes and and we do that analysis, but um it we'll be looking at all the different data points to try to give council a complete picture of where we think the community's at if we make an important decision.

So I have a sort of similar question that Kyle asked about HOAs to the question of PUDs.

So if somebody lives in a neighborhood that had a PUD, which is what developed it, and it said all residential, no commercial.

Where are we with regard to that?

Do we have any flexibility?

Can we renegotiate the PUD?

Uh does it expire and then we can renegotiate it?

How does all that work?

So that's another question we've been tackling with city attorney's office.

And so the way it comes to us as the HOA and the PUD are intertwined, the city always has the authority um to rezone to allow rezonings to consider rezonings.

Um there's a place where the city could say, okay, we're allowing this rezoning if if that's what you want to do, but you still may have an HOA skeleton kind of left there.

Um so the the conversation we're having the city attorney's office is what is the if we take that to its end, what's the mess essentially that we want to make sure that if uh PUD is unwound, it can be done cleanly.

So property owners are aware of what they can do with their property.

Um I don't think we have a specific answer to that yet.

Um I'm not gonna throw you under the bus because we left it wide open.

I think we're all looking at different options, but it it is something that we know um we need to come back with some thoughts about where to go with this.

And is it the thinking that as part of a land use code we'd make some sort of comprehensive revisions to all those PUDs, or we do it piecemeal when a development is proposed, and then renegotiate the PUD.

So as we go through the rest of this process, we will be remapping parts of the city.

Um we haven't remapped the PUDs.

It may be that some of them cleanly can be remapped into the base districts that are in the code, and that would be an easy way to move that out of PUD and into something else.

Some PUDs are more complex than that.

And this city may decide as the next step down the road hey, we we want to create a district that allows this PUD to become something else.

So we're going to reflect what's on the ground, keep property rights in place, but say, okay, you can develop more broadly than what you have going on here.

I think that's going to need to be a two-step process to get the basics in place first and then assess uh where individual PUDs could go for future redevelopment.

Any other questions from council?

There was also a question about the EV chargers and the bike parking.

So EV charges are already covered in our building code.

And so I don't know that we have, I mean, we'll be revisiting our building code this year in terms of updating, but that is a requirement.

So any substantial redevelopment of a property would also trigger, so that's 50% of the current site value, would trigger those infrastructure improvements as well.

And then we don't, other than our we have one area of town that or not area town, but one part of our zoning code, and it's like C1 commercial design standards that would trigger bike parking.

That's the only only part of our code currently that does that, but that's also something that we're folding into uh the land use code updated to encourage uh those spaces as well.

Great, thank you.

It doesn't seem like there's any other questions from council.

Uh let's speak to these policy considerations.

Um I just one question.

These all mostly came from just the amount of mixed feedback that we've been getting through the process, correct?

Yeah, we have pretty firm direction on missing metal and the neighborhood serving commercial and our comprehensive plan with the height.

It's kind of let's explore it through the code process.

So that's what we're doing now.

Okay.

Yeah.

What would be ideal for you to get from council tonight?

Just moving forward, perhaps it maybe almost negative polling if there are concerns with us continuing to explore it.

We want to continue hearing from the community, but we also don't want to, you know, if there are things that um council's not interested in us exploring further, then we it would be good to know that um so we don't spend that time, we spend that time someplace else.

And so perhaps that's another way to address that this evening.

Does anyone on council have concerns about this, Mayor Brother?

Uh thank you.

I I think hearing height concerns over time.

Uh I think it's valid, the concerns because it hasn't gone well in some cases.

I think it's gonna be important to also try to find out if these concerns are associated with where they are living, or if it is a traffic-inducing traffic stuffing up of issue that can that they're concerned about, and I think the multimodal transportation plan and the VSAP are addressing that, but they it might not be abundantly clear if the height concerns are related to that's gonna increase traffic.

And I know the the when we were talking about where we could you could take down a single family home on a corner and build a higher density.

I know I was in the senior advisory board, and they were saying this is gonna add where people are gonna park.

This is gonna add so much traffic through there, there's no way all those extra cars, and I multiple times we hear if you add this in our neighborhood, more cars are going to come.

And I I out of respect for people's concerns about cars, maybe ask if there is uh how that's associated with traffic concerns.

And it might because some of I think some of the height issues are related to traffic and being in a car, and it's we're not talking about old town.

Um so I think continue to explore.

Okay, that's just where and I'd like to piggyback that you know.

One of the things that Willoughby Corner did, the consultants is they did an early traffic study way before they were required to.

And that traffic study showed that we would get access to some things like right turn lanes and left turn lanes and uh one-way streets where it was currently a two-way street that actually took the traffic from an F to a B while adding more people because there were things that could be done because there were enough people that we hit thresholds of assistance from CDOT and things like that.

And that really helped with Willoughby Corner and assuaging people's concerns about you know traffic in and out of Willie B corner.

And I know we've moved to a sketch plan earlier in the phase on development.

I'm wondering, can we do preliminary traffic studies as a part of the sketch plan?

So that if there is going to be a big bottleneck, we know that earlier.

I I know when I was on planning commission, um we didn't get the traffic study till the developer had put a lot of time and effort into the design, and you felt guilty for you know, after so much money had been spent turning down a project, and it would again help them too, because it would identify traffic problems before they invest a lot of design in it.

I mean, and I know it can't be a complete traffic study because some of that is dependent on the design, right?

Um, but if we could do that earlier in the process, like we've done with the sketch plan, I think it would help both developers and us to know what the problems are we're getting into earlier on.

And I don't know if that's part of what we I my advice as part of this would be we should change our process to add an earlier traffic study than where it is now in the process.

I don't know if anyone else would second that.

Does anyone else concerns, ideas, thoughts?

Council Firm.

So I think we're asking specifically about height right now, right?

Or do you want all three of them?

I think any concerns with us to just continuing on exploring this, or if you have any specific things that you would want us to analyze or get input on for decision making.

I think you're going there with height, and maybe it's just too early.

But like I think part of the reason why you've had the reaction you've had on this is that is so general high flexibility outside full town.

Yeah, it's like, oh, my on the corner of my block in this little single family, you know, that's where people go.

And so I think you might get better more feedback that's helpful if you do like you said when talking to us along the 287 corridor, right?

That helps put me more at ease to say, well, maybe maybe it's okay to consider it.

So I think that's one piece of feedback I'd give is that as we're asking about these really hard things, especially height.

I think you have to make sure people understand where we're talking about, and we're not saying every corner of every whatever.

So that's one piece.

The other is a question, and so right now we already allow height flexibility sometimes, but it's only through PUD.

Why would we not continue to just do that for a lot of reasons?

But like, why would we not just continue to do that for it?

Might not put people's hackles up too about this.

Um, but it's already the status quo.

Does that question make sense?

I think that's I think that's an option.

It is an option, yeah.

Part of the feedback we got going into this, or the expectation, I think it may have been more from community members was that the PUD process is broken, and I think it's because we've been using it for everything.

Um, like we use it downtown, right?

Because there's a 20-foot setback and we require parking in the front of the building based on our current code, and so a PUD is required to overcome those zoning constraints.

And so we're fixing that with our mixed use uh old town zoning, right?

So there's a piece that's already but the perception I think is built so much that we use PUDs left and right that they don't mean anything anymore, and they and the public does not want to see them.

And so if we're trying to either whittle away at that, we what we're trying to do through the code update is kind of limit, like you can get a PUD, you know, or you can have like some sort of off-ramp, right?

Where we are taking it to planning commission and city council for affordability, like if you have an affordable project that's over 35 feet, you're gonna go through a process, you know, in order to do that.

Um but that's where we're trying to get like, and that that was part of the question is it's like specific amenities, is it other uses that you see like metronic wouldn't necessarily qualify for affordable housing or a civic immunity?

It's an employment, like you know, like a it's an economic generator, and it's also just it's bringing an employment base to the city, so there's other benefits, but we want to find that scope and and understand your tolerance for like what are those things that would fall into like something that hopes to limit PUDs from not being something a developer asks for just because they don't like what we're telling them to do through this code update, because that's now current, right?

It's just we're also trying to narrow how often they're used as much as possible.

Does that make sense or help that's helpful yeah and so what I would say in response to that is I think I'm open to considering where additional height flexibility makes sense in exchange for I would say like really tangible benefits right and I think some of the things that we talked about so far maybe like a little more soft and are also don't seem like they're going far enough maybe sustainability stuff I remember we had a conversation at the sustainability board about that stuff right where it's like well this is kind of like the floor of what we should be asking not the ceiling and so I think this is a pretty big opportunity for folks for developers and so we should make sure we're being ambitious in the things that we ask for counselor gallegos I saw your hand up I have some thoughts about neighborhood serving commercial one specifically on shared walls between the residential and the business side so will it necessarily operate within those walls and what impact would that have on noise ordinances and then just a question about the language under retail sales neighborhood so retail sales establishment shall only operate so the shall only operate part shall only operate to the public or let's say it's a bakery and they are starting operations at 4 a.m I think we can clarify the operations language that's I think that's intended to be to the public and I think it starts at seven because we were thinking coffee shop might be something along those lines um I think as far as the the wall and noise um I I would defer that's building code um a building code issue um so I'm gonna look over at Steven they would still be subject to our normal uh noise ordinance effectively so but the hours of operation also help control that so there's kind of a two pronged effort to ensure that those impacts are less in an area that's primarily residential.

Great thank you counselor general I want to share some additional thoughts about height um I really appreciate your comments Council Friedland um well thought out addressing a lot of issues that I think could be resolved the question that's here strikes me in a as a poor question especially coming from what is stated in the comp plan you know the comp plan I'm very familiar with it it says should we allow you know additional height for public amenities or affordable housing and that's it that's the only words that it uses so when you say additional community benefits I think it's possible that the public who I think is also pretty well versed with the comp plan is confused by this question.

You know do are we asking questions about sustainability maybe that's a public amenity.

I think affordable housing across the uh you know city you're probably gonna hear people say if that's what it takes to get affordable housing we really want it so I think we can go for it.

And then the other thing in the comp plan and to your point earlier is there's places where this applies and places where it doesn't.

Yeah and the comp plan again is very clear neighborhood mixed use adaptable commercial only and that is not come through in any of the questions and thus I think the questions are struggle to give you the answers that you're looking for because you're not asking the right questions I think if we ask the the public these a little more targeted we might get the kinds of responses that you're looking for to get clear guidance on that but without that I can see a clear dichotomy of public who said yeah I I don't want height anywhere that may be a lot of the no's or it's people who are saying yeah I don't want I don't know how to answer this question so instead of saying I don't know I'm gonna select no or yeah I mean if it is in some places but not others and so it's just it's I I think there's a real struggle to understand what was being asked it's got to come back to the comp plan because if that's what's guiding us here I think that's the only question because otherwise the comp plan is very clear three stories only I mean it's very clear that that's the height limit and it's only for these public amenities affordable housing neighborhood mixed use adaptable commercial so I think we've got to stick to that unless we're gonna do some additional you know input from the public on what does the comp plan mean cool any further thoughts from anyone in council I might so I might also just add that your

I mean, it's very clear that that's the height limit, and it's only for these public amenities, affordable housing, neighborhood mixed use, adaptable commercial.

So I think we've got to stick to that unless we're gonna do some additional you know, input from the public on what does the comp plan mean?

Cool.

Any further thoughts from anyone in council?

I must I might also just add that you're doing a really hard task anyway.

And so this is a rabbit hole that you've already found yourself in, and maybe you need to go down the rabbit hole.

I'll I'll let you decide that.

But just uh yeah, a word of not caution, but just like do we really need to have this conversation right now with the community?

Could it be let's fix our land use code?

We know we have to do this, and we've got a way to if we get good enough benefits, we can already make an exception.

We can already do that.

So maybe we just keep it and we say, look, you know, this is something that we've already got clear direction from the complan not that long ago.

We're already doing a really hard thing that we know we really need as quickly as we can do it.

Maybe this is just uh a you know, a wicked problem that we don't necessarily need to wait to use the company.

It's helpful just I want to remind everybody, and and if anybody's listening in the public that you know, good land use practice is to concentrate development where we already have infrastructure, where we already have you know good roads, and if we want to protect our open space and our parks and a lot of the things that people like about Lafayette, concentrating development in certain locations is a better practice.

Um, but I also don't think that means we have to say automatically that you know one in two more stories are allowed.

I really like what you said about maybe defining the corridors, you know, on 287 and South Boulder Road, so that people don't think they're gonna get a five-story building in their residential neighborhood, uh, and and putting something in the land use code with those areas.

Um so that would be one thing, and then um with regard to missing middle housing in existing neighborhoods.

I am a firm absolutely yes.

Um I I don't see any reason not to do that.

That's kind of low-hanging fruit to me.

Um, again, the infrastructure is already there, and if somebody wants to, let's say a senior who's having trouble making their mortgage payments, wants to split their house into a duplex so they can get some rent from one side to help them stay in their home.

I am all for that.

It's kind of like ADU in some way, it's very similar.

So I think that makes sense.

Um, with regard to neighborhood commercial and existing neighborhoods, I get very nervous about alcohol, and I know one ever hasn't really talked about this, but I don't know that I would want to allow businesses that serve alcohol in residential neighborhoods.

I'm I feel uncomfortable with that.

I'd love to study it more and maybe see if there are any uh places where it's worked well.

Uh, but alcohol makes people behave badly, and I don't think we want that in residential neighborhoods, so it's just sort of my I don't know what anyone else thinks, but I wouldn't want it in my neighborhood, and I would hate to do that to my neighbors, you know, and have that, and and maybe you get around that by you know, hours of operation, you know, closing at nine or something, you know, where it's it's not you know, what my mom used to say nothing good ever happens after midnight or something like that.

So something there may be ways to to minimize the impact of alcohol, but I get very nervous about that.

But other than that, I I think the the kinds of suggestions you've made about commercial in existing neighborhoods, you know, limiting it to collector streets or corners or things like that.

I think make me feel okay about it, and also the the parking requirements and the patio requirements that you have.

I feel okay about it, but um I wouldn't feel okay about if it involved alcohol.

Okay, thank you.

I don't is it okay?

Go for it.

Okay, um, we used to be the liquor board, uh, we're not anymore, and there are degrees of liquorage.

It's not a word, there's a degrees that you would allow, right?

And then the whole neighborhood would have to comment on that.

So I don't I don't know.

I mean, there are yes, I hear, and I I think there could be ways I think to qualify.

Uh I know it just says alcohol in it, but there's um there's standards around what that would be and what's permitted.

I I think so.

It could be addressed.

Great.

I don't see anyone else.

What I'm seeing, what I'm hearing is mostly um neighborhood commercial, we're good moving forward, maybe with some.

Sorry, Mayor, I'm so sorry.

I just maybe want to put a question to to the folks in the room.

Uh I know Mayor Tem Mayor Pro Tem Barnes among others who were involved in generating the comp plan uh back in 2021 and in terms of how this discussion unfolded regarding height then.

Um, because Councillor Giuliano is exactly right that the comp plan is very clear about three stories, but I thought there was something in there, so I just looked it up.

Um, and in the sustainability section, Adam, it says a way to achieve sustainability in environmental resilience, maybe it says almost quote adjusting the building height limit in in the city.

So I wonder for folks who are involved in shaping the comp plan in 2021, how did this conversation unfold then and why did you make the decision that you made?

Because I wonder if that may help us kind of make a decision or at least a recommendation to this team today.

It's a it's an interesting point.

I I forgot about that.

I mean, it high density development is generally per capita more sustainable.

I mean, there's no no question about that.

Um and so is that a public amenity, potentially and maybe that's why that's in there already, kind of what's being discussed.

Yeah.

I'll I'll say that I think a lot of it was constrained some of the unexpected consequences of not constraining uh height along the way.

And as you pointed out, maybe some of the language is vague.

We had some contradictions in development code and expectations, and the rapid growth of the city were all also problematic.

And having a having old town lafayat and having a plan for old town lafayat was key in maintain having some control over this what we call the hometown feel of law features.

Yeah, and then as development was looming in lots of different locations.

I I think that was understanding like things not everything can be only two stories.

Three stories is okay, but above that we don't allow that because that's that gives carp once to do whatever you want.

Um and yes, I think the flexibility piece, if you're looking at sustainable arguments, you've you've got to be able to provide that.

And the transient transportation-oriented communities push this right to the outside of you know, even being able to fix that bit in piece.

So uh with the PED process, maybe that's necessary, but at the same time, I think the code is going to provide an idea of where these could potentially these height restrictions could be allowed.

Um I I think if we're looking to put affordable attainable housing on transportation hubs, we should allow for the possibility of being above our certain height.

So I'm I'm not sure if we need the PUD or with the land use code that it could uh limit that to where these might occur.

That's the input.

So I'm trying to get consensus for staff here, at least come close to it.

It sounds like height flexibility is not a no.

We just want to kind of come closer to our comp plan and just be a little more specific as to what that looks like.

Uh, does that kind of get the general consensus at the moment?

Okay.

Am I also hearing that we're gonna keep PUDs in order to address that?

So it's and what we were trying to achieve is are we uh are we setting the different height expectation?

Like are we going from 35 to 40 or 45?

Sounds like no.

But we're not gonna move entirely away from PUDs either, and PUDs are gonna have to come in for any height exception.

And I'm also hearing that we need to look back at the code for like if that really only should be adaptable commercial and neighborhood mixed use areas that have that allowance.

So PDs aren't going away entirely.

Are those the only two ways?

Is there asked for a height variance as can we do it special used review or special height review?

Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, there's probably a lot of mechanics.

Some of what we've heard tonight, especially around clarity around transit, yeah, around existing infrastructure are things we can probably talk as a team and bake into the into the standards along with what we're hearing in the community to get a good recommendation to you.

So I think what we've heard tonight is gonna help us along.

Great.

I know we have two more folks to get to, so can we make sure they got the answers they need on the other two besides height?

We're we we have your comments, and we didn't hear that we should not be exploring it.

So really looking at the sites that they'd be eligible, continuing to get public input and continuing to kind of test it and see if it if it might be acceptable.

And again, when this comes to council, it'll go to planning commission and council at the very end.

It'll there'll still be ample opportunities to edit it.

So we might go to Molly.

Great.

Yeah.

And I will try to be fast so that you guys can keep moving on all of that.

Um but no, so I'm Molly Fitzpatrick, I'm a managing director at Root Policy Research.

Thank you so much uh to all of you for letting us come and uh talk through some affordable housing strategies as part of the workshop.

Uh root policy is a Denver based firm.

We do housing needs assessments, housing strategies, and housing policy work all over the country.

We do a lot in Colorado as well, including uh we worked with the city of Lafayette a couple years ago on your housing strategic plan.

So we helped develop that.

Um so we're kind of coming into this process in my presentation tonight, is really talking through some of the conceptual things that we're working on that the city's considering, and then I will hand off to Matt for lots of technical um components of one specific uh strategy that that the city's considering, which is impact fee.

So I'll do a little bit of an overview, but I'm gonna start actually with the housing strategic plan.

Um, this is a very high-level summary of the housing strategic plan, uh, which is really looking at um housing strategies across these categories, funding, preserving, assisting, and building in a very simplified way.

Uh the actions or the the small boxes you see under those categories are the action items that we're identified in the plan.

Obviously, there's a lot more detail within the plan.

The ones that are outlined in red right here are are all of the strategy or the actions that are actually rolled into the things that we're talking about tonight.

So these are the components that are rolled into both impact fee, inclusionary housing research, um, and incentive-based work.

So I just want to kind of start from there that we're taking kind of a quick deep dive into some really specific policy tools that are directly related to development and leveraging market rate development, but also just looking at uh development in general.

That doesn't mean it's the only thing that the city is working on related to housing.

These are just the parts of that that kind of fall under this umbrella around land use and future development.

So that's why we're looking at those.

Um you can see we're hitting actually four of those also under build is update your zoning code, which um we've already talked about, but is not part of my project, so I didn't want to outline it in red because I don't care about it.

No, I'm just kidding.

I do care.

Um then bubble home zoning district as well.

So there are a couple other things that you're actively working on, obviously, but the ones in red are really the ones that we're talking about as we start talking about some of these policy tools.

So jumping in the next slide.

Um, for the for those of you that have heard me present on inclusionary before, uh, I was um here when we started kicking off this project.

I think it was back in June, maybe.

So these will look familiar.

The first couple of slides will look familiar to the to a couple of you that heard this before.

But just to kind of make sure we're we're all on the same page with some terminology and what these different policies are.

We are talking about kind of three policies tonight, all of which work well together and all of which are related to new development.

And so these are really policies that are tied to um leveraging development to help deliver affordable outcomes.

The first is incentives.

That word voluntary is at the top of that one because incentives are generally something that you offer as an option to developers if they want to take advantage of that set incentive.

For example, a height bonus, which we're not talking about, but uh so if they want to take advantage of that, you would say yes, you can do that if you give us X percent of units at X percent AMI.

So that's a voluntary optional program that delivers to the city what it wants in exchange for giving a developer something that they want.

Impact fees, um, sometimes called linkage fees.

We're mostly gonna call them impact fees tonight, uh, is basically a fee-based assessment on new development that goes toward affordable housing.

It is very specifically tied to a rational nexus.

Um, Matt will give you a lot more detailed information on that one, but it is uh essentially a fee-based program that is really directly proportional to the impact that that development has on creating the need for affordable housing.

So it is impact driven, it is mathematically specified, um, it is legally specified, and it comes under essentially sort of fee powers of the city, whereas inclusionary, which is the next one, is also a requirement on new development.

But instead of being fee forward, it is unit forward.

And so it typically an inclusionary says if you're building residential, we would like you to designate some of those as affordable at whatever price point we say that we value as a city.

So typically in an inclusionary program, there is a fee option.

If you're a developer and you're subject to this inclusionary, and the perhaps the policy says, hey, you need to give us 10 units at 50% AMI, whatever that might be, the developer says, I really don't want to build those, I don't want to manage those.

I would rather just pay you.

There is typically a fee in lieu of building the units, right?

And so you can see impact fees and inclusionary sometimes kind of appear the same thing to a developer.

They're technically different, but in an inclusionary, typically you can build the units or you can pay a fee.

Let's go ahead and go to the next.

As I mentioned, these are all market driven programs.

These are all tied to new development.

It is important to note that without new development, these don't work.

They don't generate anything.

So it's important that they are market sensitive.

That doesn't mean they have to be market neutral.

You can ask developers to do things as part of that.

We do that all the time, right?

With an open space requirement or with a parking requirement or any of those other things we put in the zoning code, this is really similar to that.

However, you don't want to say 100% of the units have to be affordable at 30% AMI.

Everybody's just gonna be like, well, I'm not building anything, right?

So we want to be market sensitive.

Um it's also important to note that because this is only applied to new development going forward, it is not typically a strategy that helps deliver a backlog of affordable.

If you're way in the hole and you're way short on affordable, this isn't gonna solve that problem.

What it is gonna do is take the pressure off future because it's gonna, okay, future development is gonna kind of keep us on track with where we want to be for affordable, and then we can direct other policies and resources to kind of digging us out of a hole.

If that makes sense.

Let's jump to the next.

Um, so as I'm as a market tool, it's important to think about does this work everywhere?

And the answer is no, it doesn't work everywhere, right?

And so when and where is inclusionary effective.

Um a lot of this has to do with how you specify the actual policy or program, but some of its success is also dependent on the market context.

So generally, inclusionary works pretty well in communities that have potential for growth, either through annexation or infill or both.

Um, it also typically works well in stronger markets rather than weaker markets.

Um, if you uh were already struggling to attract any development whatsoever, you'd want to go light or easy on inclusionary, it also matters how this relates to other policies, which is one thing we're talking about tonight.

How would inclusionary potentially interact with an impact fee system or with other strategies that the city's pursuing?

In order to address this, we did do a market analysis, I think it's in your packet, that looks at how does Lafayette compare to surrounding areas.

You also have a number of surrounding areas that have inclusionary already, so that's kind of tested the waters for you.

We don't see any concerns in terms of market viability of this type of program, assuming that it's specified in a really reasonable way.

Let's go ahead.

Speaking of the, yeah, go ahead.

So one of the things I've seen happening in the newspaper is that rents are going down.

And not for sale, but rents are going down.

And we've had some public comment that 80% AMI is comparable to market right now.

And so I don't see any of these examples.

Well, it looks like Denver is at 60% AMI and below.

So if markets change and we put something in place that's 60% AMI, and then rents go way up and developers can't afford to build that 60% AMI because they're losing, leaving too much on the table.

What happens to our program and is there a way to design flexibility in the program so that depending on what's going on in the market, we're we're adapting and helping.

We don't want to have our costs so high that developers don't develop, right?

So can you address that?

That's a it's kind of a squirrely worded question.

Yeah, no, no, it's absolutely a great question.

And it's it's an important factor is where you think about setting those AMIs, and there's always some tension between we really want to serve the need, and that might be at a lower AMI or more affordable, that also makes it harder for developers to deliver that, right?

If they're discounting it a lot.

You also don't want it to be very close to market, right?

That is when inclusionary programs start to fail, is when the affordable price gets close to the market price.

We saw that with a handful of programs, uh, particularly on the ownership side when we had the Great Recession.

So if they had a fairly high AMI target in in their inclusionary program, and then market prices fell to equivalent to that, then nobody, there's no demand for that.

So you're always trying to peg it absolutely kind of in that sweet spot where it's manageable to for developers to subsidize to that level.

It's also enough below market that it preserves really the need that you're you're trying to address.

So the response I would say is I typically would suggest looking closer to 60% AMI on the rental side.

There are Boulder of Broomfield, both allow some flexibility up to that 80% AMI, but they're also asking for a lot of units to be set aside, right?

And we'll talk about that in a little bit more detail.

But typically you'll see uh kind of if you're in the like eight to 10 or 15 percentage uh range, other than superior, which is a pretty small program, um you're gonna be in those deeper AMIs.

It is important to understand how that impacts developer performance, and that is something that we're looking at, kind of piggybacking on some of Matt's work as well.

And so we're gonna take a look at that.

There are also kind of economic shock factors.

Um those tend to be really, really extreme when communities look at adjustments to that.

We did see some of that in the recession, people saying, oh, we need to pause a program or look at an adjustment to AMI, those are certainly things that you can adjust as part of that.

So typically this is kind of related to in the zoning code, but oftentimes there's like an affordable housing ordinance that's separate from that that gives you a little bit more flexibility to acknowledge market conditions, check in on that, and then adjust if you need to.

So this gives you kind of a sense of the other programs that are in the front range.

There's also lots of programs that are inclusionary related that are in our mountain resort communities, um, but I think these are gonna be the most relevant as you think about um comparables.

Uh, just to kind of clarify this table, when we say set aside, we mean what percentage of units in the development have to be restricted to a certain rent or income.

So that's that first percentage you see.

So for example, let's look at Longmont.

12% of units in a multifamily rental have to be income restricted at 50% AMI, AMI's area median income.

That's how we measure income eligibility for housing programs.

Um it's also as we're thinking about AMI, we typically um we'll see different AMI targets on the rental side as on the owner side.

That's also in line with, for example, Prop 123, grant money, and targets you're trying to achieve through other uh mechanisms as well.

Fee and loo, oh yeah.

So I understand that Longmont had an issue with developers building and rental housing and paying the five dollars and ninety-three cents per square foot, but then some years later, converting to condos.

And I just wonder how do we structure an inclusionary housing ordinance to avoid that problem.

Um, I mean, I guess that that will get into some of the policy considerations as well, and really how you wanna prioritize what you're getting out of it.

So in Longmont's case, they have uh a relatively low fee and lieu.

And so they do drive a lot of that inclusionary energy into revenue collection, but that's an intentional choice on Longmont's part.

And so they've actually bumped up their fees a little bit, but that's a strategy that some communities take to say we actually want to use this as a fee as a revenue generation tool because we think we can take that fee revenue and leverage it into other developments.

So a lot of what Longmot does is they'll collect a fee, they'll use it as gap financing for a low-income housing tax credit uh project, and that helps them leverage more dollars.

So I guess I'm not sure that I would say that it's a clear problem.

Um, if you're collecting the fee revenue, and that fee revenue is going toward delivering affordable units, even if it's separate from that development, that is a conscious policy choice.

There are ways to set up your program where that's not happening.

Littleton, for example, has a really high fee in lieu.

Every single developer has built the units.

Um, and so it's really about what are you trying to achieve as a city.

And then in Longmont's case, so for example, if a developer pays the fee in lieu, they build rental, but then they convert that to condos, you've still collected kind of the affordable housing component of that, and you can still leverage it.

Um the fee and loo obviously is on here.

I do want to acknowledge that that's sort of a calculation.

A lot of communities assess a fee and loo as a dollar, a full dollar amount per affordable unit required.

But we've converted these into per square foot just to make it a little bit more comparable to some of the data that you'll see from Matt around the Nexus study, um, and because you're also thinking about linkage fees.

So let's jump to the next.

Talking about how these work uh together, yes, you can have both inclusionary and an impact fee system in kind of the simplest form, uh, those work together by applying the inclusionary to residential and the impact fee to non-residential.

There's a lot of nuances to that.

There's a lot of ways to calibrate that a little different differently.

There's some overlap between those two.

It's not a perfectly clear line.

But the reality is if you're typically in these systems, if you're gonna build the units under an inclusionary, you're exempt from paying the impact fee.

You're not gonna pay an impact fee and build affordable units in most cases.

Um, and so that's how they typically work really well together.

You you can also um tie your uh fee and lie from the inclusionary into um it can be compatible with the impact fee amounts systems.

You do want to make sure it stays under kind of the legal threshold that's set by the Nexus study, which Matt will talk about.

Um but broadly speaking, there's a lot of flexibility in how those interact from a fee perspective.

Are you saying you could use both of these?

You can use both of these as a city, you don't apply both of them to a specific development.

Okay, is that clear?

Yeah.

Um and maybe that the next slide might make that a little bit more clear.

So in this this is just an example, not a specific proposal.

But in this example, so for example, if we set Lafayette an inclusionary policy that says 12% of new units have to be required or required to be affordable if you're building residential, but there's also an impact fee in place.

If you're a residential developer, you start with the inclusionary housing ordinance, and then you either build those units or pay a fee and lo under inclusionary, and then you're not subject to an impact fee, an affordable housing impact fee.

If you're non-residential and you're not building any units at all because you're non-residential, you're gonna kind of go straight to the impact fee amount.

Right now, um, everyone's paying an affordable housing fee.

All development types in Lafayette are paying an affordable housing fee.

Um, that uh this would kind of reiterate.

Used to have inclusionary for those that may not have that history, it was a long time ago.

It was one of the ones that sort of fell to the recessionary impacts.

Um you're not the only community that said, Oh, we got to pump the brakes on this and we're not sure how this is gonna work out.

Um, but so this would kind of reinstate an option for developers to build units instead of paying a fee.

So having both of these actually increases the optionality for developers to say, oh, we're not just required to pay a fee, we could also build.

Just real quick, how does this apply in the case of what we were talking about earlier mixed use development?

Where they're building both residential and commercial.

Great question.

Uh it and we can structure, you can structure the policy kind of how you like with that, but typically what we see is you pay an impact fee on the mixed or on the commercial square footage, and you would still deliver units under the inclusionary based on your unit count in the residential component.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yep.

It uh you don't when you talk about tools and the incentives, right?

You mentioned height as an additional incentive.

But let's say we did a 12% at 60% AMI, and a developer came in and said, Well, I'll do 20% AMI if I get some other things.

Waiving fees, expedited permitting, things like that.

And you don't mention those here, but are those the kinds of things we might also include?

Absolutely, yes.

And we'll talk about those coming up.

Those are a good segue, except you have to bear with me through two more slides and then we get to talk about some incentives, but absolutely.

Um, I do want to talk about there's a there's a couple of kind of policy design trade-offs that we've already hinted at, but I want to talk about a little bit more squarely is what we call breadth versus versus depth of affordability.

So this is when we're talking about oh, Boulder goes up to 80% AMI, but they're also asking for 25% of units.

Um, the uh broadly speaking, um the project performos and developments are impacted both by how much of a discount you're asking them to put on the unit, that's how deep the AMI is, or how much subsidy it has, and how many units you're asking for.

Those work inversely.

So you can ask for more units if it's not as big of a discount, or you can ask for a big discount on relatively few units.

It's important to think about that from a policy consideration.

There's not a perfect number that the math is gonna tell you exactly what to do.

It is a trade-off.

We can move both of those, we just have to move them in the opposite directions, right?

And so we can't say, well, we want, you know, 30% of units at 5% AMI, right?

That that's that's not gonna be feasible.

Um, we will be looking at some of that feasibility, but just to give you an example, this is an example from from Denver, and each of those asks in terms of the set aside and the AMI are roughly equivalent in terms of how it hit the developer.

So, for example, in this one, 5% of units at 50% AMI was roughly the same hit to the developers' performance as 12% of units at 80% AMI.

It's different for different communities, different AMIs, different development conditions, but it gives you a sense of how those move.

So that's one thing to think about where do we want to set AMIs and how does that impact how many units we can ask for, and which do we care most about?

Lots of units at shallow discounts or a smaller number of units, but at the deeper discounts.

And can you leave it up to the developer and let the developer let's say we want it to average at 70, and they might include some at 80 and some at 60?

Uh do you ever there are some communities that do averaging, there are also some communities that give the developers some flexibility.

I would say what what we in those systems, we hear from developers, this is too complicated, just tell us what to do.

And then when it's really simple, they say this is too like confining, give us more flexibility.

So yes, and it's not gonna be perfect.

Yeah, Tim.

Are we saying $866 is equivalent?

Relatively equivalent to the developer or 1400 services.

No, um, we're saying that that's just what the rental price that that so 50% AMI rent is $886, whereas an 80% AMI rent is 1,400, $14.76.

This is like several years old, so it's a little bit out of date.

So we're saying if you have to discount for, so let's say market rate was $1,500.

If you've got a discount all the way down to $886, that's a deeper discount, so you can only do that, you know, 5% of the time, as opposed to, oh, if I'm just doing a little discount down to $1476, then I can do that across 12% of units.

This is not showing you the developer hit.

Okay, you said they're relatively the same.

Yes, because of how you're applying it across the number of units.

So I can give you 10 units that have a hundred dollar discount, or I can give you five units that have uh I didn't do my math, 200 discount or whatever it is.

That was wrong.

Check my math.

Um this is uh this is that's not calculating the hit to the developer.

That's just saying where those AMIs are.

Okay, so the the for the developers it's kind of a wash.

We can go through the okay.

Exactly, exactly.

So that's one thing to consider breadth versus depth.

The other thing they consider is fee generation versus production.

We talked about that a little bit with Longmont versus Littleton and kind of how you structure that.

You set a really high fee, people build the units, you set a really low fee, people pay the fee.

There are benefits to both.

There's not a right or wrong, but it is important to clarify kind of what what you're trying to do up front so that it doesn't flip around.

We've had communities that's that's sort of structured it to um to generate a fee, and then they're like, why are we not getting any units?

And it's like, well, this was a this was a choice, um, but you don't want that to kind of come back to say that to say, like, oh, this is not not working the way we wanted if the if it was designed that way.

You can also change that.

For example, um, Broomfield has gone through this in a couple of iterations.

But when they first put it in, they really little fee, they said, Oh, nobody's building units, let's jack it up.

And now they say, oh, wait, this is our only um affordable housing funding source.

Can we calibrate it a little bit lower so we're getting a little mix of both?

And so there is some play with that.

There's you know, you can you can change that, you can adjust that.

You can set it kind of middle and hope to get a little of both.

Let's jump to the next.

So this is kind of a list in a very generic way of common incentives that are paired with inclusionary housing.

There are, to your point, um, counselor Jensen, there are a couple of ways that people use incentives paired with inclusionary.

One is to say, let's use incentives to get people to build units instead of pay the fee.

So you get incentives if you're just building units as opposed to paying the fee.

It's another way to kind of impact that balance between fee generation and unit production.

The other way that people use incentives with this is to say, well, if we set our bar at 10% of units, you get these incentives if you give us 15% or 20%, or we may have a whole other set of incentives if you're Willoughby Corner and you're doing you know 100% of the units affordable.

So there are tiers you can set there.

So there's a couple ways that you can use incentives to deliver outcomes.

You can use it to deliver above and beyond an inclusionary.

You can also use it to steer how people are complying with your inclusionary.

The most common incentive types are parking reductions, density or height bonuses on multifamily affordable.

Um, but there's also density bonuses that we see on single family detached and attached affordable.

Sometimes that comes through lot size reductions, sometimes that comes through you can now automatically do two units by right, four units by right, um, whatever that might be as well.

So there's density bonuses in two different ways as we think about scale and then fee waivers and rebates.

Those are the broad categories.

There's a lot of other categories we've seen uh folks that do, you get sort of an extra allowance on administrative adjustments without having to go to planning board um on setbacks or other things that we've seen, uh open space waivers if you're in a certain distance to a park, or reductions and some of those other regulatory benefits as well.

This seems very um could be more contemporary in some of the incentives.

Have you seen incentives that are revolved around access to transportation or sustainable development that's related to just go down the list of all the different things that that's not really inclusive?

Yeah, and these are these are like very general, obviously.

Yes, these are the most common.

These are the most common that are in the most, and I think a lot of reasons that these are the most common is they're they're just really straightforward to administer, right?

It's giving somebody a parking reduction, like, okay, great, you go from 1.25 to 0.75, it's easy, it's clean, it's very um notable.

Uh, and I would say typically what we'll see in terms of more sustainability connectivity, um, and you know, transit orientation, that that tends to just be more spatially driven, right?

It's location based, and a lot of times we'll see communities already have an incentive that's not tied to affordability for those areas.

So you may have higher rates already around transit, or you may already have reduced parking around transit by right, regardless of whether there's an affordability component.

Um, and so I would say, yes, we see those sometimes they're overlaid with affordable, sometimes they're just based on the geographic location in that regard.

Right.

And some of it, I mean, it's some of it is location-based, but some of it is literally the commitment to that, like higher insulation levels.

Oh, sure, yes, yeah.

Like access to the city.

Yeah, so more sustainable building practices for sure.

Yeah, we actually have seen that as part of affordable um incentives as well through through this.

Um those are a little bit harder to calibrate because you want that to apply to the entire structure, not just to the affordable units within the structure.

But yes, we have seen some of those as well.

They're not as common as these, but absolutely those are things to consider.

And those are would be things we'd want to work closely if you're looking at doing a building code update, understanding what's already in that.

Um and I I've said this uh a joke about this, Elizabeth a lot about incentives work best when your zoning code is terrible, right?

Or your building code is terrible because that's when developers really want the incentive that you're offering.

And so um, we don't want to hold good building code or good zoning code hostage to affordability.

We want to use affordability to push um zoning code when it makes sense, but we're not saying, hey, go back to 1950 zoning, make everything incentive-based, and then we get all the affordable housing we want.

So there is a balance there between just making really good choices for sustainability within your code update um versus lumping them into affordable, which I shouldn't say because I care about affordable, but um, but yeah, so I think that's oh, yeah.

So these are my these are just quick, and I think maybe we skip these and come back to them unless you want.

I just I know we're time sensitive, so I don't want to belabor the impact fee.

We could probably break here and we'll close with um Matt has some um specific data that he can share around the fee impact.

We're halfway through that study, so we wanted to give council an update on kind of what the numbers are showing for the impact fee.

But I think this at least gets to some of the policy options that would be helpful because they're gonna go off after this and continue on with some testing, doing some like development testing and seeing kind of what works, what breaks the what breaks the budget and what doesn't.

One thing we didn't talk about right here is um, and I have brought this up before I was a council member, and I brought it up in the land use working group, was we now have a new ADU policy, but we know that ADUs without incentives are not often necessarily affordable, right?

And I would love to have the land use working group give us some options for incentives to how to help people create affordable ADUs, and also in that it's not just help them create affordable ADUs, but we don't want ADUs to only be for the wealthy, you know.

So if you've got uh a senior that is struggling with you know paying their mortgage and they maybe want to move into the ADU and rent out the main home, but they can't finance you know another mortgage on their own.

What are the kind of things we could do as the city, whether it be some some pre-approved plans, spray views, some financing packages, um whatever we could do to try to make ABUs more affordable and not just another housing type.

And I know, and I've talked to y'all about this before, but you know, Habitat in Denver has a contract to help build ADUs.

They serve as a general contractor, they they work with the homeowner, build the ADU, and then the homeowner agrees to make it affordable in perpetuity.

I'm not necessarily advocating that particular model, but within less than that, there are lots of other incentives that we could do to try to make ADUs both affordable and reachable for some of our population who may be house poor and would like to do an ADU but can't afford to build it.

So I was hoping the land use working group would also give us some of those kind of incentives as well.

Yeah, and right now, so that's a great um comment.

We have started to think about a holistic approach to affordability and ADUs.

So right now we do have a what we called an ADU owner experience survey out to everyone who's ever pulled a permit for an ADU to understand what what were the hard parts of the process from working with the city, working with the designer, um the cost, what they rent it for, um, as well as um what what kinds of incentives would they be open to in it in exchange for what?

And so that surveys out right now, and so we're getting some responses to it, some interesting responses.

And so it it might actually come, it could be on a parallel track, but it may or may not be in the land use code program because it might include other like budgetary considerations where if we did do an incentive program, it would likely it may require some like financial incentive or something like that.

So what we'd like to do is probably let the survey close.

I think Molly's worked a little bit on some of these and probably speak to what she's seen in some other communities.

Um, but it would probably be a more programmatic programmatic approach to it to make sure that we're fixing any permitting issues where um we have uh resources available, we have a staff liaison that it like really try to get to like the underlying issues that we hear from the people that have gone through the process.

So time frame for that.

That surveys open right now, and so we were probably looking at it some at some point um some point this year to start putting some more finality around that.

And I know we've heard from council in the past that there was some interest around this too.

Yeah.

Yeah, and uh we've worked on some of those before too and can integrate some of that just into some of our just general incentive research.

Um, and Grand Junction's got a really good program, they've got pre-approved plans, they've got um uh education and outreach, which is actually really effective in just increasing the number of people that are interested in doing an ADU is a lot education.

How do I make this easy?

They have fast track permitting, and then they also pair some financial incentives if you're willing to uh restrict it to a certain affordability level as well.

And so they've got they've got a good program.

Maybe Boulder has a program as well.

They also offer some subsidy if it's going to be affordable.

Um some of the mountain communities do it as well on the workforce side.

So those are some uh components we can pull in to start looking at.

Well, and as we go into this whole talking to people in the community about ADUs and people see it as an option, I guess it would be good if we'd let them know that we may have a package of incentives coming so they don't build it now and then go, oh, you know, I would have gladly made it affordable if you had told me I had these incentives.

So I think communication about our process on that is kind of key to the public, so we make sure and let them know not to build their ADU till we get done with we are starting those conversations.

There's one person in particular, I get an email from every two weeks saying asking those questions.

So there's some interest out there, I think.

Um kind of pivoting quick back to these questions, the you know, the general policy direction, and again, we're testing a lot of things, so we're not asking for super clear definitive direction on these.

We're not gonna say, okay, we'll completely ignore everything else, but it is helpful for us to gauge where your priorities are.

So thinking about that breadth first step conversation, um, thoughts on kind of fee forward versus production priorities in terms of that uh and then um thinking about incentives.

I feel like I'm already getting a little bit of feedback on incentives, looking at some more specific, you know, code, sustainability um incentives as well.

So we'll we'll pull those in.

Um, and then also um looking for looking at ADU incentives in general more broadly than than just through the inclusionary process.

But any other um initial thoughts that you want to share to help guide as we start to analyze and run some of these tests on what might work, what might not work that you want to leave us with?

Just a quick question.

I'm looking at the those two first questions, and aren't they kind of one in the same?

We really have to look at our fee for production to really analyze what we would want in breadth or step, right?

Okay.

Yep, that's fair.

Any thoughts from council?

What did you say?

I'm sorry, couldn't you?

So those first two questions to me are kind of one in the same.

We have to figure out whether we want to go towards fee for what are our priority, fear production, and then we can kind of look at the first question and we look at AMI and percentage and we look at what the inclusionary housing housing would actually be for us.

So, related to that for me is the needs assessment.

Yep.

When was the last time we did a needs assessment?

What year?

2022.

22.

We I think we did a needs assessment as a precursor to the housing strategic plan, which was adopted in 23.

So I think the needs assessment was 22.

Um, so it's probably not too far off.

But so what does the needs assessment show as to where's our greatest need in the community?

I I know the lower the income level, the harder to build the housing, right?

Um but but perhaps the very low income is our greatest need.

I don't know the answer.

So I haven't looked at that in a while.

So it'd be really good to track that.

It seems to me, with what is what is our needs assessment show we need, and then the same with regard to the rental versus for sale.

You know, I know I've seen some data that entry level for sale housing is you know one of the highest demand things in our community that people want to get into wealth building and own their own home.

I don't remember what the needs assessment says.

So to answer those questions, it seems to me we go back to the needs assessment, see what our particular community needs, and then shape the policy based on that, but also make it flexible enough to tweak it as needs change, you know.

And if it turns out rental costs start going way back up again, you know, and people are paying $4,000 for one bedroom, we might need more rental than we need right now.

So we need the flexibility to deal with market forces.

I don't think that yes, and um the for sale piece.

I don't know if this is accurate, but it seems more of a stabilizer for those who are need housing.

If because they're not they're not susceptible to rents.

Um and getting that threshold to get to the for sale properties is also a big challenge.

I would lean for the for sale of all kinds of housing if we can get people in that because I don't know if it's in our comp or cap uh, but that would that for me would seem like a more um realistic way of minimizing our susceptibility to market forces or things up and down.

Well, and the research on the equity issue for sale is extremely such that people of color, um any sort of marginalized population LGBTQ, they really uh that the data shows that they are their interest rates are har higher, they're harder to get a mortgage, and if we're doing some sort of city program, we can you know use an equity lens to to try to even out some of those kind of things.

And I think it's also important because it creates stability, but not in the way you're saying market stability, but family stability, you know.

Um kids don't move around as much, but you know, and they stay in the same school district, and we know their public health impacts and all those kind of things from owning your own home, and the public likes it better.

And they're connected, yes, yes.

If you get somebody in a home but they can't, or in a rental place, they're gonna move because of the market pieces.

And if they're if it's for sale and they own it, or they they're they're still more stable.

Yep.

Right.

And we have you know, the modular factory that habitat, I don't know if you all know about that, but we have a we have a modular home factory just on the road, and they have excess capacity right now.

I mean, who knows how long they're gonna have that?

It's not gonna be forever because people are gonna figure out that they have excess capacity and take it, but we should take advantage of that while we can't.

And I'll just kind of add to that to acknowledge that that one of the compliance options we're looking at.

You know, I talked about you can produce the units, or you can build or you can pay a fee.

There are also communities that say, or you can donate land to a nonprofit developer.

So for example, you could say, okay, in instead of building or um paying the fee, we'd like you to commission 10 units from the habitat modular factory or donate this piece of land that they want then we want to designate for affordable.

So we will also be looking at some of those more strategic partnership opportunities as potential for compliance options as we look at some of those policy ideas.

Any other thoughts before moving on?

Yeah.

Um I targets would be ideal.

I think I think it's a great idea to look at the needs assessment, but I'm thinking 50 to 60% seems like it makes a lot of sense to me.

Um yes, we should have different for rental versus for sale.

Um to your second point, um, should we adjust the set aside of the AMI?

I think adjust the set aside.

If we can get 5% at 50%, that's great.

You know, 12% is the goal, but at the end of the day, it's really you know, what can we what can the market already provide?

And I think the market sometimes provides, especially in Lafayette, with um uh units that are at 120 100, 80 um, because we already have a an affordable mix.

Um fee versus production, I think production.

Um I don't know.

I I want to learn more about what we've done with our the money that we've collected in the past um and what sort of opportunities exist there.

But to me, it seems like production is more important.

Um I think we just need more, I need more on incentives.

I'm not sure I fully understand um all of the options that exist, the ones that you put on the board I get.

But the sustainability one we started talking about, I don't really it didn't really make sense to me of how if we would give cuts on the sustainability attributes that they would do to make it more make the money work for the colour.

Typically, we would see that is if you go above and beyond sustainability requirements.

So you're doing all electric when it's not required or something like that.

Then you don't have to do as much.

Then you uh then you get either a reduced compliance option or um that that's or like a reduced VNL or something like that.

So yeah, it can work kind of both directions.

We're asking more of developers here, then that can offset some of the affordability.

So those are priorities that you have to think about.

Yeah, so they're kind of competing priorities in that case, really, is sort of what we're saying.

And should should how much should they be competing, I think is your question.

Um so yeah, I think learning more about that sounds really great, but yeah, there's all my answers.

Great, thank you.

And David, if they lower a utility cost for the family that's living there, they're effectively lowering the AMI that can afford to be there.

So maybe that's how you take it into account is you say you get credit for a lower AMI because you lowered the total cost of living there.

I mean there are lots of ways it can be done, but that makes more sense thinking about them.

Do you have a question?

Thank you.

I agree with everything that's just been said.

That's my input.

Okay.

I just quickly, you know, have wanna say one more thing about production versus uh uh fees.

There's a place for both, I think, because Willoughby Corner, those kind of things don't happen with the production.

And one of the things we have at Willoughby Corner, we have you know congregate meals, we have a community center.

We had uh we have services that come out and provide medical care for people who need it, because there are a lot of people who need that all in one location, and we have a community garden and we have other kind of benefits that you don't get if you do that dispersed.

But the research on dispersed housing, especially in wealthy areas, is putting low-income kids in wealthy areas has lots of good benefits.

Um, just in who they play with, the the services their school has because their school has more you know, wealthy parents or whatever.

And so there's there's re there's research on both sides that they have benefit, and so I think we should try to do some of both.

I don't know though that we have the place to do another Willoughby Corner in Lafayette anytime soon.

So maybe maybe the production is is I I I could argue it both ways, but I think there's benefits to both.

That was also sentiment shared, the working group um earlier this month about spreading it out throughout the community instead of isolated ones.

Okay.

Thank you.

We could close out.

So I wanted to also introduce Matt.

So Matt and Molly's work is both funded by a uh grant through proposition 123.

So we uh we committed to that, and that's made it possible to do this work.

And so Matt's working on this affordable housing fee study that um about halfway through.

You'll be seeing that probably separate, but at the same rough roughly about the same time as the code project.

So we wanted to let you know where we are in the process.

Yeah, hi everyone.

Um yeah, I'm just gonna give you an update on where we're at in this affordable housing fee study.

So I'm Matt Prosser, I'm a principal with economics and planning systems um based here in our Denver office.

Um so I'll just dive in instead of talking about myself.

Uh really what we're gonna talk about is what's the purpose of what we're doing.

Uh I want to introduce to you at a high level the methodology of how we think about a linkage model.

Um, let you know that we're gonna do some development feasibility testing and then tell you what our next steps are.

So this is really just informational.

Uh next slide.

So why are you doing this?

Well, uh you currently have an affordable housing fee that's charged on new development that offsets the impact uh on the need for affordable housing.

Um and so this fee is typically referred to as a linkage fee.

Uh we've been calling it an impact fee as well.

And as Molly has mentioned, it's tied to new development.

Uh it's offsetting the impact that new development creates.

So often when you have an impact fee, or not often, when you have an impact fee, uh there's a need for a Nexus study that provides the rationale for the connection between uh the fee that you're charging and the cost of the community.

And so what we're doing, excuse me, is doing the fee study to help justify an update to your fee.

Um next slide.

Um so as you you may know, you currently have a fee.

It's a dollar per square foot, and it's a charge both the residential and non-residential development.

Generates about $325,000 annually, at least over the last 10 years or so.

That's what we saw from your data.

It's one tool, as Molly has mentioned, that you can use to offset the impacts of new development.

It can be applied to both residential and non-residential development.

And you can calibrate that based on how you want to structure your affordable housing programs, and it can work very well with an inclusionary housing program.

Next slide.

So how do we do this?

So you understand what that nexus is.

So when we're looking at a new market rate housing development, how do we figure out what the need is for affordable housing from that?

And so, really, what the argument is, or the rationale, I should say, is that new households that come into your community earn money and they're going to spend it in the economy.

That spending creates jobs.

So for all these jobs to create it, that's going to create the need for houses for these workers to live in.

And a portion of those houses that workers live in are going to be unaffordable, or the workers are not going to a portion of the workers are not going to earn enough to be able to afford market rate housing.

So service sector jobs, for instance, pay relatively low wages, challenging for those workers to afford a market rate housing product.

And so that gap between those workers that can't afford affordable uh can't afford housing and the market rate is what we use to calculate the fee.

And so basically spending from new households generates jobs, jobs generate new households, and a portion of those need affordable housing.

And that has a cost, and we're attributing the uh proportional share of that cost onto the new development.

Um we look at commercial development, it's a little bit simpler.

Um, commercial development places create spaces for jobs to locate.

And so it kind of takes out those first couple steps of spending.

It's basically new jobs need uh create workers, workers need a place to live, and some of those workers can't afford to live in your community.

And so that cost to provide them an opportunity to live in your community is the impact that you're then trying to assess on the new development.

Uh next slide.

So we have built our model.

We have some preliminary um fee numbers that we have created based on our modeling, and we're calibrating this more.

Um, and we'll come back to you with actual recommendations in terms of what to do with that.

But what we're showing here on this is what we're calling sort of the maximum supportable fee based on our analysis.

So do you have the latitude or the ability to charge up to this amount per square foot for new development that can be rationally justified through our Nexus study.

Um, oftentimes uh communities set their fees lower than what's mac the maximum justifiable about justifiable amount, and we'll get into that in a second.

Um but as you can see here, residential the maximum fee is 38 to 34 dollars per square foot based on for sale or rental.

If you remember back to Molly's slide, a lot of your peer communities are well below this.

Um Boulder was the only one that's higher, and you know, obviously you can argue that there's a higher need in Boulder given the higher cost of living in the city.

But basically the takeaway there is you're likely at a maximum fee level that is a beyond what you're gonna want to set.

And we'll get into that again in a couple slides.

Uh, the other thing is the the fees for non-residential development are are higher.

That's because there's a pretty direct tie to new jobs needing new uh affordable housing.

Um, and you can see things like retail have a much higher fee.

It's because those produce jobs that typically have lower paying wages, and so the impact is greater.

Generally, what we do though is try to set an average fee for all non-residential development that sort of factors that in.

There is some ability to play with that for different uses, but in a community like yours, it's usually just setting one fee for non-residential development.

But this gives you a sense of what relative uses charge or uh have in terms of an impact.

Next slide.

So uh a really important consideration into where you set your fee level is really the impact on development.

I'm gonna tell you again that your fee maximum fee levels are probably higher than you're gonna want to set them and probably higher than what the market can support.

And so this feasibility testing is a good way to help you understand where do we start to create pain, if you will, on the development community when they're trying to pay for this.

And so it's a way for us to calibrate uh the the how we set the impact fee level.

Um, and so we're building real estate pro uh development pro formulas for a wide variety of uses that I'll show you in the next slide, um, to help understand what that impact of a different fee per square foot would be on those different uses.

I'll show you in the next slide, um, to help understand what that impact of a different fee per square foot would be on those different uses.

Um caveats, we're we're gonna be using conceptual buildings.

These aren't actual projects, um, and we're doing our best to estimate inputs from market data sources that we have, but every project has unique circumstances when it comes to either the land price they paid or site constraints or design considerations or vision of the development.

And so it's not always the same for all, and we're just trying to give sort of a uh a pretty um accurate measure of sort of what the typical average development would look like.

Uh, last slide or next slide.

I think we're going right to considerations.

Yes, yeah.

I'll just mention just real quick there's like four or five residential development types, there's like four or five commercial development types that we're gonna be evaluating.

So we look at the most common types of projects that incur in Lafayette, so we're understanding those impacts.

Um yeah, next steps.

Um, so I've already said this, I'll say it again.

Your defensible fee is probably well above what can be supported by the market.

So setting that fee will be based on market tolerance, some of that feasibility work, as well as what do you want to achieve from your revenue potentials and how that actually, if you want to use inclusionary, how that fee and loo ties into your set-aside requirements, and so we'll be doing some back and forth with Molly and team to help calibrate that.

Um next steps for us, we want to finalize linkage models.

We're gonna refine our feasibility analysis.

We've already been doing interviews with developers in the community to help calibrate our inputs.

Um, and we'll bring a draft and final report to staff as well as you all for review adoption and approval.

And so you'll have the opportunity to get into the weeds and pepper me with fun questions in the future as you continue on this path to uh update your fees and use this study to help inform that.

Yeah.

Um, so we can obviously stop for any questions for Matt.

Um, just uh in terms of next steps, the survey, this survey will close, I think it's the 16th of February.

So just another um reminder of that.

We'll be doing a lot of analysis, as I mentioned at the beginning of probably at least over well over 2,000 comments that we probably want to tag and review.

So we'll be doing some of that, and then um we'll be coming out with a schedule to release the final draft of the code for the adoption.

Um we'll be doing some then more informing the community through perhaps the community briefing or some other types of event to let folks know you we heard you uh say this.

This is how it um um uh showed up in the code, um, and then uh inform them of kind of the what that adoption process looks like to actually go through the code um uh adoption.

So wanted to say that as the next steps, but also um if if the council has any questions for Matt as well.

Any questions for Matt?

Any questions on next steps?

Mayor Protect?

Uh questions for Matt.

Um bear with me for just a second.

So we've the model.

Um I just have some questions about the modeling.

And I hear over and over again that build uh building homes, the materials available for building homes is dramatically different today than it was, say, 10 years ago.

But the materials, there are new advances in uh ways that you can build the homes.

Um as I was alluding to earlier, there's sustainability questions about how do we build in resilience and sustainability with what is being developed.

And um with those elements considered, and um I I was looking at the numbers from local areas.

I'm just wondering when you're modeling, do you are you able to do you initialize this run?

These runs.

I assume it's a numerical modeling system that you use.

Yeah, and you do you initialize that specific to uh how small of an area works for Lafayette?

Is it just Boulder County, or do you look at the whole Denver metro area with what housing uh what's associated with the people building?

Because we have we have different um ways that things are being done in Boulder County versus uh other parts of Colorado.

So I'm just wondering what is the area that you focus upon and how do you account for these wild swings in building material costs and labor along the way.

COVID threw us for a loop with what it did to the building market.

So just how do you constrain the model, I guess?

Yeah, so um for the feasibility models that look at the impact and fees of impact of the fee on feasibility of development.

We usually start with national publications of construction costs that document through various surveys what construction cost rates are.

Those studies also often have adjustments for local areas.

So Boulder County per se is X percent more expensive to build than the national average.

So we start there, just kind of get a baseline.

And then we do interviews with local developers to understand where they are in terms of current pricing.

And so talking to folks that are active in Lafayette, but also in Boulder County or sort of Boulder Broomfield, you know, Northwest Denver range to kind of understand what their inputs are and how those might vary from those like kind of baseline numbers we got from our uh national manuals, if you will.

Um and so we calibrate that to try to best approximate the type of product we're modeling and the condition or the context of the community that's being built in.

Um building materials, it's just it's hard to so within it it kind of depends.

Um you calibrate it a little bit based on the product and the quality of product that you're looking at.

Those construction cost manuals have different levels of quality construction that refer to different materialization or articulation in buildings, things like that.

And so we try to calibrate that to the type of development you've been seeing because we're really trying to reflect what the impact is on the type of projects that you've been seeing in the kitchen.

And you're able to tune the model for what we have the best we can.

Lately, I guess.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

But one thing to consider, and then we'll talk about when I come back to you, is that uh market conditions change.

They're fluid.

Right now we're in uh uh a period where construction costs to your points spiked pretty high because lack of labor supply, supply constraint or supply chain constraints, those are starting to moderate, but we're also in kind of a relatively high interest rate period, and that has really big impacts on the feasibility of development.

And so we might model something right now that won't show up as feasible, whether you have an impact fee or not for affordable housing.

Um, but that might not be the case down the road or if conditions improve.

And so what we're trying to find of get at is what's a fee level that is relatively um uh relatively something that the developer can accommodate in a project given favorable market conditions that would support development.

But we can't control those.

You know, sometimes interest rates will go up and it development's gonna slow down whether or not you have a fee or not.

And so it's it's important to consider that and remember that in the context of the discussion.

Thank you.

Yep.

Any other questions?

Council Johnson?

I think I remembered in the document that whatever threshold we set for when an inclusionary housing housing ordinance kicks in, let's say it's 10 or 20 units.

If you're building below that, then the fee would automatically be what you pay.

Is that is do you is that what I understood from the packet?

There, yes, probably.

So most jurisdictions that so uh what you're referring to is typically an inclusionary kicks in if you're building a certain number of units.

If you're building one unit, you're not gonna say, oh, make one room affordable, right?

That doesn't work that way.

You know, so that is really dependent on kind of where you're set aside.

A lot of times it's okay, 10 units or more or 20 units or more, the inclusionary applies.

Below that threshold, there are two options.

One is to say you pay a fractional fee in lieu that's based on kind of an inclusionary obligation, um, which essentially is the same thing as saying let's let's apply it to the impact fee.

The other way to do it is to say, okay, anything below that threshold um is falls into the impact fee bucket as opposed to the inclusionary bucket.

So, yes, that is most common is you set a threshold number of units, um, and that's based on development, not like attached units necessarily, but for the development application, um, and then impact you would apply.

Yeah, so somebody's building, just bought a lot and is building something, they would be in one of those categories that you just described.

However, we decide to make the ordinance correct.

Yep.

Yep.

Counselor General.

Just coming back to Matt, thank you so much for what you've shown us tonight.

Really interesting.

Appreciate the work you've done.

What is the timing for finishing the study and coming back to council roughly?

I think it's a good question for Phil.

Yeah.

I don't know how much work is left.

Well, I mean, we're we're pretty close.

I mean, our feasibility models are built.

I've started to actually share them with the team.

That means I'm feeling pretty comfortable.

We're still calibrating.

Um, so I think at this point, our technical work uh is you know pretty close to being done in the next month or so.

It really comes down to calibration and coordination with what Molly's doing, um, and making sure that we're in conjunction and then finalizing a report and then getting into sort of your political process.

And so that kind of depends on how quickly I think you all want to move uh with that.

I think our hope is to have the updated code in the first quarter of this year and then be looking at some adoption hearings in the second quarter.

Um, and so Elizabeth hasn't punched me yet.

That's okay.

Okay.

Um so this would probably be kind of coincide with those because we would want them kind of married um together.

So I guess my other question then is to staff, like taking the feedback from tonight and synthesizing you know, recommendations from from these other folks.

It's gonna be your presenting then recommendations to council on kind of first cut of this is what we think what we sort of heard from council, what we're here from the community synthesizing synthesizing all this together.

Is that kind of how this will work in the practically in the background?

We'll be sifting through at least a couple thousand comments and really trying to get the key themes from what we've heard throughout this entire process.

Um, and then there's a question council could decide.

Do you want another touch point?

Do you want us to come to a formal meeting when we kind of get to that part of this is where we're landing on these key issues?

This is how our inclusionary and fee what we're what we're gonna recommend be set up, and then the final process is uh a public hearing before the planning commission and then a public hearing before our city council because it's an or it's an ordinance, chapter 26 of the code.

And so um we could we could come back to council if that's something that you know is uh it's is something that you would like.

So yeah.

Is that something we'd like?

Just looking around the room.

You mean before we have to vote?

Are you talking about another time before actually voting?

Pre preview the the code where it's going, um, in case you wanted any final changes before we go through the formal planning commission public hearing and council public hearing.

I mean, I guess I was more asking about kind of the inclusionary uh the numbers that are gonna be put forward to us.

I definitely want to see those again before it's gonna be put in an ordinance, just because I think we want to understand and you know, maybe go back to the study from earlier and have a better sense of this.

Um I don't know about the code necessarily that will go through planning commission, right?

I think you said, yeah.

If I might I would just second council counselor Gianola's point on the numbers specifically rather than kind of the broader code.

Um thank you, Molly and Matt, for the presentations.

This is fantastic.

Um I I guess I would just ask for in the kind of the next bite of the apple that we get for uh maybe a range of like very creative bold options.

I think you know what you've laid out is really interesting.

I think there's there's building consensus in terms of what kind of numbers uh look like.

I think counselor Fridland noted it earlier in terms of the AMI, but I'm just I would just encourage you to continue to be bold.

This is fantastic.

Well done.

So just to make sure what I'm hearing from councils, we we want to scan back.

What we really want to see is kind of what these incentives look like and what these numbers look like before we move forward.

Does that make sense?

Perfect.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Right.

Well, thank you for dealing with us for so long.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Very helpful.

Thank you.

Oh, fantastic.

We will move on to our second agenda item, which is uh new ideas.

However, from my understanding, I don't think we have any new ideas this week.

No, would it be valuable just to I don't know if the new counselors, I'm sure they talked to you about it, just of like what this is.

Why I connected with every new counselor so they know exactly what this is.

I I made sure.

Yeah.

Um yeah, it sounds like there's no new ideas this week unless anyone has anything off the top of their head.

Well, some of the new ideas we have, I'm assuming we will present at our retreat.

And if somebody says, you know, that's really odd and nobody else supports it, we'll just stop talking about it.

Is that I mean I how how does how does this concept?

I mean, I don't want to waste everybody's time if I have squirrely ideas that nobody else supports, right?

I I want to so I don't know that my new ideas I want to throw out right now until I've had a chance to talk to you about them and make sure they actually have some basis, you know.

Uh so I don't need to talk about that right now, right?

That that's right, that's right.

Uh and yes, the the idea behind the retreat is just to guess get us in a room together and figure out what our priorities are for the next two years.

And I think for these new ideas, and you know, hopefully maybe I'm saying things that people already understand, but um, I think the intention is floating them a little bit before you bring them to this session, right?

Like if there's a legal question, like making sure that it's legal a little bit, right?

Talking to other city counselors and saying like, is this something that you might support me on?

So you don't come and you're not surprised by how people react, you kind of know there's already a couple people that are on board with me on this, and so we we should talk about it more in depth.

Fantastic.

Well, I mean, before we close, I guess my my kind of only other question since we have the uh the planning session coming up for the retreat coming up.

You know, not having been through that process before, you know, I've got my skip my appointment with the consultant scheduled to I mean to can we just get a little bit of uh foreshadowing of what's to come with that and the retreat.

Sure.

I'll turn to staff on this because I think they have a better idea of what the consultants are planning.

Um that's a great question.

We don't because we wanted to get your guys' feedback on what you hope to accomplish, right?

It's a day and a half, and so I think it's just really level setting with the consultants that a day and a half isn't actually a lot of time, and so what are some of the top priorities that you want to get through?

I think the first day is typically set on around how do you all interact as a council with three new members and how does it feel you know when you're on the winning side of vote, how does it feel when you're not?

And so that's a lot more of kind of the high-level Friday stuff.

We do plan on talking a little bit about the work plan existing work plan, um, of what to expect of the next couple of years, and then that's when once we present that we can say where are we maybe misaligned or where there are additional items that maybe we want to fit in, and what does that mean for capacity?

Um, but until we hear from um most of you, so reminder to sign up if you haven't signed up.

Um, we will be meeting with the consultants early next week to flush out what it exactly looks like in the formal agenda.

And that's exactly what I wanted.

I wanted to kind of overview like high level, but what they're taking from us.

So that that feedback that you'll give them during that interview is what they're kind of gathering from all of us.

They'll have that data gathering and then they'll kind of put it all together and see where what's what's best and what's most efficient for us to kind of work through during the retreat.

Thank you.

If it helps any, I've been through it, and it's basically they need to make they need to know who they're working with before they can do something that's tailored for us.

I see it's kind of an interview.

Yep.

Okay.

Yeah, I went through it this morning, and um I I thought it was sort of a mix of aspirational and practical, you know, as what is your vision if you could do really good things, and then how do you temper that with the reality of you know, the operations of the city and staff?

One thing I asked them to think about, and I think we should all think about is not constraining ourselves by our current actual financial constraints, but creating an aspirational vision for what we want to do and then seeing if we can find ways to get the financial resources to do what we want to do and knowing what that gap is, and maybe we can't do this this year or even next year, but maybe you know, if we had certain amount of revenue, we could, but I think we shouldn't constrain our my personal feeling is I'd like to see us all be as aspirational as we can, and then if we can't achieve what we want because we don't have the resources, figure out ways to do that.

Amazing.

I'm not saying anything else.

Looking at the screen and no great.

Well, thank you for joining us tonight.

Um adjourned.

Thank you.

Tim Wick.

Thanks all have a great night.

So you see.