The new days like the top job for accessible.

I think from what Jake would just tell me.

Yeah, yeah.

That's what everybody in front of me started cursing.

Yeah, if we can make it home before one air, I would be so delighted.

Um, I would just be so happy to be a little bit more.

Very religious.

And we'd have these big meetings or could have dinner.

Every single time I'd be like maybe like an hour for a parallel.

We were happy not to be able to do that.

Ready?

Yes, thank you.

Okay.

All right.

I'm calling to order this Lafayette Planning Commission meeting of April 22nd, 2026.

Can we have roll call, please?

Yes.

Chair Thomas.

Vice Chair Wilson.

Here.

Commissioner Lehman.

Here.

Commissioner Mettler.

Yep.

Commissioner Phillips.

Yep.

Commissioner Watson.

Thank you.

Hey, thank you.

Are there any members of the public that wish to speak regarding items that are not scheduled for public hearing tonight?

And if so, is there anybody?

No.

Okay.

So let's begin with our first agenda item, the South Boulder Road Area Plan update.

The Commission will hear from City Staff.

Good evening.

Commissioner Phil Fleisler, the City's Planning and Building Department.

Thank you very much for your time this evening.

So we'd like to introduce the team.

About a month or two ago publicly.

Uh and then we have some questions at the end of this presentation to start getting your input on the process as well before we go to council in just a couple of weeks.

Uh and so you might recall last year we had a conversation about area planning in general.

So that comprehensive plan identifies different areas of the city that would be suitable for small area planning.

So this is like a hyper-local planning effort where you can really get down into the weeds and have some fine-grained recommendations around land use policy, infrastructure, and so on.

Uh and in looking at that, we got some initial input from the planning commission.

We've since um identified a funding source uh and have gone through a procurement crop process to bring on this uh team.

Um so Civitas is our main consultant helping uh lead this project.

Um they also brought on board several subconsultants as well.

They're not here this evening, but you'll need them at some point in this process.

Uh one is uh CDR Associates, they're an engagement uh firm based out of Boulder.

Um V Consultant Consulting is a transportation firm, so they have expertise in bike, bicycle, ped planning, and other all other types of transportation planning.

Um, our local ref, their office is in Denver, but he's actually in Lafayette resident.

I believe he lives just outside the study area.

Um we have Civestruct strategy and development.

Uh, they're going to do our market analysis, and he's also a Lafayette resident, so he has a lot of specific knowledge and spends a lot of time in the district across the street working.

Uh, and so we have some good local knowledge on the team here.

Um, and then Stray Advisors, they specialize in special special district analysis.

So that's one of the things that we'll be looking at here.

Uh, and again, this is just one of the implementation projects of the Legacy Lafayette Comprehensive Plan.

Uh, we'll be looking at this project in four distinct phases.

And so we just kicked that off a couple of months ago with our listening and analysis phase.

So we launched uh Lafayette Listens uh site uh just I believe a couple of weeks ago now.

Uh and so that is live, and the team has been meeting with folks in the study area and outside the study area over the past couple of months, focus groups, uh Lafayette Youth Advisory Board and so on.

Uh and there'll be an event that you'll hear about here in just a minute.

That's this Saturday.

Um, and so we're in this listening mode where we're listening for issues and opportunities.

So, what are the issues that we can seek to address and opportunities that we can explore?

Um, after the uh session with council in a couple of weeks, we'll be into the next phase of visioning and testing.

And so that's kind of the visioning, where do we want to go?

Um, after that, we'll be um ideally we'll narrow down a set of scenarios for this area into a preferred scenario, and we'll get into kind of the the next phase, which is how we get there, implementation and finance strategy.

So that'll be looking at how we have this vision, what are the implementation tactics that we should explore to actually implement it, and what are the um potential special districts that might help aid in that implementation?

Uh and then lastly, we will bring the plan for planning commission uh uh for a recommendation to council early next year, um, and council will ultimately adopt a plan.

Uh and so that said, I'm gonna go ahead and hand the mic over to Chris.

He's gonna walk us through a series of maps and and tables, and we have some questions for the commission at the end.

Uh, and I think you can feel free to ask questions along the way as well.

So hopefully this is interactive and fun.

Is the mic right here?

Uh great.

Okay, no physical handoff.

Uh, thank you, commissioners, uh, for your time tonight.

Chris Pariso, um, urban design principal with Civitas.

Um, yeah, Philip brought us into this um project a few months ago.

We're just kicking it off.

I'm gonna walk you through sort of how we're approaching it, how we're thinking.

Um, it's up to you guys if you want to stop and ask questions or wait till the end.

I am completely uh flexible.

So um a little bit about our process.

So we're just learning as much as we can about your city.

So, what I'm showing you now is sort of the physical analysis.

We're starting to do some market analysis, and Sam's gonna talk to you about what we're hearing from the community because that all feeds into our thinking about the site.

So, South Boulder Road area plan, generally at the crossroads of South Boulder Road and 287, the big white lines on there.

Um, just getting a handle of where it sits sort of in the community with relation to major infrastructure, open space, uh creek networks.

Um, the other thing we're taking a look at because this uh, well, we are not a corridor study, you are along a South Boulder Road area is along a major corridor.

So we're starting to ask ourselves what are the other major anchors or destinations along the corridor.

We know we have several on our site, JAX, Sprouts, the Flat Irons Church, among other things.

Um, but what is along this corridor?

Where are people going for other sort of um major acre destinations?

All that does is inform our sort of thinking and ideation about the site.

Um Medrana Campus, we know there is a large base of employers there, um plans to grow.

Where are those people?

We don't know, but we're questioning ourselves where do those people go for lunch?

Where do they go after lunch?

Do they bring their kids or families back to Lafayette if they work or live out?

I'm sorry, if they live outside of the city but come in to work.

We do have stray advisors helping us with public private finance and what tools are available.

The way I like to explain that is you know, planners and designers can draw anything, but we put our teams together to make sure that we have real knowledge behind the green lines and the bubbles, and we try to dive deep to understand that we put proposals forward that give the city options.

So that's just part of it.

We're looking at uh a little finer grain, you know, all of your open spaces, your schools, um, parks, the dark green within the light green near the blue, those are schools, playgrounds, ball fields.

Uh, what is interesting to us when we look at this as well, um, sort of the in my opinion being here, old town sort of has its small quaint character, sort of the hub of activity, South Boulder Road area, very highway centric.

Um, I've been here several times.

I will still make a wrong turn and not know where I am in that district.

Um, but a lot of the schools are um stretched east-west along um South Boulder Road, and of course, South Boulder Road is planned for a future uh RTD BRT with a uh station near your new city hall.

So we are actively working to get a meeting with that team to understand the influences of that on the site.

Um just us labeling as much as we can find in the site.

Um there's a lot of sort of arts and cultural venues in the site, um, music, art, um, dance, gymnastics, bounce.

So there's a lot of there's a lot of things happening here, and when you talk to certain people, there is a community of people in this area that know each other and and work together.

So the other thing we like to do just for comparison is get a real understanding of scale.

Um, we've been doing this for years.

I always start here.

Your site on the left, we're about 232 acres in that boundary.

And then I just laid it over Old Town Lafayette, Boulder, Longmont, Loveland, and Belmar.

For those of you that are familiar with hopefully one or two of those areas, you've walked it, you get a sense of you know how big it is.

Um, and I just put a red line on where their predominant sort of main street or walkable urban center is.

There is no proposal here, but um Civitas did Belmore years ago.

I've walked all these, but it is always surprising to me that your mental image of Belmar is basically where that red X is in the plaza and some of the stores, um, but it is a much bigger area.

Um, so that just gives you a sense of how much land we're talking about at the um South Boulder Road area plan site.

Um, so just zooming in to your site again, uh South Boulder Road, generally in the northern third of the site, um, 287 on the left.

You guys are pretty familiar with this again, letting you know 232 acres.

Um, so we sort of pull back the layers of the onion just to look at this through different lenses to understand the pieces that are influencing the site.

So, this is our analysis of the creek and floodplains, understanding that primarily is um focused around Cole Creek.

We were out there walking around, found the historic mine plaque, and we're like, Well, we should probably look into that.

So, everything in the dappled is the extents of the mine mapping that we um could find from GAS information.

The reason this was important because I was asking myself the question of the vacant land out there is well, why has nothing else happened out here?

Um, but the good news is we have talked to some other folks, buildings have been built out there.

Um, they have not had issues with potholing or anything else, so uh that's pointing in the right direction.

We don't know what's happening under all the land and the other other spaces, but we want to have all the information we can.

Neighborhood form, this is us just sort of doing a what we call figure ground analysis and looking at all the neighborhoods sort of surrounding the area, and it's very clear.

Um, you guys know this well, but much finer grain residential neighborhoods north of the study area's historic downtown.

So you do have sort of a rectilinear street form, um street and alley system, um, in old town and these other little neighborhoods.

Um this is not scientific.

This is us looking at building forms and analysis, sort of you have these other little neighborhoods that came in over time.

Some are a little more suburban, some are a little more walkable, but in later maps, what we'll see is how um disconnected things can tend to be from each other, especially from the South Boulder Road area in the middle.

Um building heights.

Well, we know you know, working in these um smaller communities, heights and density is always a conversation.

Um tall buildings, traffic, um, people.

So we just ran a map here.

This is out of GIS.

We've done a little fine-tuning with some things that we could visually identify.

Um, zero to twenty feet in the light pane, twenty to forty feet in the mid range, and then forty to uh it says sixty feet, but I don't know if anything's actually above sixty feet out here.

I think your your new buildings right around here, these are the taller ones, and those are four stories, so those are probably in the 45 to 50 range, depending on actual floor plates or if there's commercial floor plate on the on the base floor.

Umership is another thing we we look closely at because owners in America control their property rights.

So we we just sort of took a look at all the ownership groups and just assembled um various ownerships that own like large pieces of land, pieces of land that are vacant, um, or um anything that's sort of in the four, six to eight range, we look at and see what's going on.

What is interesting here is in the middle, the district building, the physical building spans actually two uh ownership boundaries.

I don't know what we're gonna do with that, but that's not a common thing uh to see.

So Jack sort of sits over on this side, and the the district and the actually the church uh flat earth church offices are on the other side.

So that's just an observation.

Um we are making uh the city owns a couple parcels where we are today, the new parcel there.

Um, what happens to this building when the new city uh building gets built will probably be a question that um will come up and we might have ideas about that in the plan.

So the other thing we take a closer look at is because most of the time you look at zoning or land use maps, they they throw commercial and red buildings all over all of this.

So we have done a deep dive to try to understand basically going through Google Map as to what is here large format retail pad retail.

We have a you know, we have a couple of grocery stores.

A lot of times when we do this, everyone is clamoring to get a grocery store.

You have two.

Um that's so that's a big advantage.

Um you know, a collection, quite a collection of medical office um buildings down here, of course, with a um county in the middle.

These uh medical off, it's not really medical often, it's it's more um uh production, but classified as medical for now.

So trying to understand what each of all these little buildings are um in the area.

Um streets and access is also very important.

So this one you can see um, you know, this area is highly disconnected.

Some of the neighborhoods around it are connected a little bit.

Um, but access to a premise site is highly important.

Um we are also um dealing with highway 287, is a state road, so that has certain regulations that come along with that, so we want to be aware of that.

So what's interesting here, and this is we're just giving you one of your uh sort of old town blocks for scale, 600 by 250.

I'm sure you guys have walked.

Some of those can feel it, so you can see how big it is in the area.

There are only a handful of actual streets that run through the South Boulder area.

Everything else is private drives or parking lots or drives.

Um, everything in red are signaled four-way intersections, so right that allows you to move all sorts of different directions.

Um yellows are right in, right out turns.

The blue one is a three-quarter intersection, so you can, you know, if you're on 287, there's a turn-off lane you can pull in, but you can't make a left out.

Um that sort of tells me, especially because it's along 287 in the state highway.

Any access, any changes to get in and out of the site is is going to be difficult to achieve.

This could be something that any potential future developers, retailers are going to be concerned about locating along along that corridor.

Um so this is just a finer grain map.

Everything in yellow is public street, City of Lafayette owns it.

There's a couple of red streets that are privately owned, just driveway slash streets.

Um, and then of course I already mentioned uh C dot on 287.

So land allocation.

Um, and don't add all these up because they're not gonna add up, but this is us getting a snapshot of what's happening out here.

Um you have a 232-acre site.

Everything in sort of this mustardy color is land that is just vacant land.

This is this doesn't have to do with ownership, this is just land that is vacant.

So if we were to call it uh permeable, it might be permeable today, but it could develop in the future.

So vacant land, about 23 acres, 10% of your site.

Um parking lots, the light gray, uh 74 acres, that's about uh a third of the site.

Your building footprints, sort of the the darker gray here, um, take up about 34 acres, 15% of the site, and then your streets, sort of these dark lines through your table about 10% of the site.

The map does not add up because you all of this other white interstitial area, which is landscape buffer zones, something that was not coded in in JS makes up another remainder, about 30% of the stuff.

But this just gives us a snapshot.

You can see quickly add that 30, what do we have?

57% of the site is parking lot building focus and streets in previous.

What would what would be a typical, like what would you want to see in a place like this for proportions?

Well, a typical for what?

For this sort of an area.

For what we think this might become, I guess for.

Well, uh I can give you a if we were designing sort of a new mixed use, walkable neighborhood.

Yeah, I don't want to use that.

That's got a lot of big footprints.

But if you took a hundred acres, the first thing I would tell someone is 35% of your land is going to be public realm, parks in open space.

When we design, we don't we don't start there.

When we design it, we're getting we get very close.

And that is using like very walkable, narrow streets, 68 to 70 foot right-away, and the right types of park and open space to create a really fibrous walkable network.

Um what is always the driver is parking, is the amount of parking, whatever your code says that is required for the use.

And even if the code removes parking, the market wants parking.

So it's always the amount of time I talk about cars and parkings was not conveyed to me in grad school.

Clear enough.

So 32% is not alarming for you on parking lots.

No, it's a it's an absolutely lot because you what you what you're looking at in your large format and your um your large format retail and sort of your um smaller outparcels, your drive-throughs, you're at a 0.15 to 0.18 FAR ratio, and that's because of the parking, right?

That's a building percentage to parking.

Um it is alarming because it's a lot of asphalt.

Um it could probably be better utilized.

It's as you know, it's it's all the things heat island, runoff, all that sort of stuff.

Um that's my quick assessment from the podium, but we are digging into it more.

We'll put more thought into it for the next time.

Um your trail network.

This was interesting.

Um we took a bunch of trails off of um GIS, and then we sort of walked out here, and then we started looking at Google Earth.

So we have modified this to our observation.

So what you're looking at is um major trail systems that feel like the major backbone of your system, you know, they're they're eight to twelve feet wide, and we started looking at well, some of those, the map just says trails.

Well, some of them are paved and some of them are dirt, right?

So when you squint, you can see the bones of some sort of a network stretching along here, up to the north, along here, through this neighborhood.

Um, so there's some stuff in place.

Then what we laid on top of it, and this is I'm gonna do this a little a little bit back and forth because it's kind of hard to see.

But the red and the blue, oops, are sort of where we have bike lanes or bike routes designated.

So on public road, it's designated as a bike route.

And as soon as you get um basically past the it's not great anywhere, but when you get north of the flower shop, then it becomes a very narrow walkable street.

You know, it's probably seven foot parking and ten foot lanes.

Like that you can bike on it, it's slow, but it's not um it's not ideal.

Um also when you look at the map and you have these blue lines saying bike lanes, you know, uh like there's a it's not an enjoyable experience.

You're sort of squeezed in.

You know, sometimes it's sidewalk, sometimes it's it's called it's a wide sidewalk, it gets narrowed.

So you can ride a bike on a surface, and that is what that is.

Yeah, yeah.

So um you may not survive.

Yeah, I mean you're taking your life on your own hands, but uh I appreciate that our observation was confirmed.

Um I've tried it, so anyway, and this is just the way we were the study area is sort of there in the middle in blue, but we're looking at the periphery because as much as we do thinking of the study area, we got to connect the community to this area for whatever it um becomes, and you have the bones of the network in place.

You sort of have all these little smaller dashed lines there, these little social trails that go uh in and out of neighborhoods, uh dog walkers, kids, whatever, which which is great, but I didn't want to put it on your trail and network.

Um for the eastern part of for the eastern part of the South Boulder Road, because I know there was that that revamp on the road.

Is the sidewalk there the multi-use?

I can't remember if the bike lane is still on the road or if it's associated with the is that what that's showing?

Yeah, that is a 10 to 12 foot hard multi-use.

Off street multi-use.

Okay.

I think the bike map labels uh I don't know if it's here or here, it labels it multi-use, but it goes back to like the the old five-foot attached walk.

Um so my sense is in our plan we should have some new green lines that say let's connect this grid and let's make it um safer and separated, that sort of a thing.

Yeah.

So this is you know, this is the land use designation in the comprehensive plan.

We are looking at that.

Um we are aware of it.

Um the hatched, everything hatched on here again.

That's sort of what we call the vacant land.

It is um prairie dogs, um, dirt, a little bit of grass.

And then we are aware of zoning, but we also know you're going through a zoning updates.

So we're just putting this in here because we are aware of what is on the books today and the sort of heights um that are allowed.

There's also sort of a mix of um PODs out on out on the site as well.

So um these are all the plans that we are looking into to help inform um our thinking.

We're trying not to reinvent the wheel, but you know, these are sort of community-wide plans, so we'll take a closer look at this area um and see what we can learn from that.

So, market snapshot.

Um, we are working on um, we have a whole report, I haven't read it yet, but these are some initial slides just to give you guys a sense of what we are are finding um from Civistruck.

So let's start with retail.

Um the sort of takeaway here is is vacancy is not as bad as as we have heard some people mention.

Um so if you look at the city of Lafayette, on all these slides, you're gonna see City of Lafayette, South Boulder Road Plan Area, and Boulder County.

We are working on a comparative of the pure cities as well.

Um, but your vacancy rate of Lafayette is about 5.6, similar to Boulder County.

But what's driving that is we've got about 63,000 of your former Lafayette Florist property is allocated to that.

So when I take that out, your vac effective vacancy rate is 3.1% because that's 64, 63,000 yellows, some of its greenhouse, some of its front office.

So even if it's not all as bad as 64,000 square foot of drinking retail, right?

Because it's a specialty use.

So we just want to put that up on on the screen to show you guys.

Um South Boulder Road plan area includes 20% of your total, 21% of your total city retail inventory.

We think it's a healthy market.

Um, low adjusted, I told you that, uh, to 3.1.

Rents are competitive but below regional average.

Um slight negative absorption, reflex transition, not weakness, strong alignment with neighborhood serving demand.

I'm reading these because I'm not the real estate expert.

But one of the conversations we've been having about rents are competitive but below regional averages.

We do have some unique, funky, quirky businesses that are able to afford to be in some of those sort of um older uh sort of industrial tilt-up buildings like um is it dog town?

Dog house.

Dog house, doghouse records.

We went and talked to them and all the stuff they do for the community.

So um when rents are low, it is affordable, and then you know that might be something to build upon.

Um because there is gentrification of, of course, retail and office users as well as um residential users.

Can I have a couple questions on that slide?

So the vacancy rate, it's a percentage of the square footage, not of the number of retail spaces.

It's a square footage.

Okay, yeah.

And then could you talk through this 21% of total city retail inventory?

Is that also square footage?

Is that based off of sales tax?

What is that per se?

This is just square footage, not tax.

So yeah, so you in your boulder plan area of 483,000 square feet of retail, your your total city is 276 2.276.

So that's where you're getting the um 21% of total city retail inventory in this area.

Okay, thank you.

So um office snapshot, similar um story.

Um South Boulder Road, City of Lafayette generally has a similar vacancy rate of 6%.

Again, that's not necessarily bad.

It's usually transitioning people moving in and out.

Um, whereas Boulder County as a whole is at 14.2%.

So that is is much higher.

I'm sure you've heard the city of Denver stories of 50% vacancy and uh or 35%, 50% uptown, 0% downtown.

So that's a skewed number two.

Um, but overall, when David's looking at this, you know, 20% of your office inventory is here.

He thinks it's a stable market, much tighter than Boulder County.

Rents are competitive with the market.

Um City Lafayette and Boulder asking rent is 30 bucks a square foot.

The county is a whole third 32.

You know, Boulder's probably Boulder is probably the city is probably skewing that higher, right?

So you're probably on par with everyone else.

That's why we're also doing a study of peer cities to like isolate the cities from the county as well.

Modestly positive net absorption.

Success that's suggests steady, selective demand, um, and medical office as a key anchor use, 45% of inventory.

Now, again, that is probably we have not reconciled this with his.

I showed you the map of the colors.

Great, we're working on that.

He is working off of CoStar data, so we're trying to just understand exactly what that is, but I'm guessing that number um includes sort of the uh medical uh I don't even know why they there's a medical manufacturing facility that's pretty pretty large there.

Any questions or thoughts on this?

Um industrial and flex market.

Um again, showing you total inventory, um plan area, Lafayette, Boulder County, vacancy rate um 9% to 7.9, uh a little higher than the city as a whole, lower than Boulder.

Um this includes 12% of the city's total industrial and flex um inventory, so less than than your other market sectors.

Um moderate stability, relatively healthy academic.

Um rents seem stable and in line with your with the uh rest of the county.

Um cooling market, consistent with regional and national trends.

So nothing is like out of the nothing is a glaring red flag that we found at any point here about sort of the the market and the vacancy.

Um multifamily residential snapshot.

In our planned area, there's only 270 units that are right around this building that have been built, and that's that you know, four-story um multifamily buildings.

So we don't have much much to compare for multifamily in the area.

There's not even that much uh 684 units, it's probably a lot in Lafayette going on, but um about 684 units are planned.

Uh occupancy is right around 7% vacancy, which is generally healthy people moving in and out.

Um, some of the class A properties have lower vacancy.

Um again, this is this is all sort of in line with what we would expect.

And um I'm gonna pause there and hand it over to Sam to uh let you know what we're doing in community engagement.

Unless you have any other questions.

Yes, the only the only thing I think I have at this time is I don't I don't know how you guys are classifying Krishna grocery, but there is a third grocery store.

Oh, really?

In the district.

Okay, yeah.

There's a small it's small, but there's uh like an Indian grocery store.

It's got a healthy more people in there than I do might have been caught half the time, honestly.

Yeah, maybe that got tracked as retail, I don't know, but I'm just yeah no, we should we'll add that to the map, and there was um it's questionable that it's a European store that just opened up uh probably a few weeks ago.

So must see.

Where's that?

In the attached bakery.

Okay, yeah.

I had some questions within this first set of slides, but I can wait till the end if you don't want to like have to go back to our budget just before you sit down in the there's only a few community engagement slides.

Let's do that, and then we'll come up here for the final show.

Thank you for pointing that out.

That's what we need.

Um sometimes we miss stuff digging around.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

Thanks, Chris.

My name is Sam Kirchner.

I'm a urban designer with Civitas.

Um we'll talk about community engagement just a little bit.

So the the work we've done thus far has been with our our engagement lead CDR.

Um, you know, we really were we're just trying to whoops.

There we go.

Start over.

You guys okay if we just go through all those slides again?

We're all again.

Uh Savon.

Uh really just wanted to learn more about the city as well as the planning area.

Um, so with within that effort, we we've interviewed uh 12 different individuals.

Um these people are have been residents, uh nonprofits, faith-based organizations, and and business owners, people that work at these businesses within within the area.

Um those these interviews all occurred within February.

Um we've also had three different focus groups thus far.

Uh we've we've met with the Lafayette group, uh Lafayette Youth Youth Advisory Board at the public library.

Um we've also met with the the Thorna Nature Center from Tores uh that was in April, as well as the um uh the youth advisory board at the Thorn Nature Center.

So all of those focus groups have occurred within within the last month.

Um but but some of the takeaways from those focus groups have been pretty enlightening thus far.

I mean, you know, getting some some firsthand accounts of the planning area and understanding their feelings of it and feeling like the area is sort of calm but not necessarily entertaining.

It's a it's a place that you would go for a trip, but not necessarily to spend a lot of time at.

They express the desire for it to feel more kind of like old town Lafayette, having that walkability, the lighting, just feeling safer, feeling like there's more to do there, and feeling more homey.

Um some of the feedback we heard as well was that you know it might be nice to have some kind of my micro-mobility options just to get around.

There are a lot of people that bike to through or around the planning area, but not a lot of other options to get get around it.

It's it's for pretty large.

So whether that might be scooters or bike share.

Um really one of the one of the main draws is food.

Um, and you know, there's a lot of chain restaurants.

I think there's some some successful uh spaces within that, like that north northwest corner uh of the planning site, just south of South Boulder Road where you have Chipotle and Noodles and Co.

Um, and then also um you know, some people have felt like that area actually sort of felt like their center of town just because there are so many places that they would go to eat, um, which was an interesting, interesting feedback as well.

Um other destinations would be uh the district, Otis Coffee, Chipotle, Noodles and Co.

Uh this is just one of the slides and one of the uh the boards that we we did with them.

We we we asked them to either draw or use pipe cleaner to show us some of the paths or or places that they liked, and they they were pretty into the pipe cleaner, which was fun.

Um, just have marking out places they felt safe, but they felt places they weren't sure about, places they might go to more often.

So with with this as well as the interviews that we've done, um there were there were a couple of emerging themes that we started to identify.

And I'm just gonna read this essentially verbatim because I think that these are pretty all all pretty worthwhile.

So, really, you know, emphasizing that Lafayette character, understanding that there is a unique character to Lafayette, and and trying to emphasize it.

So supporting local businesses, small businesses, um, feeling artsy and maybe a little quirky, um, you know, managing the height and the intensity of the building, so nothing that's that feels too big, that feels something that feels like the scale of Lafayette, um, you know, soft it softening and connecting this area to uh outside homes and trails and businesses, um, increasing the green spaces and having you know access to nature, to parks and to Coal Creek to the south, um, creating better connectivity, as I mentioned, again, to those trails on the outside, um, feeling more vibrant, energized, and places to go and to gather.

So that's a community space, um, another place that you could stay, you know, not just a business where you'd have lunch or whatever else, but how do you how do you go and and meet people or you know, hang out with your family and your friends?

Um, you know, knowing that there's a collection of health and wellness businesses in the area, you know, is there an opportunity to sort of build on that on that energy as well?

Um, and then building upon the concentration of arts and culture facilities that are also that are also sort of in the center of the planning area, um, and then potentially you know supporting more housing as well.

So, as I mentioned, we've had these interviews, we've also had the focus groups um throughout the last couple of months.

Um, our next large engagement event is actually this coming Saturday, the 25th.

Um, we'll be at the Super Kids Expo at the district.

Um, so we'll have we'll have a booth and activities for both kids and adults, and that'll be from 10 o'clock to 3.

Um, in addition to that, we also have the Lafayette Listens page for this project, which is live.

Um, on that page, there is a questionnaire, and there's also mapping activity for people to participate in.

So yeah, so I think this evening, these are the questions.

We had a couple of questions in the packet.

Just at this stage in the process, we're really just listening and hearing about different opportunities, um, different issues that you see for the area.

Um, and then also looking ahead, since we'll be coming back to you at each stage of this process, um, but we'll be starting um to talk about the vision for this area um over the next 15 plus years.

And so if you had any kind of thoughts, things that kind of came up during this presentation, um, we'd love to hear them this evening.

Um, and we'll share this information with council when we go to them in just a couple of weeks as well.

I would love um to hear when you do a plan like this, it's the first step of a long process, I assume.

And how does the city take whatever comes out of this plan and actually realize it when there's a bunch of private property and people have their own development intent interests, and how what would be the way to manifest what comes out of this plan?

Yeah, so I'll let Chris talk to some of it.

I can start off with that.

Um oftentimes with these plans, we'll get um kind of a finer grain land use plan.

So that can then lead to different zoning designations, and have policy recommendations that talk about the look and feel of future development.

That can also get encapsulated in future regulations.

There'll be recommendations for public and private infrastructure, and so that's where the taxing districts would come in where the city might choose to build some public spaces or other types of infrastructure in accordance with the plan to kind of spur some of that early um movement.

Um and then there's uh private activities too, supportive ways to different ways to support local businesses, um, different um programs to consider um to implement the plan, and so it's pretty all-encompassing.

Um, but I might I don't know if I missed anything, Chris.

I can just add a little color to that.

Um I think our approach, um, and we do a lot of work with um private landowners as well, coming up with the design and then working to get it approved, take it down, market cycles, all that sort of stuff.

So that in feeds our thing it informs our thinking.

Your question is very important because you are a city and you don't own the land.

So part of it is um this plan giving a little bit of vision to the market and the community of what we want to occur here, because you are still the municipality, you still have the police powers of safety, health, wellness.

Um, for instance, if a idea came out of this that you know, we need to stitch old town to Cole Creek in some sort of a green white green belt.

That is a pretty bold vision, could happen on uh some public realm, might need some private realm.

There should be some sort of um park or gathering space here.

Those are sort of the visionary plan ideas, what we would call catalytic projects that might come out of this.

The uh so that's just an example.

And we might we might I think we said we would probably identify it.

We always end up identifying several catalytic projects.

So if the city is investing, then it becomes well, how does the city invest this money and where and why?

Because when the city invests money, your goal is to catalyze private development through your public investment so that you can generate tax revenues ideally in the future, which is why we have straight advisors on, because they're public-private finance experts working.

I mean, they worked with um down on Union Station, they're working on the other side of the table from us on the women's soccer facility.

They're the district folks or the private folks.

Um so what we will do is identify those things, identify you know, more than just a pretty picture, we want to have a vision, but like what are the components, what do we think should happen?

We what we'll also do is create um, we create sort of a whether this is adopted or not, it's probably not it's just informative as sort of a matrix of who do we think the players are to make this um happen.

One of the things we'll want to know, you know, the big question is um let's use RTD, something different for example, not a city of Lafayette investment.

Um if that um bus replicat line comes in, what do the stops look like?

We know there is going to be a hub on public road, what is the design of that?

Can this plan influence you know what I tell folks when we work in those projects is those guys are the RTD guys are all about um ridership bodies on the bus.

Well, if you don't have a really great station or a way to get to the station to ride your bike to lock it, like we have to get people there and make people want to use it because just putting it in is not going to use it.

That might be something we identify as a a partnership, understand what they're doing.

Uh there could be a partnership for joint funding from other uh federal or state uh resources.

So those are just some of the ways we look at ideating um how to implement.

If the community in the city wants us to test ideas for various development patterns, we have capacity to do that.

So say the and I don't know any of this, but if district or the JAX decides to leave or they decide to change or they sell to someone who wants to do a more mixed-use residential, we can test to help the city understand what that means.

Part of this is the process in education versus what gets baked into there.

Um if someone comes in and builder hospital says we want some ideas, we can do some general testing to help people understand the feasibility of fit based upon code, or we might do some feasibility of fit to inform some of the rewrites in the code.

Does that help?

It's kind of a broad.

What is the impact on what that might have on your plan?

Yeah, and I think there's also redefined GID, please.

Yeah, there's two general improvement districts in the area.

One I believe at City Center, and then one at the tax center, I believe.

We also have the taxing district, the new taxing district, the down the downtown development authority, the DDA.

This project is actually funded through the funding from the old urban renewal authority that's that is a South Boulder Road kind of subset to it.

And so this is so there's kind of a few different pieces there.

We haven't identified any changes to those at this point in the process, but we will be looking at them to see as the vision kind of starts to take shape and we get to that where how do we get their implementation phase.

Um look to see is it gonna present a roadblock to achieving the vision?

Is it going to um can it be tweaked to help facilitate it?

Um, and then what other if any additional taxing districts might be beneficial?

So, for example, it might be that the downtown development authority could annex this area, if that made sense.

We could look at other um different taxing districts like a um uh business improvement district and otherwise, and so um we know they're there right now, and so I think we're just gonna as the plan takes shape, um, see how they interact with that vision.

If that makes sense.

So, about 17, 18 years ago when Walmart had moved to 287, and uh Albertson's moved up close to 287, so we had two very large buildings vacant.

And we hired a consultant for 40,000 to give us a redevelopment plan.

Sounds a little bit like what you're doing here.

That was really pretty and mixed use and all these nice things.

And there wasn't a developer who wanted anything to do with it.

So I'm kind of wondering here how you see this stimulating any kind of interest in the area because people are going, you know, they're gonna build based on their particular circles they draw for their customers, their various factors, their financing.

Um suspect they might take our super high sales tax into account as well while they're at it in terms of what it can sell.

Um what what are you doing here that's any different than that?

Well, I can I don't have the answer to that yet, but that's what we're gonna um work through.

So we have to uncover that.

The other thing we have also realized was the water issue.

Yeah, that that is on the back of the developer.

So I think part of this process is going to be investigating what the city believes they want here in the future and what tools the city has to maybe entice something to happen, or what red tape might have to be dialed back to encourage to happen.

Um I think that's what our process is really about is finding out what you all want and then dialing this plan to be targeted and actionable to help make something happen.

Um your point about the um Walmart and the Albertsons, you know, we we heard about that through our interviews, which you know, just we realized well, whatever happens with Flat Iron Church near future long term, like that whole area is never going to be a retail anchor site if a Walmart and Albertans can't make it work, which started to make me think about maybe anything past this point is probably not really good serving retail.

Um, I mentioned that issue earlier about um 287, the state highway, and we only have write-in write-outs and three quarters.

That could be hindering anyone from ever wanting to locate along 287, but because that's a highly visible place, you would you would think commercial or office would want an address there.

Um that might be something that the city can start to prime the pump for and tee up some of those things.

Okay, I I guess I don't know, nothing was ever suggested in terms of, for example, what we had happen south of um South Boulder Road, which is we have a bounce house, so that's a new thing.

I don't know.

Anybody would have ever, ever thought, wow, that would be like a good place for a bounce house.

Um and then across the street there, we have a very large uh professional uh gymnastics, gymnasium gymnastics gym.

I think that's all those very kind of things that I don't think anything you kind of people would ever go, oh gee, maybe you could attract this.

So you kind of have to think outside the box a little bit and not the standard formulas.

No, I completely understand.

I think what what our approach is the way I explained to staff in the interview is what we come up with generally is a set of urban design frameworks for the place you want to create.

We will never be able to predict the uses.

What we can predict is sort of like 287, although we do have a um is it a senior living?

Is a senior living center along 287?

That's probably not a great place for market rate, high high density residential because of the noise, although they have good views.

But we would never want to say this edge should be commercial or should be residential because we don't know.

I'm a firm believer in getting the right frameworks in place, and then you guys can respond to market demand.

Because you are you are you are right, um Commissioner Phillips about um yeah, someone finds a piece of land, they draw a radius, uh, what is the household income, who's gonna come.

So I'm certainly getting there.

What do you what are you providing the we don't necessarily already know and can figure out ourselves?

What are you providing us with your study?

We were hired to go through this study to take a finer look at this sub-area as a subset of the overall camp plan, because the comp plan is citywide.

So that's why we are digging into it at this level of what are the actual buildings, what are you know, what's the market, what we what I believe we are going to provide you is a actional plan and a roadmap that can give you guys some direction towards an outcome that you envision with us together.

I don't I don't have a silver bullet or the or the answer.

What we have is the process to work through with you all.

All right, thank you.

Sure.

Oh, I have questions.

Oh, sorry, not in a bad way.

Um I will full disclosure, I live just north of this red line, and I use all these little social use paths.

So I have a strong feeling about all of the access on this.

And it actually ties into something we've been talking about, sort of in a greater citywide thing, which in the era of everything is on fire all of the time.

You can really like the red line, and you guys would have no way of knowing this because you're new here.

The red line is this very interesting hard line of like old town.

We literally drew a line and stopped old town.

All of the homes there have a road that just dies at the fence.

And part of this is something we've considered in the last fire that we had.

I'm at half of town on this pedestrian overpass because we were trying to figure out which way the wind was blowing.

This corner where 287 and the development where the the jacks is on the corner, completely trapped.

There's no way to get out of there in case of a fire situation because it is cut off from all of the rest of these things.

And I think that lack of connectivity sort of like there are these hard boundaries around this whole thing, which you guys no doubt know.

Because you've you've seen it, but I think this is the major impediment.

And why there's been such a hard time activating the space this whole time is there are these hard lines.

Like I'm insisting on riding my bike everywhere, but to get to the district from there is this just complicated city.

I it's crazy.

I go through parking lots, I dodge cars.

I'm a pretty adventurous urban biker, but it is like there are no bike lanes.

This is not an easy thing to do if you had kids, if you had a stroller, if you had dogs, if you were not very fast, if you're not a bold cyclist, like these are impossible to get to places.

And the other thing I always think is such a because you guys are asking for opportunities and constraints, so I'm just gonna hit you with it.

The Col Creek Trail, I think is not, it doesn't feel like a part of the city except for to the houses who boundary it on the outside of this area.

Like people drive along public and then they park from other parts of town because there's kind of no pleasant way to get there from the rest of the city.

Like I see a really kind of amazing opportunity.

I think everybody, all the developers around here are in terror of developing over any of these historic mines because of what happened with Flat Iron Small.

Um so I imagine there's just always going to be some hesitation there, which probably isn't wrong.

But I think that's a very cool opportunity to bring some green space that is sorely lacking in old town and really sort of bring that open space, that park space, that gathering space, everything that you know people are looking for in town to the south side of town, to the east side of town, kind of into that area that I think realistically is not very developable from a density standpoint, especially today's costs.

Like all of these, I think is are very cool opportunities.

But my other big hesitation is you know, a lot of the parking lot and commercial space that's owned within this district is only used one or two days out of the week.

And that is a huge impediment to anything happening here, and you just see it die out when it is not in use, and it is pro it prevents use in basically everything else that happens in these areas, which I realize is nothing that you guys can do anything about, just is something over the years of been living here next to this.

I have noticed that that is I think a big impact on what happens in this area for sure, because it's not something that people can come to to the same degree that you would hope that it would in order to sort of activate and engage this day in and day out, which I think maybe that ends up sort of drawing more of the activation south of South Boulder Road, but just having lived here for a long time is the observation.

I think that might be something that we kind of have to go around because I don't think that's going to change anytime soon.

But there are like actual barriers, there are actual barriers to things.

But I think if we could figure out how to break that up and make more interconnectivity, it serves a dual purpose of having resilience and safety for everybody in town also to be able to get through these spaces and out of these spaces and have more ways to access things across the site and get out in case of an emergency and all of those things.

So it may serve more than just development standpoint.

I think it could be a safety mechanism and a release valve, which we talk about a lot in other contexts, which maybe would be good for everybody that's trapped in that little corner back there.

It's gotten a little scary.

Thank you.

I also noticed that on public road south of South Boulder Road there, there's a lot of the the bigger buildings, they're at they're set back.

There's a lot between the road and then that's empty.

And I'm not sure what has caused that.

It seems like backwards development.

I I mean somebody knows, I'm sure you probably know.

But I I'm I I just think that that's it what it makes me wonder what the why.

Why that is that people like to know that they can park.

But they're they're they're like grass fields, not the ninja nation is back, and modern zoning as it's written today, typically oftentimes requires or leads to a building that's set back from the road.

And with some of these uses, um they're also that's kind of their design.

Like a grocery store wants the ample parking with sight lines to the major thoroughfare.

And so I think that's like but like in front of Ninja Nation and the J Gymnasium like the lot in front of the city.

There's like a lot or in front of like where where the city hall is gonna be.

Like there's it's curious, because you'd think they'd want to be fronting the No, we want to make sure that the prairie dogs run onto the road more quickly, obviously.

I like skirting them on my bicycle personally.

Yeah, and with that too, like as we're looking through this, we still have the 287 right-of-way along South Public going down.

And so when we went through a transportation planning process, we um designated that as a main street uh typology.

And so not necessarily public road, but something that is is different than what it is today, which then allows you to kind of think about the character of the surrounding lots a little bit differently.

Can I make just one more observation on that uh front?

I know not everybody comes in from the south very much, because Boulder County people don't leave Boulder Crowing, but this sort of this has come up in other context, but like as a gateway to Lafayette, if you get off of 287 and come down public, there's this like incredible opportunity along this corridor, which for the 16 years I've been living here has been sort of in in wanting more.

So I think you know, and I I know that people are somewhat discouraged because you slow down and you gotta see the farms and everything, but I think there's very cool opportunity for placemaking along this corridor to really sort of connect.

Like you drive through all of this and then you're in old town.

I do think that it makes sense to bring it that way, which is for uh like this is an entrance to our town to our community from people primarily coming from the south.

Like it's a very important visual.

Where would where would you put that?

Would you?

Um did you get off on public or in the roundabout?

Or did you use a little sign, this is old town?

Yeah, yeah.

Um the roundabouts by gateway.

Yep.

But I think when you cross the bridge.

Like should there be like using game more like we're coming across the creek, you're coming to nature and arriving.

Or is it is it here, is it here, is it here?

I think it's past the bridge.

I think it's you cross Coal Creek, which then I think calls back to Lafayette's coal mining heritage and all that.

And it's nice, and because I think you know Lafayette's sort of buffered, and then you come out into this.

Oh in Lafayette's case, it's always a dentist, but you just have like that.

I think is a nice sort of we're calm, it's quiet.

We've got a farm, we've got a little creek, and now we have Lafayette.

That's that's how I've always wanted.

That's what I've always wanted to see there is that sort of entry sequence.

That's good to do.

Totally personally.

That's my opinion.

I do wonder which one Google Maps usually recommends.

Because I I feel like it took me when I moved here a year to realize that that actually connected to the town.

Yeah, it's not the average way.

Yeah.

But then it connects some of the new development happening in Prawn on the hospital, you know, like that feeling left out.

It's the connector, like that roundabout does kind of bring together parts of the community that don't feel like they're entirely part of the community.

Well, and if you're walking or biking from the south, I mean, biking is somewhat fine on that part of South Public.

But like the sidewalk on the east side just like ends one property south of the intersection.

Like some of those missing teeth, I think are really critical, obviously, in this.

But like some of the feedback are you're looking for more just like conversation discussion on form base and like the experience and not necessarily getting in the weeds on use.

No, I think um we will definitely get into some of that.

I mean, for right now, for like tonight.

You know, um our approach, um so we as Philip mentioned, we are in the listening and investigative stage.

Then we will go into what we call the idea stage is we will start um and we're very workshoppy collaborative, we'll do staff meetings here with our office with the trace, and then because we can generate a lot of ideas quickly.

Um yes, no investigate this further.

We'll refine, we'll and we have organized stops um with the community and stakeholders and you guys um along the way.

So um if that sounds good to you, the you gave us some strengths and opportunities for improvement.

Um we've heard we've tried some other things before and they haven't worked, so we need to know that so we don't fall in that pitfall again.

Um then a little bit of your ideas of of 2020, you know, 15, 20 years out.

Um because the vision that um you all in the community want here for your future and your destination is going to shape the direction we go in and and and and the sort of implementation ideas we bring up, and then we have people that will keep us all grounded from a market and feasibility sort of standpoint, but we also um, in my opinion, we can't be afraid um to dream a little bit um to to sort of make something.

So again, with what you're going to give us, so you're gonna create this plan, and in that plan are you gonna say like, okay, this is all commercial.

If you want it to be grocery based on the dynamics of the area, you're probably gonna have to look at the city, you know, having some kind of um tax break for X years, for example.

If you want some other kind of business, you're probably gonna need to be thinking about this or that.

Is that the kind of information you're gonna provide us?

There I I can't speak directly to that because that's my subconsultants.

There will be strat financial strategies to help uh achieve what you're looking for.

If if if Lafayette says, you know what?

We want to attract more medical uses to build off of Medtronics, and we're gonna go for it.

Um that should go here, and we're gonna target it, and that's gonna be tax break.

Um that probably isn't the right path just because of other work I've done and how difficult that sort of is um to do.

Um if you want to transition, if if you guys find out some of the big box retailer going away and you want to transition to something else, we might look at some ideas of what that might be.

One of them might be you want, you know, it depends on the owner.

Wants to go back out to market for this, or you guys might have a couple of other ideas.

You know what?

This is what we envision here, and maybe you help recruit someone to take over that that property.

The um back to what I said before is sort of the urban design frameworks and the investment and the connectivity if you start stitching things together is probably the more broad plan and vision.

And you can plug and play um different uses to a point, right?

That the design of the park is gonna or a plaza, depending on what goes there is is a little different.

Yeah.

I think one question I have, whether it's for you or for staff.

I know some of the state bills and acts are kind of up in the air.

But how is this taking into relation the housing and transit corridor density requirements potentially happening?

Yeah, as the next phase of work will likely include different scenarios.

So if we pull a lever on more housing versus more employment, so on, um, it'll likely include some analysis for what that would look like if that transit oper or transit opportunity zone uh corridor um uh was implemented here.

So that's probably something we're gonna be exploring through this process.

Um right now I'd probably defer to our city attorney for any specific questions, but um yeah, it will be considered.

And I think also to just highlight additionally um what what Chris was mentioning.

One of the harder things that as staff, the harder questions that we get is here's this big vacant piece of land, and the comp plan has this overall vision.

What what do you want to see here?

And that's a pretty challenging thing to do because we don't have a plan like this, and so there's uh a big potential for something to get built that doesn't have the road connection that will ultimately be really beneficial, or the trail connections, or the different types of uses, building types and so on that um would be beneficial as we kind of get through this process.

And so it's um we think on a day-to-day basis, it'll help provide a lot of certainty, not just for staff, but for applicants too.

Yeah.

Well, I mean for some of these questions, I think thinking through just the open-endedness of this, there's a level of infill, incremental infill being ideally part of the vision for what this build-out is.

I know we're doing the code update, and that's very particular and very articulate.

Is part of the vision or the idea around this that maybe there's a specific subdistrict plan from a design standpoint that goes over this, or is it more the incentives are what encourage increased development pressure in this area?

When you say subdistricts, do you mean like form-based code?

Yeah, like specifically saying here's the south boulder road criteria, and there's like increased FAR minimum, required shared parking, yeah, extra greenway.

So the zoning will be an implementation tool from the plan, just like it is for the comp plan.

And so a lot of cities when they go through a process like this, one of the first things they do is to actually rezone the land with the with the regulations that implement that vision.

Um based codes often time is a is one of those ways, but it's definitely not the only way.

Um but yeah, it'll it it may be subdistricts, it that's probably pretty far down the road, but we'll go on the four or four columns route where all the parking has to be in the rear.

Like some of the crazy out there stuff.

Yeah, yeah, you know, our our plan right now with the comp plan does suggest suggest that in a lot of cases, yeah.

But this has been really helpful.

Um we will go to council, we will um summarize what we heard tonight on May 5th.

Uh hold on, I think we have re-and questions.

I had one question just before we totally move on, and I'm curious if anybody else feels this or if this was just a thought that I had.

It's not well thought out.

I'm realizing that a lot of what we're seeing here and like in every conversation we're we've had about everything, is that we don't really like have a lot of gathering space in Lafayette, and bless it but festival plaza is not exactly what it's like a gathering space for all of Lafayette.

If we're looking for something to anchor this big space, we have some space that presumably isn't super attractive to developers for whatever reason, highly accessible, sort of easy to get to from many places in the city.

Is this something that we consider ideating as a larger gathering place for all of Lafia as a potential use, or is this just something I'm thinking about right now?

And I'm asking you guys because we're here, and I'm curious what you think.

Is it not strongly held feeling?

It's just a thought I'm having, but I'm curious what you think.

Like a city-owned project, or just encouraging that there is a private development that has public accessible.

I think that if the city put its money where its mouth was, and was like we're gonna make this a gathering space for the city that's a shared resource that's bringing people in, it is a potential facilitation.

There's an invitation to other uses that encourages increased development that we now have some kind of control over with the new land use code updates and all that, but it would be a way to get the ball rolling without changing something there and address something that we don't have a lot of other opportunities in the city to do is create a larger gathering space that is sort of equally accessible to most folks in the city.

We don't have a lot of those places.

And readily visible, because I wonder how many people even know that there's like the bench plaza behind the district.

Like there's just there are these weird little spots that you'll never know they're there if you don't go into a business.

Yes.

I agree that if the city put more into actually acquiring land or being focused on that catalyst, not just having a code policy.

And the placemaking and the entry sequence and all of those things, it's like, okay, you're not in Broomfield anymore.

You're in Lock yet.

And here's the history.

It's on this historic site.

We have the creek, we have all of these things, like welcome to our beautiful little town.

Well, I think the open space group would have something to say if you're putting stuff a little bit too close to the creek.

I'm not saying close.

You know, in the in the vicinity, not close.

Just you know, closer than like the old King Super's lot as that one thing.

Yeah.

It's an idea to is it worth considering as a public gathering third place spaces in the area.

Yeah.

So is the city gonna do anything with the Great Park land, or is that the big secret that nobody ever really wants to talk about?

What's the great park land?

Oh, we didn't heard about that.

I love being relatively new.

City owns a fair amount of acreage next and around the dog park is a piece of it.

Oh, sure.

That was designated the great park.

It was supposed to actually have baseball fields and all kinds of stuff.

And the only thing that ever got put on part of that was a great park.

So what's gonna happen to the rest of it?

That would be city owned public space.

And that's ear, but that's you over there.

But that feels like eerie over there.

No, no, but I mean you're asking, you know, so you put their money where they're about as well.

When they own land, they don't do a damn thing with it.

So we have a planning opportunity.

We don't do it.

I think we don't do anything.

I think it'd be the more correct point.

Well, if we have a plan being developed, is it interesting idea to have a plan that's around something?

Absolutely.

You know, strengths and opportunities.

I I feel like one of the things that we lack is a really vibrant nightlife in the city generally.

Yeah.

That isn't just a bar.

But at the same time, I feel like I am flatter gas at how busy Calabanga is every single time I'm there late.

And I think there are those small businesses that are open late.

And I think one of the things from a strength perspective is looking at the ways that we can incentivize nightlife type businesses to come into the city.

And to the conversation of there are uses that only really use their space once or twice a week, looking at through the incentives that may or may not be researched in this process, what are the opportunities for creating like the shared parking leases or you know, an agreement where the lot is public.

So even though there may be one use happening once or twice a week, that still is a public lot.

Um, 20 years down the road, is there a bunch of infill and there's a parking garage?

I don't know.

But I mean, if you know, if this is the the 30 minutes, the hour that we're gonna talk a little bit about this now before this goes further.

You know, uh the height restriction I've heard has been the the godsend, we will not go above 35 feet.

That is that is the marker that every document rubber or puts a stamp on the first page.

But I think there's still a level of having that, I think somebody called it softened butter on toast a couple meetings ago of just having that density, but it's it's spread across.

Um, if you want the walkability, it has to be walkable, it has to be desirable.

It can't just be a striped bike lane.

Paint isn't infrastructure.

Like part of this plan is gonna have to look at how do you actually do an enjoyable bike lane where it's you on your regular bike, it's your you and your kid, it's wanting to go there to the farmer's market.

It's easy.

It's not just there on a map, but that it is encouraged as a just as a justifiable route to go.

It's not just, oh, I don't want to go in my car.

Or I'll bike so I can say that I bike, or because I feel like it's my obligation to bike, but it's just as feasible as a route.

Um, same thing with the sidewalks.

South Boulder is probably always gonna be the busy, loud, noisy rows it is, and everyone's gonna hate turning loft off of 287.

But the more that we can make the experience for bicyclists and pedestrians and people who do take public transit travel to this place, I think that's gonna be critical.

Um, it's it's it's a development with a lot of parking lots and not a lot of exciting things to look at or visit, other than to the point of going to a business and leaving.

But I think the placemaking is key for this.

So we didn't mention this is happening concurrently with a study led by Boulder County on the South Border Road corridor.

So we did a initial study a couple of years ago, and now they're following up and doing, I think up to a 20% design for a future roadway.

So it's an opportunity to talk about both the roadway and the adjacent uses as well.

And so was there this is a question when I was reading the agenda a couple days ago, but I'm curious.

Was there any conversation of this stretching to like tacos III and that kind of like weird little southern barbell?

Yeah.

This is it was a pretty big area once we've actually mapped.

It's like probably the bigger area that will do one of these in this.

As far as just like a cohesive shape.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think we were looking at natural features like creeks, uh, major roadways, property lines or some of the big factors.

Um, you know, the comp plan does talk about like a baseline corridor plan that would be similar to this, uh, but no, we didn't think about going down there.

But it's not a bad idea either.

I used to live over there, so I this is that's my experience to coming to this part of town as oh god, I don't want to cross 287.

So or I'm biking Cole Creek and then skirting around it.

But yeah, I don't know.

There's the questions, and I just want to get into the weeds a little bit on answering the specific ones because I don't want to just complain.

So it's been super helpful.

I think are we okay to I think so.

Um we'll go to the council.

We'll do our best to summarize what we heard tonight at that meeting.

Uh, and then we're the team, the project team is going to start up with the vision and testing phase.

And so you'll start hearing probably some more things from the city on its public facing channels like socials and whatnot, probably some workshops, um, and then we'll be we will be having more touch points with both planning commission and council at each of these phases.

So you'll be able to weigh in that when we when it at the best times are is our hope.

So we're really looking forward to it, and this was um really helpful.

So thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah.

Okay.

Next item on the agenda is a public hearing and consideration of recommending approval of an application for a special review and site plan and architectural review for lot three, solo filing number one, replat C, located at 2378 State Highway 287.

The public clearing hearing was noticed in the daily camera on April 20th, 2026, and notice was mailed to property owners and posted on the property in accordance with the Lafayette Code.

The public hearing is now in order at 720.

No, 719 p.m.

Tonight, the planning commission will hold a public hearing on the special use review application and review the applications for special use review and site plan and architectural review, and make a final decision on the applications this evening.

We'll consider the record, which includes city planning staff's report and analysis, presentations by the applicant and the city's planning staff, written public testimony submitted to the city and included in tonight's packet in any public testimony received tonight during the hearing.

The commission will evaluate this proposal based solely upon the record and the applicable criteria established in the Lafayette Code of Ordinances, which are highlighted in the staff report.

But before we get into the presentations from staff and the applicant, we have a few preliminary matters to address.

First, because this is a quasi-judicial matter, the planning commission is bound by constitutional due process principles to provide a fair hearing to remain impartial and to make a decision based on the city's existing code and the evidence presented in tonight's hearing.

It is important that each commission member remain objective and capable of fairly and impartially considering only the information offered into the record and evaluate review and make a decision on the application consistent with due process requirements.

So does any commission member believe they are not able to fairly and impartially consider this application based solely on tonight's record and consistent with due process requirements?

Okay.

Does any commission member have a conflict of interest or any other matter he or she would like to disclose prior to proceeding on this item?

Are there any other disclosures of any kind?

Okay.

Hearing none.

We will get started with the meeting.

So we'll move on to the hearing.

Um before we hear from city planning staff and the applicant, I'll enter the following materials into the record, all of which are included in the planning commission meeting packet for tonight's meeting, the planning commission agenda memo regarding these applications, planning commission resolution number PC 2026 13, staff analysis reports from city planning staff regarding the site plan and architectural review criteria and the special use review criteria for these applications, the applicant's narrative letter and attachments, the applicant's site plan and architectural plan set, the planning staff and applicants' PowerPoint slides added to the planning commission packet this afternoon, written public testimony submitted to the city before 1 p.m.

today and added to the commission packet this afternoon.

Are there any objections from the commission to entering these items into the record?

Hearing none, these items are entered into the record.

The planning commission will now hear from city planning staff and the applicant.

All right, good evening, commissioners.

My name's Jake Mitchell's.

I am the current planning manager, and as stated, we are here to for public hearing and public meeting around resolution PC 2026 13, TED's car wash special use review and site plan and architectural analysis.

Real quick order of presentation, staff introduction.

The applicant is here and we'll give a presentation, followed by staff analysis, the public hearing questions of the applicant and staff, a discussion from the commission, and then hopefully a motion.

So Ted's car wash is located at 2378 State Highway 287.

It is the last undeveloped lot along the east side of 287.

It is zone C1 and has a PUD overlay, the Sola Commercial Institutional PUD amendment number two.

The proposed use is a tunnel car wash.

I don't think that'll change the building form at all and the design.

But that's something that we can inquire of the applicant.

Car washes do require special use review in the C1 zone district.

However, it is worth noting that the Sola PUD that it is in specifically states this is a screenshot of that PUD, and they refer to these lots as the highway 287 lots.

And the anticipated uses are a variety of uses, but in my mind, when you look at these, you see that there's a lot of auto-oriented uses.

That was kind of the vision for the lots along 287, and it did specifically call out car wash, car wash as an anticipated land use.

So existing conditions.

Again, largely auto-oriented.

We have a gas station directly to the north.

We have fast food to drive-through directly to the south, a financial institution with drive-through south of that, followed by another fast food drive-thru, coffee drive-through.

We do have residential across 287, and then a daycare just off the screen over here, and then of course a hotel to the east, and then the hospital south of Exemplar.

Alright, I'm going to use uh the landscape plan to kind of walk you through the site.

Um get down to that only here.

So, first kind of going through the circulation.

Uh actually, one other thing I forgot to mention the size of the property or your reference earlier, 1.48 acres of 64,547 square feet, does include about half of Balmstone.

That is a private drive, just so we're all clear it's not public right-of-way.

Uh so you take access kind of on the on the northeast side of the property, you come in down to the south, and you have the choice chance to go into the vacuum bay area or continue on through the Q lanes.

Two of these Q lanes are for the public, and the third is for uh members, so it's kind of a fast express route, so to speak.

The traffic study the staff reviewed, reviewed everything through just the two lanes and found it to be uh not creating impacts and to be able to process the the number of vehicles in the stacking they provided.

So this third lane is kind of a bonus uh in terms of that.

They do have like a little escape lane here that can get you back into the vacuum bay if you decide you need to get out, uh gets you out a little bit before you actually go through the tunnel wash.

Proceeding through the tunnel wash, and then of course you can come back around, go back into the uh vacuum bays or exit the site.

Pedestrian access off of the existing walkway in 287.

It does cross the drive aisle or the queuing lane in this location where it necks down to a single queuing lane.

Really, the only options for that were here to wrap it around where it's crossing more queuing lanes uh or to come out the exit one which people are moving a little faster and not stopping and starting.

So we did, and that's one of the approval criteria kind of speaks to that, but I just want to point it out now.

Uh we we thought it was one of the one of the better, if not the best location to put this.

Um other things just to note, even though there's uh not a lot of bicyclists using car washes, there are workers.

I did provide a bike rack.

I do think that's uh in the C1 standards.

Um let's see here.

And then going through the landscaping, a lot of the existing landscaping in front of the building will remain like the other uses along highway 287.

They have added a significant amount of foundation planning here at the building to kind of soften the building from 287.

They provided two rows of shrubs here, one of which is an evergreen to help mitigate headlight uh shine onto the onto 287.

And then uh they've also added a significant amount of landscaping around the garage, uh the vacuum bay area, especially on this northern portion here.

Uh there's no actual requirement that they kind of screen it, it's just they're just doing that to kind of soften it.

And then along the southern property line, there's a criterion and the special use that talks about like it's not written very well, not surprisingly, but it talks about visual aesthetics very generally generally when you have adjacent drive-throughs.

So this landscaping was added.

And I also will note that there are three species, species of juniper proposed on this plan.

They're not going to be there at the end.

They will be removed, they will be uh substituted out.

All right, now since a lot of the letters we received in the last 48 hours have to do with water, and I know that's also a concern of many other residents and commissioners.

I want to talk a little bit about water.

So at the initial solar development, they were required to dedicate a certain amount of water.

I'm not going to get into the exact because I'm not our utility engineer.

And then essentially, as each use comes in, we evaluate that use compared to the water that was dedicated originally.

If it's a use that's gonna require more water, they have to dedicate additional water, which this project will have to do.

How we calculate that water is we ask the applicant to tell us how much water they use.

So this is typically, and then we compare it to other similar uses based on our utility usage, our water usage.

However, in this case, the applicant operates a very similar car wash in Arvada.

He was actually going through the process when I still work there.

Uh and so we did get the water bills from that uh from that uh facility, and uh we use those to calculate the water dedication.

Uh and then also the other thing we do is we do a rolling assessment of how much water people are using.

And if they start using more than what they said, we do require additional water dedications.

Uh and and another thing, well, I'll talk about that when we get down to water reclamation.

So just a little bit of background.

I learned some of this for the first time having worked in a community that had really solid water, and we didn't have to nobody had to bring water in the last jurisdiction I worked in.

This is some of this is new to me, so I learned a lot.

Uh, but we only take dedication of well firm yield water, so things that the shares you know are gonna be there, unlike a lot of the ditches, the agricultural ditches that run through town.

So it's typically CBT.

Uh, and then on a typical year, a share is 0.70 acre feet.

And this year, I was told by our water utility uh engineer that the shares have been increased to 0.80 acre feet.

And apparently that's a common thing that uh the Northern Water CBT does in hard years, they give a little bit more with the understanding that there's likely going to be less water available in other places, and you know, Mother Earth is giving them less water too, so they kind of increase it a little bit.

And then in rainy years, they actually drop it down a little bit, which uh was kind of counterintuitive when she first told me.

Then the more she explained it, I was like, okay, that that makes sense, and hopefully I was able to explain that also.

There's some also some questions about whether or not they have the rights to use uh water, they can recycle it or they can reclaim it in the city, and our portfolio has enough reusable water uh that we can accommodate the relatively few water recyclers we have.

I think it's three or three, this maybe it's a third car wash that would be recycling water or the fourth.

So there was no concern there.

Uh and then water restrictions, people were asking about that.

Uh car washes are subject to uh water restrictions like any other business and residences.

Now we are actively working on a plan.

This hasn't been adopted yet, but in the draft plan, uh car washes with reclamation are they start to they have to restrict their water use once we hit a stage four drought.

For perspective, right now we're in a stage one, currently moving towards likely moving to a stage two.

So that's just to provide a little background about uh kind of the restrictions that would be in place or could be in place.

And then a quick overview of the process and applications.

We do have a spar and a special use review.

Technically, the spar, uh the PC is a recommending body to the city council at a public meeting, which doesn't have a public hearing, but since we also have a special use review, and planning commission is a recommendation to city council at a public hearing, we kind of treat the whole thing like a public hearing, but there is that little little distinction uh between the kind of meeting and then obviously different approval criteria, which we'll go over in the analysis.

With that, I'll hand it off to Ted Lopez.

He's the applicant and uh would be the owner and operator of the car wash at this time.

I'm not sure I'd do it.

Okay, yeah, it does, but yeah.

There we go.

I'm Ted Lopez, nice to meet you guys.

About two consultants, that's Gia Lopez and Lily Lopez.

Um, so I am currently the owner.

Well, I'm an architect, first of all.

I was one of the architects on Coorsfield and so I'm used to doing kind of this stuff.

I currently operate this car wash in Arvada.

It is the car wash, just for reference, the car wash that we're talking about doing here is about half this size.

This is a hundred and fifty-foot uh tunnel, and we're looking at doing an 80-foot tunnel here.

So do the orientation of this of the, I was gonna say stadium of the car wash.

Um this car wash, I don't really need to go into the details of that, just kind of giving you some imagery of kind of what we're looking at, which I'm sure you guys are familiar with from a cobblestone or a wash fox.

I know we're in these areas we're all in cars and we all wash our cars.

So uh this is the site plan as we talked about.

I think the the really important part about the site plan is one is the landscaping and the and the work that we've done per the criteria, but also to make sure that we're doing you know things that we think are are necessary, or we think are just good to add to the aesthetics.

But I think really important part that uh Jacob was pointing out was the third lane that he was referenced.

Um I point on this.

There we go.

So these two lanes are obviously we sell memberships.

I'm sure you guys are familiar with that.

These two lanes here are membership, or I mean uh single use car washes.

This lane here is for members, so it's like a fast lane.

So that really lays quite a bit of pressure.

I don't know if you saw before.

We in the current wash, we have two lanes.

And when you're a member and you kind of get backed up a little bit, it it's not ideal because you just want to blow through and get done and get out of there.

So we this one will help with queuing.

I mean, I'm kind of glad we have this, have this third line.

We originally had two, and went to this third line.

I think that will make it a lot faster.

Um this is employee parking.

I don't I don't know if Jake mentioned that or not.

But you enter here.

Um be in that tunnel about about two and a half minutes in our tunnel, so this would be about a minute, a little over a minute and a half to come through this tunnel, come around, and you can either exit, which I would say probably well, it depends on the weather, honestly.

Some people, if it's kind of crummy out, and if you're a member, you just blow through, wash your car, leave.

If it's nice out, you'll you know, obviously you have tendency to come around and then come in and do your vacuuming.

And we have free vacuums, free tiles, free window cleaner, free high pressure air, and a mat washer.

So it's you know, we try and provide a lot of amenities and so forth.

So just from a traffic flow standpoint, we really try to make sure that the queuing area was big enough to accommodate, you know, roughly we expect to be 250 cars an hour, or not an hour, I wish.

250 cars a day, roughly, which is what is that?

Well, so let me go.

Our hours are during the summertime, it's gonna be seven in the morning to seven in the evening.

And during the winter time it'll be seven in the morning to six at night.

Because it gets once it gets dark, we kind of really don't see a lot of traffic.

And if there's weather, we simply don't even open.

So just for reference point.

Um we employ this car wash will probably employ uh four full-time employees, one manager, and then we'll we'll usually hire a bunch of kids during the summertime.

We like to hire local guys and local local crew to come in and help us out during the summertime.

It's kind of nice to have them involved.

A lot of kids will work after school, so it kind of provides an opportunity to come in and work after school.

We like them.

Um it's really good training ground to be honest with you for sales.

It's kind of nice when you come across kids that are interested in trying to do sales pitches and learn some learn some skills.

They learn a lot, quite frankly.

It's kind of kind of fun to watch them.

One of the girls that we have working for me now, she's getting her welding degree, and she's awesome at sales.

I love it.

I really like watching her.

She's 18, I think.

But anyway, so those are our hours.

Um from an uh in efficiency standpoint, you kind of go with what Jake's talking about.

All of our lights are LEDs, so they're all high efficient lighting.

Um all of our pumps are all VFD, so they don't run unless they're being used.

Um the vacuum or the dryers inside the tunnel themselves have power locks on them, so they're trying to maximize the amount of power we use, and when they're not operational, they just simply don't run.

I think one of the questions I saw, I don't know where it came from, but the vacuums only run during the day, they don't run at night.

When we're not open, they're not on, because obviously we're using energy.

We don't we don't really want to use.

Um what else in the tunnel?

All of our chemicals, all of our water nozzles are are uh highly regulated in terms of water usage and so forth, which is really important to us.

I know in here, I noticed in here that this indicates that we use 20 gallons per car for a wash.

We will not hit 20 gallons per car.

Right now at our car wash, we use 13 to 15 gallons per car.

If you take a shower, you're gonna use 80 to 100 gallons per shower.

So we really try and crank that down, obviously for economic reasons.

Uh same thing on on power.

I mean, it's obviously important for us if we minimize our power usage and so forth.

Um so when things aren't being used, they're simply not running.

Um what else in there?

Obviously, we've oriented it north and south.

Uh so from that that standpoint and power on we use about it's about 60 cents per car from an energy standpoint.

And let's see here.

Reclamation.

I know water is obviously a high issue.

We have a cyclonic reclamation system that we use.

It spins out the water and gets all the sediment out and sells the water into.

I think we've got four tanks on site here that are in ground.

They're kind of like uh big cisterns, basically, and they collect all the hard sediment, they settle in the bottom, and then we suck them out probably about once a quarter.

We'll clean all the mud and all that stuff coming off the bottom of the trench.

There's a trench inside the tunnel that collects all the water.

We recycle that water after we spin it out, and we obviously want to reuse that.

And we use we use about 80% of our water, which is pretty good for a car wash.

Um we have BFDs for our pumps, injection nozzles, landscaping, landscaping obviously is drought resistant.

Um native grasses.

We try and try to minimize the amount of grass that we have on site.

A lot of it's gonna be hard scape uh to minimize the amount of water.

And the another point on that too is I know I think the allowable is 15 gallons per square foot, and we're using roughly five is the planned usage on the irrigation system.

Obviously, again, in our favor to minimize the water usage.

Uh let's see.

Let's really oh and the noise one of the things uh that Jake brought up was the noise in the vacuums.

As you know, the vacuums have they're called producers, they're pretty big units.

They will actually be housed in the trash enclosure right here.

Uh that's a I think we said it's seven foot, that'll be an eight-foot high block wall to reduce the sound.

I can tell you that the sound coming off that highway is a lot higher than you're ever going to hear coming off these vacuums, just to be quite honest.

So peak hours or peak hours are typically it's kind of a bell curve.

I mean, obviously at seven in the morning, not a lot of traffic.

And depends on the day, of course, and the weather, but usually it's kind of a bell curve.

You know, we'll hit get hit around 10, go to round two, maybe swell up a little again around after people get off work, and then it drops off pretty hard after about six.

So and if it's dark, it's uh it's pretty minimal.

Um I think that's it.

I think the lighting's all pretty low grade lighting.

We've got some, I think some required side lighting.

But uh other than that, it's pretty uh it's pretty um pretty efficient.

So yeah, that's it.

I don't know if I have any other oh, there's uh elevations of our building.

I'm sorry about that.

Jake did mention the second story uh office space.

We are not gonna do that.

It's we don't really need the office here.

I'm not quite sure why the architect put it in there, but we don't need an office space.

It'll just be uh the office will be down below.

There's a restroom in there for staff and for public.

Uh I think it's site plan or the the building plan.

That's the office.

We will not have that.

This is the office space right here.

This is the equipment room right here.

Delete those stairs, those won't be there.

And this is a tunnel.

You'll enter here, slide down through there and exit here.

If you go back, one thing we like is that uh we like the office space to be near the point of sale so we can communicate back and forth with our staff.

So, yeah, that's it.

Thank you.

Any questions?

Oh, sorry.

I'm sure there will be.

Yeah, I'm sure there will be.

Oh, there it is.

What's that?

I said it wasn't meant that way.

And that like there likely will be, but there usually is in any uh commission hearing.

All right.

So I'll move on to the analysis.

We'll start with the special use review.

Wait, wait, so we have a public hearing?

That's after the analysis.

After your analysis, okay.

You're always throwing me curves at where you want that public hearing.

I think we moved it to where you like it now.

We're we're trying to align the city conquered.

I just thought you did your piece already.

That's what it's like.

I mean, well, so you're saying keep it brief.

Uh so we'll start with special use review approval criteria.

Uh I'm gonna go over this you know, like I usually do, relatively high level.

We try to provide a lot of analysis in the in the staff report.

There's a couple of the different SVAR approval criteria and the SUR approval criteria that we'll go into a little bit more detail.

But uh it is a compliance with the applicable municipal code requirements, so we found that to be met.

It's uh in staff's opinion very compatible with the character of the surrounding area, which is primarily comprised of auto auto-oriented uses, and it was uh contemplated by the PUD.

Uh we also didn't find that there's really any potential for adverse environmental impacts.

Now, compatibility with the comprehensive plan.

I've been thinking a lot about that one because you know, I I think I I quoted two policies in the code, but also what it's occurred to me more recently is that when we're looking at compatibility with the comprehensive plan, we should really be looking at all the solar.

I mean, that's what it was analyzed as as a first at the first time.

Uh it would it came through.

Obviously, it was a different comprehensive plan and all that.

But when after you keep on whittling these down to smaller and smaller and smaller lots, and more and more of it gets developed, and you're expecting uh a small single standalone lot to somehow demonstrate that it has this uh uh uh you know large impact on implementing the comprehensive plan.

And if you look at the larger development of solar that reaches, I'm gonna go back to a previous slide here.

That you know, we I don't even have the whole thing that goes from here to the other side of South Public and Prana to the open space over here, and then goes all the way to the east of the railroad tracks, and it included anywhere from 25 to 50 foot pedestrian uh easements around the outside.

It dedicated some, I believe, some floodplain.

It did lots of things.

I think you could start to say, oh, it it meets more of the different framework.

It would meet more of the uh the environmental stewardship one uh the if you look at all of the businesses that are in within the solar development, I think you can start to say it meets many more of the strong economy framework goals.

So that's just something that's occurred to me more recently, and I think that's how I will be kind of looking at these little individual pad sites within a larger development.

Uh and so staff does find that it does comply with the compatibility standard with the comprehensive plan.

Um then there are specific impacts uh in the approval criteria rated related to traffic, parking, screening, noise, light dust, uh, infrastructure capacity, and ability to serve, and specifically hours of operation.

Uh many of these are going to be covered in the spar, so rather than go over them twice.

I'm gonna go over them in a little bit more detail in the spar approval criteria.

Uh maybe a couple exceptions of that would be uh spar doesn't really speak a lot to dust.

You know, we don't anticipate a car wash to create dust.

Um doesn't it speaks some to infrastructure capacity and ability to serve, and when they're looking at this, they're looking at not only like water and sewer capacity, but ability to for the schools to serve, ability for fire to serve, emergent other emergency services, uh things like that, and uh staff finds that that there's no issue there.

This was referred out to a variety of different outside agencies, and then Ted mentioned the hours of operation are very I mean, they're they're less than probably many of the hours of operation of existing uses in that area.

The other items like traffic parking screening uh light, we'll get to with the uh with the spar approval criteria.

There are two specific review criteria that apply to car washes and other auto-oriented uses.

And we'll one's 200 foot separation, and then one's 150 foot separation, and we'll go into those in a little more detail.

Um the 200-foot separation is from residentially zoned lots, properties that are zoned, developing resources but have a housing designation on the on the future land use map, or land that is not currently in the city but has a uh housing designation, and there's none of those within 200 feet.

The closest ones are across highway 287, and uh those are 220 or so feet uh from this in terms of the residential loans zone lots.

There is a it's not all right away that 200 feet, there is a tract on the other side uh that is dedicated for I think uh drainage and uh pedestrian trail, and that's I think 45 feet wide, so that is the that's kind of where you get to that 200 plus number.

And then the other requirement is the 150-foot separation uh that's between it's it's it's a difficult to digest criterion.

Uh it talks about drive-through windows or point of service, and the closest things, if you kind of take any of those are would be the two, would be in my opinion, the two point of service, which would be here for their closest kiosk, and here for the menu bar that kind of superimpose the Carl Jr.

site below their site.

And that comes out to just over 80 feet of separation.

Uh however, the code also does say the planning commission can reduce that if it can demonstrate that there's a design that minimizes potential traffic impacts and the site addresses visual aesthetics.

If you read it, it kind of says addresses and minimizes visual aesthetics, so it doesn't really read correctly.

But I think that's the intent of what I have down here.

Uh so in I've struggled with this criterion a little bit, and and I think the reason it was in there is it's it's it's really meant to address pad sites within larger shopping centers at all kind of share dry vials and parking lots where you get a lot more conflict rather than on standalone lots of their own access to roads and so forth.

So uh, you know, staff didn't think there's any traffic impacts because there's no cross access, there's there's not shared drive lanes.

Uh it's just you know uh blomstone, ballstone, excuse me.

And then the visual aesthetics, uh, you know, we did push the applicant to try to get some landscaping in theory to kind of create that visual uh separation and uh you know some some screening, and and they were happy to oblige, so we've got uh a row of hedges here.

Uh so we we feel that reducing this 150 foot separation is supportable given given those factors.

So next we'll move on to the spar approval criteria.

I'm not gonna go through all these because I kind of go through each of them in the following pages, but we have we kind of lumped them into you know, we lumped the 20 plus criteria criteria into what do I have here?

Six overarching categories.

We have architecture, we have landscaping, we have circulation, screening, lighting, and then in this case we have the car wash specific criteria.

So this actually gets closer to 30 criteria when you uh when you include those.

So first we'll go over the architecture uh criteria, and that speaks to things like scale, proportion, character, and compatibility, visual or interest in durability of materials.

Staff finds that these have all been met.

You know, the building uh this is the uh east elevation, so I want the west elevation here.

This is a street side elevation.

They provided uh variety of windows, they've got uh canopies, they have durable materials in terms of split-based CMU, masonry, metal siding, standing sea metal roofs.

Uh they've kind of got the 360 degree architecture and that they've implemented different building materials, uh, you know, different uh architectural elements like canopies, uh change materials, like I said, on all four sides, transparency on all four sides.

So we did find that this met the all of the uh architectural criteria.

So the landscaping talks about the function and use of open areas, buffering and enhancement of the project.

Um they don't have uh what I would call a ton of like functional open areas, but also it's a car wash people, and this is you know, you see some car washes where you get out of your car and people drive them through.

There used to be one in Wadsworth where everybody would have their lawn chairs set up out in the the street or in the sideway in the grass next to the street.

Uh this is uh you know a car wash that you stay in the car the entire time and you drive it through.

Uh that being said, they have provided a lot of of high quality landscaping.

They have tried to buffer with it both from the street and the and the vacuum bays, like I kind of discussed a little bit earlier, and from the adjacent properties.

Uh they do exceed their landscaping requirements, our minimum is 15%.

They were at like 37 uh percent, so we do find that it does enhance the project and the site, and we found that the uh the project complies with those approval criteria.

So, and then there's a circulation, and it talks to both pedestrian and vehicular.

I kind of walk through the vehicular uh circulation.

I think they do a good job of minimizing conflicts both between vehicles and between uh pedestrians and vehicles.

You know, we talked a little bit about this access point.

They are delineating it with uh a design.

We have asked for more information about this.

This would be more than striping, as I think Zach alluded to on a in the previous uh presentation.

So we will expect this to be a high visual distinction between the rest of the road or the rest of the uh drive aisle.

Uh so we we found that these criteria have been met also.

And then we have screening requirements or uh criteria and they and that speaks to kind of two things, and that is what does require screening and whether or not it's compatible with the building.

Really think the things that required are outdoor storage yards, sorry about that.

Uh and then like trash and enclosures are pretty much the two predominant ones.

And then there's also uh sorry, there's also uh like RTUs and things like that.

Uh the RTUs are screened by a parapet wall, um, and then their trash enclosure, which also serves as the uh kind of where the vacuum sit uh are made of the same CMUs I found on the building.

They do have an opaque gate, so they do meet our requirements.

We found that this complies.

That being said, I did hear the applicant say he's committed to eight foot tall uh enclosure, which will help with the noise mitigation from the vacuum motor, so I would recommend that as an additional condition of approval.

So we have lighting next.

We have really oh I'm going off memory here.

I think we have eight, you know, we have one criterion for lighting.

And it just talks maybe there's two compatible with the building and then minimizing impact on adjacent properties.

You know, they're using a fairly straightforward pole uh parking lot light and uh fairly standard uh wall pack, both downcast.

And the other thing they they also are lighting is under canopy lighting.

I didn't include that here as an image because it just doesn't really show much, but it's completely under the canopies.

Uh so they're all downcast.

Staff did note that there's a little area down here in the southwest that they're those light levels, like we've asked them to look into whether they can shield those a little better.

They're not that high.

That it raises a lot of concern for me in the commercial area adjacent to a uh state highway where there's not you know residential.

So we've asked them to look at that.

That being said, this is also the uh Carl's Junior drive aisle for their drive-through.

They have a light kind of over here, and their light levels actually get to get low over here.

So that was another reason I didn't really cause me much concern.

But like I said, we have asked them to explore it, but regardless, we do find that it uh complies with these criteria.

All right, now Frank's desire.

Right.

Thank you.

And we'll be obviously happy to answer any questions after the public hearing.

Thank you.

Do any commission members have questions for staff or the applicant?

This is what we wanted to give.

You can't.

Uh first we have questions, and then we have public testimony.

In addition to questions after that.

We switched it up, though.

We are doing do any commission members have questions for the staff or the applicant?

Sure.

We all do, I'm sure.

Well, I mean, do we want to proceed with it?

I mean, we can take it out here, right?

I thought there's a little mix up, I think, between Lauren and myself here.

Uh no, and it might be the city attorney, because I did help prepare the script based on the one we did for council last night.

Um, the thinking with having questions before um before the public hearing is that the public would get to hear some you know the answers to those questions, but then you get another opportunity to ask questions after public hearing based on what you heard during public hearing, but but you can uh you can skip this section of questions if you would like commission and then wait till after you hear from the rest uh from the public.

There's only a few.

We will hear from the public.

Don't make them don't make everybody think it's all I will.

Hearing no questions at this time from the commission for the staff or the applicant, we remove to public testimony.

So at this time we'll hear from any interested members of the public who wish to address the planning commission about the special use review application for this car wash facility.

Um we have uh if you are interested in speaking and you haven't already, please fill out a speaker form and hand it to the commission secretary.

When you come to the podium, state your name and address for the record.

Before I call up the first speaker, I'm going to note for the record that it is now 751 p.m.

Okay, Mr.

Spalding.

Please uh if you'd like to, you have filled out a speaker request form if you would like to speak.

Good evening, commissioners.

Ron Spawning, 1326 Elder Altaway.

I apologize before I start because uh I don't have my hearing aids in and I need them.

So everything that's been said, I could barely hear.

With that said, uh let me just preface this.

I found out about this yesterday in a first, and you know how I'm about water before the council and here and everything, the water in the town and the city and the state and all that.

And my main concern is the water.

So when I saw this yesterday, I go, wow, no way, this is insane.

However, I took a deep breath and said, that's not me.

Let me do something objectively.

So I read everything tonight, but the staff is done, but Mr.

Ted is done.

And ah, I come before you tonight to say I'm neutral on this on this.

Uh and maybe some of my questions have been answered, but I'm still confused.

I just want to go through my little analysis this afternoon.

I think it's already been answered.

So I said to myself, ah, I'm a homeowner, a family of four, according to AI, you know, a family of four uses approximately 300 to 400 gallons of water per day.

And they say it's about 80 to 100 gallons per person.

Okay.

So I look in this proposal for the car wash, the car uses 13 gallons per car wash.

Fantastic.

No, it really is.

I'm not being sarcastic.

So then I said, okay, I'm trying to figure out how much water.

Uh so what's the hours of operation?

And then the uh planning report, 7 a.m.

to 7 p.m.

12 hours.

So, real quick, I said, Well, how many cars are expected to use the car wash per day?

It's not in report.

And I said, okay, this is the maximum theoretical analysis I've done based on the information here.

So 160 vehicles per hour based on page three, the planning uh memo, which means a stacking them to get in.

Now, this is a maximum theoretical.

Uh so 160 vehicles per per hour.

And if you're operating 12 hours a day, you know, real quick calculation, 1,120 cars, probably way out of the range of the thing.

Yes.

Yes, okay.

Yeah, no, so so then, you know, this is my little analysis.

So, how how much water then uh would it be per day?

Theoretical 1900 cars, some 13 gallons, 24,60 per day, but equal to 83 homes.

However, now that I've attended a little bit of herd, I know staff has much more detailed information because for seats of another facility have been sent in, which would give the actual water, I think, per day.

And as a so I just like to know what that would be.

Not me, but you, but it's much lower.

So I'm neutral on this whole thing.

But this is my thing before coming in tonight.

So that's been answered, and I'm sure it's okay.

So then I'll have a second before tonight.

I said, hey, does the applicant bring his own water, or is it gonna be cash and loo?

And I think what I just learned, but I'm still confused, is that it seems the city has approved what I say the city has enough enough water to accommodate this.

And I know it's all right, but I hope in your discussion, what does that mean?

Uh I don't know how many gallons is going to be.

I mean, Sundar development, we just approved for another extension.

That's 650, 450 homes, you know, resonance now, another 650 total build at they got to bring the water.

So I don't know, but I like to be a good citizen, and I know it's all going to be explained.

So we're at I agree with the staff and the developer.

And whatever you all come up with, whatever the city does, you know, I'm neutral.

And and the reason I say that now is I'm giving up on this whole water situation.

Because when you look at all the development going on at Erie and RTAN and all this coming up, and Lord almighty, with we don't have the state figured out what's going to happen with the whole Colorado River, this done mean beans.

You know?

And this is a pretty development.

It's a nice looking car wash, sort of like the one up at 95th Street.

I just had to get this off, and I hope for your further discussion.

Jake, you know, I'll do a great job.

Don't have to bring in water.

God bless the development.

It'd be a nice, it'd be a nice addition there, and it would fit.

That's it.

Thank you for putting up with me.

God bless.

Thank you.

Can I respond to that?

No.

Um just a second.

Um is there anyone else from the public who'd like to speak?

Okay.

Seeing no other member of the public wishing to address the commission, the public testimony period is now closed.

It is now 7.57 p.m.

Okay, now does the applicant wish to respond to the public testimony, including the written public testimony that was included in the meeting packet for the hearing record.

Sure.

Just so yeah.

Um so I hope we have that many cars.

Uh we are, I will tell you at the at the car wash in Arvana.

We average right at about 300 cars a day.

So I have I don't have a calculator in front of me, but we can't we figure this would give a bit, do about 250 to 300 cars per day.

Yeah.

We we I think the most we've ever done in an hour at the other car was like 75 or 80.

That's the most we've ever done in an hour.

So that's a lot of cars.

That's over a car a minute.

As an owner, I really that would be fantastic.

But that's not likely.

So anyway, that's what we do our math around.

It's roughly 250 cars per day.

And like I say, 13 gallons per car.

I don't know what that math is, but anybody want to do math?

Oh, I have no idea.

How many?

13 times 250.

10 times 250 is 2500.

3250.

Yeah.

300.

Roughly let's say 3,000, 4,000 gallons a day.

Something like that.

So 80% of it's reclaimed.

So a lot of recycling.

I will say real quick too, the the applicant received the kind of letters late in the day, so I kind of did my best to respond to those at the water slide and stuff.

So uh I just didn't want to make it seem like he's ignoring ignoring those.

Thank you.

All right, so now back to the commission.

Does the commission have any further questions for staff or the applicant?

Yes.

All right, this is gonna sound weird coming from the landscape architect, but I'm gonna defend Junipers, honestly.

Like if we're gonna put evergreen screening, pines aren't gonna make it.

Uh you're gonna poison everybody's dogs.

We're kind of out of options.

We're talking total masonry construction here.

There's no homes nearby.

I don't see a problem with putting junipers in here.

I don't know if there's some overarching reason that we can't right now, because we haven't banned them as far as I know.

But if there was a place for junipers, which are a native or near native species that is low water use and facilitates well in a low water use, highly reflective urban environment, it's a really great planting addition for this use.

Do we have to get rid of the junipers?

I know the right reasons in some places people don't want them, and I respect that.

This does not feel like that same risk that people are worried about.

And and you know, we are in the process of you know adopting the wooy plan that talks about defensible spaces and has some of that stuff.

But if you look at the wooy designations, not everywhere in the town is in them.

Yes.

But our our basic the basic guidance we've been given from our Parks and Open Space people who we rely on for a lot of our landscape reviews is to remove junipers.

I think we can I think there's space to have a further conversation on that.

We also have a lot of the members of public.

We hear from a lot of them individually that are highly concerned about them, and maybe it's an educational component.

Uh so uh that's the approach we've been kind of given to take at this time.

I appreciate a different perspective.

Uh like I'm gonna defend them to the death in certain circumstances because yeah, planting fitzers against your foundation if you live in a wildland urban interface and you've got grassland and your house is made of timber, sure.

Terrible idea.

Planting junipers in a parking lot surrounded by masonry buildings.

I don't think it's a problem, even remotely.

And there's a fire station down the street either way, but and you know, it's a car wash, you probably presumably have water nearby.

But I just think there's a place for a more nuanced conversation, and I don't want to predicate approval on saying we have to remove the junipers because I think anything that gets planted in its place will not serve the function of what we're trying to do with the screening here, which I think is fabulous.

I think the screening planting, it's generous.

It is not required.

It feels very nice, like it's trying to be a nice space and not adhere to the bare minimum standard.

I would like to meet that with the same generosity and try to make it the nicest possible parking lot that we can do, and that's something that I would like to continue doing because we could use more of that in all of our new development for me.

I will definitely take that back to the group and to the city staff and I'd need to talk to anybody about that because I really I'll I'll die on this hill for the.

When I talk to Ted about it, you know, he says he's not a big fan of Junipers either, so we might be fighting uh a two-pronged attack here.

Uh we'll have to overcome.

But the replacement plants are limited and not great options, unfortunately.

Well, I like I said, I will definitely, you know, take that to uh rest of staff and see you know how they feel given the context.

I think you made a good point there.

And and if they feel comfortable, uh we may, you know, and and Ted is our landscape architect, if want to proceed with that, then maybe maybe we will.

And yeah, sounds great.

I appreciate a different perspective.

Because we've been hearing one thing quite a bit for quite a few from quite a few people for a while.

Yes, I I know.

Um I'm waving, I'm tilting at windmills with this, I know, but I'm gonna die on the hill.

So excellent.

Any other questions?

I can ask a couple.

Yes.

So I think to confirm and clarify some things from the presentation and then public comment.

The original subdivision had dedication of water, and then the expectation and obligation is what a new use there's gonna be a question at the end of this.

I guess I'll rephrase.

Can you clarify that if through a water study or through through means it is determined that additional water dedication is required, that dedication is maintained as part of this process?

Correct.

Yes.

And it has been studied, and additional water will be required.

And I will tell you, they have provided uh we we also take a more uh conservative approach on water dedication now, in that we make sure we're we're getting enough because we have some you know, some issues in the past.

Uh and so now whether or not they buy it and bring it in or they give us a fee and loo, like that either or can happen, but what we don't do anymore is take fee and loo today, like we did with other developments, and then they develop two years down the road.

So if they do pay a fee in loo, it'll be at like a building permit or at uh I think it's at building permit or before CO, I'm not exactly sure, but they it's it's at the end, you know.

Because that price changes with the market.

And we've been, you know, we've we've made that mistake, we've learned from it.

That's not something that happens.

Uh so another thing that I was I was informed of, and hopefully it knows about this, but uh, you know, they they're they claim they they we've seen some different numbers, but they claim they recycle about 80%.

We're only crediting them 70% because we're taking a conservative approach, we think that's more realistic.

So they're getting like a that's that's what that's what we're factoring in, and our utility engineers when they're calculating it is a 70% reclamation.

Uh so and we did get, like I said, we we we did get uh bills from our bata, and uh and then you know Ted provides information too.

So uh that's something our our utility engineer does, and I don't know the all the inner workings of it, but I know they are dedicating water because they are they do use a higher amount than the original land use that came through with the solar or the original dedication uh and and and kind of land uses.

So second clarifying water question.

The augmentation or accommodation for the reuse.

That's that's a separate thing that's not necessarily part of this water dedication.

That's in reference to the 80% or 70% that's recycled.

This is saying through the water table that the city manages, they basically put water into the system to make up for that reclaimed water.

For their lost water.

They would get whatever that kind of, you know, what they what's what's been allocated to the property, what they use, uh in terms of actual usage, it's that delta between those two that they would.

It's not that we're accommodating their CBT requirements.

No, well, no.

The accommodation there was simply meant to mean that there's certain water that you know can't be reused because there's downstream users, or there's you know, Frank can tell us more about it, he knows more than me about it.

Uh but our water portfolio has more than enough water that doesn't have other users that we can accommodate the amount of recycling we have.

If we we couldn't recycle 100% of our water, you know, that it's like to get into the gray water kind of discussion and some of those.

But where is there's there's no concern with where we're at now.

And then last water question from me right now.

The anticipated 13 gallons per car wash, that's the original number, and then 70 to 80 percent of that is what's no my understanding is that's what's used, and there's seven it what there's the right, that's the end a use amount.

So they're really using you know, closer to whatever 60 gallons, or you know, I don't know.

I'm doing the math off the top of my head, and or maybe like 75 gallons.

So that's 13 gallons being lost used is that 20 percent is the lost water.

Gotcha.

Okay.

That is good clarification for that part.

Uh you can take a pause.

So using your numbers.

Do you have the numbers by the way, what the solar water dedication originally was that was dedicated?

I have the sta I the only thing I have, I no, I did inquire about that, and I haven't got that.

They thought gosh, you could I looked at the development agreement, it doesn't have the sp the specifics, but as I understand it, it was I don't remember off the top of my head.

There was a standard we used that was X amount acre feet per acre.

And uh our utility engineer thought that they dedicated a kind of a standard amount, but I don't have that exact number.

Because you mentioned earlier in answering question, it was looking at the water use that'd be the difference between what was originally in solar.

Okay.

So um I little bit of number crunch in my set.

And I initially started as Mr.

Spauld and gave it the maximums and came up with quite the gigantic number.

But those maximum thankfully, thankfully, the applicant provided a daily average, which you confirmed as 3250 or something like that per day, right?

Of course, of water.

Yeah.

You multiply that by seven, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.

That's over a million gallons of water.

An acre foot of water is 325,000 gallons.

So this is over three acre feet of water.

A lot of the developments we have that are fairly large, maybe an acre foot acre foot and a half.

So I scratching my head here.

This these numbers don't add up.

Are you gonna have them buy dedicate three acre feet of water if solas used up all of it for its resident?

How is this gonna work?

Where is this coming from?

Well, I do not believe solar is used up everything.

I believe there's still water that has been that you know, there's large parts of solar have not been developed.

So and obviously it's up to solar is not also not, as far as I know, it's not under uh singular solar corporation ownership anymore.

Uh so I believe that the the water rights would be based on the parcel.

Um but this is what we have a utility engineer for, and and I don't kind of meddle in her numbers and and and figures.

But it would be nice to have those numbers since it's been very obvious early on that water was an issue.

Yeah, and I and I've did my best to try to get as much information as I could over the last three days.

Uh I can check to see if I received an email that I wasn't that I see but before the end of the day.

Uh but I can tell you, I mean, we have other car washers in town that have less recycling.

Uh this is not you know, it's not unprecedented.

Uh and I am and I trust them that's not the issue here.

And our in our utility engineers to make sure that we are calculating this right.

I have processed the application, so I've seen the water bills, uh, I've seen all that.

I know uh for a fact that they do have to dedicate.

And I kind of explained.

They do have to dedicate.

100%.

Yes, they're dedicating.

Oh, we don't know how much that is right now, though, is what you're telling me.

What you're telling me.

I think city staff does.

I do not.

Your city staff, are you not?

Okay.

I'm sorry.

No, it's all right.

I you know, I I can't know everything.

You know, I'm a planner.

I can't know every single thing that you know, the way all the drainage works.

I you know, we have engineers that special specializes.

I don't know everything about transportation engineering.

Fair enough.

So you know, I have to rely on them, and I don't check and nitpick like and check their work and and try to uh verify everything.

I have to have faith in that.

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

Um okay.

Uh so that's I'm just gonna leave with the comment on I'm simply not satisfied with the information that's given about water utilization.

I just have a uh comment for the commission.

Um even though we don't it doesn't sound like we have exact dedication calculations or numbers from staff.

Um of course you're where our staff are very uh aware of the current drought situation, and um we have a very uh conservatively managed water portfolio in Lafayette.

Um my uh point that I wanted to offer for the commission is simply that our code requires this user and any user who enters into the system to dedicate sufficient water and the the regulations for commercial uses are different than residential.

With residential, we have like a half acre foot, or you it's based on the size of the unit and the type of unit.

With commercial, it's based on use and actual calculations.

And so our staff and knowing our water um resources engineer and utilities engineer, um it sounds like they've already taken a conservative approach with what they're calculating, but but our code, so as a city attorney, I'm saying the law does not let development ever off the hook.

They will be required to um to dedicate whatever is necessary to uh cover their use.

Um in addition, this is in chapter 120 of the code.

If their use at any point expands or it takes more water to operate than we initially took a dedication for, the city has the legal right under our code to require additional water from the user.

Um so just know that our code does already anticipate this, and um it will be required regardless of whether we have a uh a calculation tonight.

Um I just wanted I I don't know if that provides any assurance is that that this is the law in the city and not just a calculation issue.

So that again, that's that's what we require, and that's great.

I'm glad we do that.

The problem we kind of have here is again um the concept of drought and what drought means.

Now, Jacobs provided the figure up there that uh firm acre yield, and firm acre yield is basically what you can count on regardless of whatever the conditions are that you will get from an acre foot.

So if you buy an acre foot, unless conditions are perfect and you're in a rainforest, you're not gonna get a full acre foot.

And that's why they come up with numbers like this.

Okay, firm yield is 0.8 of an acre foot.

Okay, that's fine.

That's currently that that's never we have never.

That's per unit.

Yes, it's it's a little bit different than the acre foot.

When we are um no, and I believe me, it took me a few years to understand how this all works with uh with CBT.

So with Colorado Big Thompson water, the city has an allotment contract where we purchase a certain number of units.

We contract to receive a certain number of units, and those units are calculated as a fraction of an acre foot.

Um when we require an acre foot or some uh calculation of water dedication, which is based on acre feet.

This um they'll have to provide more than a unit to reach an acre foot.

So an acre foot of CBT water would be more than one unit.

I can't do that math, like 1.3 units.

Right.

If it's 0.7, I don't quote me on the math.

But so this is just representing what we get from a CBT unit, but the actual dedication and what we get from a CBT unit, um, if that's how they meet their water dedication, still has to add up to the total acre foot that our engineers are saying are necessary to serve the development.

But this firm yield piece is a little confusing.

So that our engineers so their acre foot is different than the definition of an acre foot?

You mean northern water?

No, our engineers.

You just said No, no, no.

This is a northern water, this is a yeah, Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District construct for how um units are calculated.

So when we an acre foot is an acre foot.

So if our engineers are going by an acre foot, but we contract for unit.

325,000 gallons of water football.

Right.

Uh 100%.

That that's absolutely right.

It's just that our contract it's per uh we contract to receive certain number of units in those in Northern Colorado Wire Conservancy District says, okay, for each unit Lafayette this year you get 0.8 acre fee for each unit.

Now the developer, if we say you need two acre feet, yeah, they need to pay for enough units to get that number up to the city.

And we plan and we plan to do that.

Yes, exactly.

And the really cool part is I'm gonna buy them and you get to own them.

I don't actually own them.

Yeah.

That's unbelievable to me, but that's the way it works.

That's how water works.

Yeah, I know.

Right?

Yeah, absolutely.

To clarify a little bit more, hopefully give some sort of satisfaction of rate.

They they we received the water bills.

We received first round of water bills with first review, or we received like a they fill out a form with the first one.

We asked for water bills with second review.

We provided them feedback.

We are in between second and third review.

Uh I did get received an email from Melanie this afternoon that said uh they will have to provide the dedication at building permit.

Uh and I think some of the I think the final calculations get done with building permit, because that's when we get into fixture counts and things like that.

We don't get into that at this stage.

We get into overall water usage from the land use.

So I think it's fine-tuned at that stage.

And then lastly, she also said she would support a variance at that time to get a fee in lieu at that time to go purchase them if that if that were requested.

So that's that's what I have, the information, the best available, most recent information based on conversations I've had this week, kind of running around trying to learn as much as I can about water.

Uh so I yeah, I don't think the exact number is known at this time.

Uh I think we have all the information we need, and then we'll have the fixture count and the building related stuff to make the final determination.

Well, I mean you say exact numbers not known, but based on your own numbers.

We're talking roughly over a million gallons of water a year.

We don't know.

We only want to wash 100 cars a day.

Yeah, I think he was citing well one of the number of.

You said 250.

That's no, I know.

I'm just saying we may only wash 100 cars a day.

I hope we wash two.

That'd be great day.

I will say when we got the water bills, there's a huge difference between winter water bills and summer water bills.

So it's not consistent throughout the year.

Right.

The the staff report was misleading because it was citing the peak hour based on the ITE, the you know, the transportation uh manual.

Uh so that was citing peak hour, and we were simply using the peak hour to say the staffing lanes are more than sufficient to meet the demand at peak hour to not create uh stacking issues.

Uh they weren't meant to be used to kind of extrapolate a total number of users and car washes per day because that's not what that's for the traffic analysis.

Yeah, and for the V use, yeah, or number of washes per day, like that's our peak hour.

And again, that's I know a lot of planners have a healthy skepticism for the ITE.

Uh that's why it is.

You said you had the bills, right?

We we have a dull stream.

So you could tell us how much water there is.

From our data.

Fine.

I mean, you know, I'm gonna get a number I can wrap my arms around on every time I think I do, does somebody says, well, no, not really.

Well, just because it's water.

It's water.

I know it's water.

So we I mean we plan to buy the CBT water credits and then turn them over to the city.

I mean, that's we're gonna go to market.

I've already talked to Northern Water District and figured out what that looks like.

So and that's all over the border.

I mean, last year's price was a hell of a lot different than this year's.

Yeah.

So yeah.

But that's the plan.

Bottom line is this is that you know, you can buy as many CBT shares as you want, but if the water isn't there, then you're not gonna get full allocation.

No, I'm gonna get that from CB from CB.

So it may not.

You know, you may buy enough for a particular estimate, but in a different year, it may be less.

No, but then we'll put the more.

I mean, we have to buy more, we have to buy more and else.

Oh, okay.

So it can change.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Just like any any, I mean Maryland alluded to any user, you know, we might I think it's on a three-year running period, and if they start going over what they were allocated, we do.

We require to buy more.

So uh and just for the record, that is in section 120-92.1 of the code titled expansion of use.

So we retain our right to always allow um always require additional water rights to be dedicated.

Um then this calculation where I can't do math up here in the dice.

Calculation I was speaking to is also in the code in the section before that in 120-92.1, um, or it specifically says that all parties who dedicate units of CBT water to the city to meet the water dedication requirements of this article shall calculate the number of CBT units to dedicate to the city by a befalling formula and it's total acre foot dedication.

So that like again, just using a random example of two acre feet.

Okay.

Um so for one acre, that would be 1.25 CBT units.

That is all spelled out in our code.

And Frank, here was here are some numbers for you.

So we when he submitted, he sent four kind of bill space throughout the year.

Our uh water resources engineer, utility engineer reached out to Ted and he provided her, I believe a full year's worth.

So I have a sampling of four months.

Okay.

I don't they I'm not seeing on the bill exactly the date, but it has the due date, so we can extrapolate is probably about a month before the due date.

Close enough.

We have 116 uh due date, 81,000 gallons consumed.

We have uh one two due date, 55,000 gallons consumed, 35, 33,000 gallons consumed, and then five, seven, thirty-five thousand gallons consumed.

And one thing we would specifically wanted is like summer months, so we've got all of them.

So uh you know, I would say some of these months are probably lower usage months, and and we have the the the whole the whole picture.

So that's some numbers I can give you.

Okay, thanks.

Um okay, I'll have a question.

Um I was wondering about uh the idling lane there.

I mean, there was a lot of reference to the fact that with three lanes, we're not gonna have as much issue, but there's there's only one lane through the actual car wash.

That's the bottleneck, right?

So is there likely to be a lot of idling traffic in your experience?

Well, here's the so that chain, we can speed that chain up.

It's variable speed, which is a VFD.

So it depends on what our traffic's like.

Typically, like we know what our car wash is set at this location that we run now because we know what our kind of peak traffic looks like.

We've been doing this for two years, so we kind of have a good feel for that.

This one we'll wait and see.

This would be the same application.

We'll wait and see what it looks like.

Ideally, the members are going through fairly quickly because they know what to do.

A lot of people well, we like the members because they know exactly what to do.

They just blow through and we cruise through with them.

So it depends.

I mean, I I don't think you'll get a lot here.

I I like the three lanes.

Like I say, we only have two.

And it it honestly at bottlenecks behind the point of sale, it doesn't bottleneck at the the at the throat of the of the car wash.

Oh, because they're doing the like the kiosk or whatever would take the time.

Yes, the kiosk is where the holdup is because we're trying to sell membership, so we're s we're actually interacting with people and trying to sell memberships.

Uh there's people in each of those kiosks, it's not a computer screen or something.

What's that?

Tell me about those you're you you're describing that there's people working in those.

Well, how are you trying to sell stuff?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So when people pull up, there's a gate arm.

Have you been through the of the cobblestone?

I think there's a cobblestone north of here.

Anyway.

I don't wash my car.

You're one of the few.

I don't know.

Um, she came in a bike.

Yeah.

There's a gate arm here, and we have staff there, because a lot of people have questions about some of them are just single purchase, like, I don't know what car wash I want.

I want the grade one, two, or three, whatever, whatever we call them.

So it's kind of there's some interaction there that usually kind of slows down traffically.

It'll back up.

This is a honestly a lot more cue than what we currently have with the current wash that we have.

So I'm not personally I'm not really concerned about the the throat of the car, the tunnel is very rarely a bottleneck.

Interesting.

And when you say variable speed, that's like how fast the car goes through the speed it up.

I mean we can make it.

Ours right now runs at about it runs at a speed that could handle 90 cars an hour.

So that runs a car through pretty quick, but we we will adjust it during the summer and the winter.

We even adjust our chemicals because in the winter time you get the mag chloride all over.

It's hard to get off.

So we'll adjust the speed, so we'll slow it down the winter time so there's more time in the tunnel so it gets cleaner.

It's kind of just stuff we do.

It's a pan of that, to be honest with you.

But inside the industry.

And this is a minor thing, but you know that roads in Boulder County don't use magnesium chloride, right?

What's that?

Uh they don't use magnesium chloride on the roads in Boulder County.

I did not know that.

Yeah.

Well, they do over where we are in Havana, and it's hard to get off.

It might be something to think about your formulation.

That's typically used in Boulder County.

I realize that we're at the edge here, but within the county, it is not used for clearance.

I will tell you, we're I'm the owner.

And so I'm I'm very conscious.

Wait, you're Ted.

I am Ted.

I didn't name this, my brother did.

Um we're very conscious of one, the quality of the car, just to be an honest with you, because if you're not washing good car, then what are you doing doing this stuff?

We're not cobblestone, we're not a big, we're we're locally owned.

And uh so we really watch how cars are clean.

I mean, I I know this sounds silly, but I'm I was always asking your butt dirty when you come out of a car wash because if you can't get it back in of a car clean, you're not doing a very good job.

So anyway, we will we really pay attention a lot.

I mean it will slow them down, we'll speed them up.

It depends on the time of year and what have you.

And in the dryer, so I mean, you know what?

We'll I've moved those hard drivers 20 times trying to get it.

The cars dry, so they dry right.

And we we like what we do now.

So like I say, we're not a we're not a big chain, we're we're locally owned.

So yeah.

I don't know if that answered your question or not.

Yeah, uh thank you.

Um can you I I'm sorry, I know you've gone through this several times already.

I'm not getting quite getting it.

The recycle the reclaim reclamation capacity that you're talking about that the city has, is that like water treatment facility capacity?

What is that?

No, it means like within our within our water portfolio, you know, all the water we have, natural CBT, other sources, a certain amount of that is restricted and technically we're not allowed to reuse it.

But we haven't we have our portfolio has more than enough, like what do you what it was the term you like uh there's a term for that, but basically there's no other restrictions on the water.

We can use it however we want.

And so that water, we have more than enough of that water in our portfolio to manage the handful of users we have to recycle water.

Uh-huh.

So if we had like all CBT, like some communities do, like we couldn't allow water recycling.

Yeah, yeah.

So the city doesn't have any additional requ yeah, responsibilities for this the recycling happens on site with his tanks and his spinning and all that.

He spins it, he drops out, then he filters it and reuses it.

Can I zoom in a little bit on the side?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Yeah, you see so if you look real closely, you'll see these dash boxes right here.

You see those?

They're kind of hard to see.

Right there.

Those are the tanks that are in the ground, they're big and they're deep.

And that's where the water goes in and settles settles out all the solids because there's a trench in this tunnel.

There's drain lines that go into those boxes, basically the concrete boxes, settles it all out, spins it out before it goes out, settles into that, and then we pull that water back off the top because it's got a lot of the solids out of it, and then we'll we'll put it back through our ooh, it does.

Sorry, it does.

I don't want you to know that.

It I'm an architect, I used untouched stuff.

I didn't know that was touched the way.

I don't know my own thing.

So and then it goes back into the tanks inside and it and it gets filtered out again, and then we reuse it.

So it really like almost never enters into the city wastewater because it's just like constantly getting refilled and used and refilled and used.

But anyway, I mean you could argue it's less taking some chemical.

It's probably cleaner than the water that runs off into the streams and stuff.

Uh but yeah.

Uh so the city has no, yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't, it's not a burden on the city in terms of sanitation, like cleaning it and treating it.

And it would be because of what we've heard that you're you're gonna be responsible for buying extra credits if you use more.

It's a hundred percent in your interest to make sure the system is running as efficiently as possible.

We had a comment come in that noted that without proper maintenance, you lose a lot of the efficiency of the recycling.

Absolutely.

We use Yes.

We we we try and maintain our facilities as best as possible because I mean I I can tell you right now, for instance, I know exactly how much chemical cost on every single car that goes for a car wash.

When we first started doing this, we were at like 95 cents a car.

We've we've squeezed this thing down, we're like at 46 cents a car.

So every penny counts when you're washing 250 cars, you gotta you gotta pay attention to water, chemicals, I mean power.

If we're not using power, we don't run.

You know, I mean, so we really pay.

And honestly, I mean a lot of places will stay open even in Kremlin weather, and I'm like, nope, we're closing up.

There's no sense in washing six cars today and have all this power and all that stuff running for no reason.

I'm not doing that, it just costs me money.

I don't want to do that.

So like I say, I'm not a I'm not a big chain, I'm just local.

Um I noticed another comment that requested that we we require water use reviews, and I just want to note I think we've established that that does happen as to our code.

Um is it every three years?

Is that what you said?

Is it rolling?

Is it rolling then?

That's how I have it.

Yeah, don't quote me on that, but that's how I understand it.

Yeah, rolling three-year use.

Yeah.

Um so I think you might have said this too, but it sounds like the original dedication that was required was for the entire subdivision that was approved.

And they're not using it all, we think yet.

You said I haven't gotten confirmation.

I've had a development agreement that says the owner shall comply with water dedication requirements, but it don't say anything other than that.

So uh, but they I mean, regardless whether they're dedicating their whole they're dedicating from nothing from scratch or where they or where they're dedicating based on a previous dedication, the end result is the same regardless of of which one.

And that is they need to pay for, they need to have they need to pay or bring in their own water to to fully service their needs.

Yeah.

And I understand that there's an option that somebody would decide later on about whether to accept fee and loo or not.

Is it ever the case that there simply aren't more shares to buy?

Like, is there a case that we should not allow for fee and loo?

Because if there are not if it if we find ourselves with cash and no share, we have now allowed a use with no water available.

I mean, what every time I've ever it's an open market, right?

So every time I've ever looked, there's always shares available.

I I mean I don't I don't know enough about I mean, you know, we have water attorneys on retainer because water laws so is so crazy.

In my mind, I could see some point in the future, it seems like we have to run into that uh situation, but I don't think that the we're we're anywhere near there now.

That's also why it's in an open market.

Like you you if it gets expensive enough, somebody's willing to sell it, you know.

Uh so I've never heard of that being an issue.

And I think it's also at the time of building permit.

So if we were to find that it's not available, we simply went to issue a building permit until we had it.

Uh we've we've accepted fee and loo at the end of like this process before, and then not have things get built, and then we run into problems, so that's why we're very strict about when we do it now.

Have you uh have you looked at the Northern Colorado water website?

You probably looked at it.

I'm sure you have.

I look at it occasionally just to kind of see what's there.

I looked probably two months ago, and I've gotten to know those people really well.

Not the owners, but the people that run it.

Anyway, there was they sent me there's a list up there, probably the Tyler Plot, 15 people that had CBD credits for sale.

Some people had like 20 credits, some had 30, some had two, some had five.

It was kind of all the board.

I was afraid to call them and find out what the price was, but I just I just know they're there.

Yeah.

I've looked a few times because this is all new to me, and there's always been stuff on it.

Some people trade them.

Some people buy loans a lot.

I mean, so this this is this is truly just a risk that you are you're gonna carry until the day you get your building permit.

You might get you might get an estimate at that time that tells you this is not a viable development for you.

Yes.

You are 100% correct.

Yeah.

That's an issue with this site that I did not know when I bought the land.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's yeah.

Yeah.

Chair, just one more uh comment regarding your question of you know, is there ever a situation where we shouldn't take cash and loo?

Um our code defaults to dedication, and cash and loo has is a granted exception.

Um for developments that are required to dedicate less than 10 acre feet, it's in the sole and absolute discretion of the public works director whether to allow cash and loo.

Um, this I think is well under 10 acre feet, um, but it still is in the sole and absolute discretion of the public works director, and if you have been paying attention to council meetings, they this is this is constant.

Um it's a constant topic right now, and and uh um anyway, I I he'll be absolutely acting in the I would like to say, and I work with him daily that he'll be acting in the best interest of our water utility at all times, but it's never the default to take cash and loo.

We default to dedication.

Um sometimes it does make sense to accept cash and loo in the public works director's discretion for a smaller dedication amount.

Um anything over 10 acre fee, just for commission's information, um, has to go to council, and our council has backed way off of allowing um cash and loo and removed the default, which was in place for several years uh back in 2021, where developers were able to decide that's off the table now.

And it it would there are standards that need to be met, and it remains in the sole and absolute discretion of our city council whether to ever take cash and low for anything that's 10 acres of um water required or more.

Um so I I just uh again, if if it helps to know what our code says, the default is we we require the water dedication.

Um but again for smaller I mean it's it's it's up to our public works director.

It's another good person to engage with if you have questions about how he makes that decision too.

I worked pretty closely with Melissa to kind of because I didn't know any of this.

This is all new to me, like we've got to find out here, but I worked pretty closely with Melissa to kind of navigate my way through that.

At the time, the city's cash and loo was I think 90,000 dollars acre foot, and I could find on market for like 65.

So I'm like, I'm buying my own premium.

Yeah, it's kind of it's kind of depends.

So it's not cheap.

I think there will be a time and we will know when that time is near when we can't buy water anymore.

It's definitely coming.

Not like in the next two years, but it's coming.

Well, if it doesn't start snowing more in the wintertime, that's for sure.

Yeah.

It's gone.

Any other questions from the commission?

Does the applicant have any closing comments for the commission?

No, I have comments about the previous presentation, but I'll talk to you after this.

Okay.

Seeing as there are there are no further questions for staff or the applicant and no further comments from the applicant, we'll now close the public hearing at 8 35 p.m.

and we'll move on to commission deliberation and the item for discussion is resolution number PC 2026 13 recommending approval of an application for a special use review and site plan and architectural review for lot 3C solo filing number one, replat C.

The Commission should focus our discussion on the evidence presented in the record during tonight's public hearing and the applicable review criteria for both applications.

We are required to make findings of regard make findings regarding whether the review criteria have been satisfied.

So the special use review for a car wash facility, the review criteria are in section 26154A of the code.

Site plan and architectural review, the review criteria are in section 2616 7.1 of the code.

And though the public hearing is closed, if the commission has specific questions for staff or the applicant regarding information already in the record, not to bring new evidence.

So we should probably begin by considering the special use review criteria.

So here, I think do we have the slide with those?

I think we did.

Section 2615 4A of the code sets out the criteria for review of a special use application.

The first criterion is number one, compliance of the application with the municipal code.

Anybody have thoughts on this?

Compliance with the municipal code.

Well, I believe the one issue that is not in compliance.

That has been mentioned, but not over any detail is the requiring a per 2615-4-B-2 requires 150 feet of separation, but apparently that there's 80 feet from the order kiosk.

And that we are uh something that's allowed as a commission allowed to waive, but that is one requirement that is not met.

Does anyone have concerns with the proposal to waive that?

I do.

Yes?

I just do.

I think it should be the 150.

I'm gonna disagree and think I think it's fine to wave it because it feels like it creates dead parking lot space that doesn't serve a function.

Like I understand where the potential conflict is that's in the municipal code in this circumstance with the landscape screening.

I mean, if you had close uh you know, order windows where two drive-throughs are shouting at each other and you know maybe like cross-contaminating each other's orders, sure, maybe that's a problem.

I don't think that a sort of kiosk window and the thing are creating this conflict.

And I think maximizing utility of a space in what is sort of a dead wasteland of highway adjacent property is not a bad thing, personally.

I think that's worth a waiver of my vote.

I agree that I'm comfortable with the waiver on that since it's not like these are accessing off the same road and their accesses are 150 apart.

It's being efficient with the lot, and there's from the from the landscape plan, there's that increased kind of landscape aesthetic being created.

So I see the reason for it.

And I I have the same concern that requiring that would just mean inefficient pavement for nothing.

So shall we discuss further or is we comfortable moving on?

Okay, keep moving then to criteria number two, uh the compatibility of the proposal with the character of the surrounding area.

I mean automotive use and an automotive area.

I think it's exactly compatible.

Yeah, we did there were a few public comments noting that this didn't feel like the most valuable use for the adjacent residentials.

But the immediate surrounding uses are very similar.

Potential for adverse environmental impacts.

I had some concerns and curiosities going into this, but I think we've I think with the really robust conversation on the dedication requirements that if the drought gets extreme enough, there are restrictions on car washes and just the conversation on how the process works for reviewing excessive water use that the city holds all rights to reassess.

I get that there is water use for this project.

Any new development is going to have water use, and there's a values component to it being used for a car wash versus housing, and I don't think that's an appropriate concern to have in this regard.

Um I think I had concerns coming into this, but I feel like I've been satiated from the discussion tonight.

You've been quenched.

I've been quenched.

I I was wondering though from the attorney, can you can you talk to us a little bit about this, like the values question that that was just being brought up in terms of you know which uses we may prefer for the city versus what is required in this kind of review?

I would be glad to.

So the these particular criteria do have some discretion built into them.

They're not totally black and white, you know, they're not a measurable standard except your 151, which it sounds like you guys will continue to discuss.

Um but there is some discretion here.

Um however, in your quasi-judicial role, um, you are required to remain objective and base your decision based on facts that you've heard in the record.

And so um while uh you know you as a human being and as a commissioner, you you retain your values up here.

Um you are required to review these applications, all of your applications in a quasi-judicial manner, um, like a judge who is charged with reviewing the facts on the record and applying the existing law.

So you are um bound by our current code and uh uh the facts you've heard this evening.

Um it's not that you leave your values at the door, but it is you are charged with a responsibility to hear the concerns from the public, to hear the information from the applicant, and then within the constraints of constitutional due process, which recognizes property rights and the right to um to develop in compliance with our code, which you are a very important part of that role is determining um does this satisfy our code criteria that that you stay within that role.

And again, you're not checking your values at the door.

Um and you are exercising your discretion.

So I don't know if I can if I can answer anything more specifically.

It's it's you should have a discussion and and you know it's not is it good or bad, it's is it satisfying the criteria?

Um I'm curious if I don't know if this can be answered, but you know, in a way, if we assume that there's a finite amount of water that will be available, um any choice we make to allow a use of it now is someone who doesn't get to use it later.

It's finite.

Is that something we have space to consider?

For example, if we assume we only have a certain amount of water to to distribute around and allocate.

Might we have preferences about what kinds of uses we would select to use that finite water?

As the planning commission, I would submit that you do not get to make that choice.

Um that is primarily going to be a legislative decision overall, and and it's a it's um to pick and choose.

It would be a picking and choosing winners and losers analysis versus applying the code criteria based under the code we have today.

So I I I would say that our planning commission in your very important role does not also um run the water utility, however.

Um, you know, and and Lafayette's unique in that we do have a municipal water utility.

Um but but your role is to uh is to make the land use decision.

I I do I do hear what you're asking.

I would just say that it that would be outside of the role of the planning commission to decide who is uh allowed to buy water and dedicate it to the city to develop versus who is not.

That that's beyond your your scope this evening.

That's very good question though.

And sorry, one more.

Um we saw a lot of public comments come in saying we already have three car washes in town.

We don't need another car wash in town.

That is also not within our we do not have a criteria that accounts for that kind of analysis.

Uh you do not um I'm gonna I'm gonna borrow a line from the SORSA General Counsel who provided a quasi-judicial training to counsel recently.

Um he said to counsel to our city council, he said you are charged in your quasi-judicial role with considering the application you received, not the one you wish you had received, right?

Um so those types of uh determinations are largely made by the individuals who choose to submit an application based on the fact that they um choose to develop in a certain way and they're making a business and a market-based decision and all of that.

Um so that is that is also outside of the planning commission's purview.

Now, would our code potentially address an issue like that, having two car washes right next to each other?

Um I don't know if our code would have something to say about that, but it certainly has car water you know, drive up facility limitations on how many can be within so far of each other.

Um but yeah, it's the market that kind of dictates what applications we receive.

And then it's up to you to review the applications we receive.

It's it's yeah.

And the PUD did it mention specifically that a car wash could be a use on this.

It did.

Yes.

Does that spark any new thoughts from anyone?

Thank you.

You are uh you know, you're you're keeping me on my toes this evening.

I appreciate it.

Said you were tired, so we couldn't let you get up.

It's all good.

I was just gonna go back to the I had notes about my concerns about the noise and the light and all of the things, but having these conversations and even the water and everything, I've I also feel uh better about the thoughtfulness that has been approached about trying to limit impact from noise, business hours, headlight glare, all of those things I feel like has been addressed as far as environmental impacts go for I mean I realize residential is far away, but it's not not there.

So I do think that there have been as much as environmental impacts exist have been mitigated to a good extent.

Any other comments going back to it?

Environmental impacts um okay uh compatibility with the comprehensive plan.

No, I actually I think we want to go with uh staff's earlier comment on this one, which is not every building on every pot and every parcel in every part of the city can be uh somehow in furtherance of this new comprehensive plan to say that we like this should be some kind of walkable 15-minute neighborhood serving thing on this 1.4 acre thing.

It just we we gotta be somewhat practical about things.

Like I think it infills an existing site with similar uses.

It promotes some economic vitality, it brings people to the area, provides some jobs.

Like there are some elements of the comprehensive plan.

I feel like we're very focused on the sort of community serving aspects in terms of like people's livability, but not so much the economic vitality and some of the other things in the comprehensive plan that are less attractive to people.

Um but it feels to me like this serves some of those less glamorous functions in terms of infilling and promoting some little bit of tax revenue, a little bit of economic vitality and all those things.

It's plug in a hole, which is great.

Any additional thoughts?

Um then specific impacts.

We've got examples of traffic, parking, screening, noise, light dust, infrastructure capacity, ability to serve hours of operation.

We talked about that for that.

Yes.

So that's the language is not exact, but it refers to 26-15-4 perens five, taking into consideration any proposed mitigation measures.

Special use shall not create significant adverse impacts on government services and existing developments, et cetera.

Um I am still not comfortable with the water situation as far as creating a significant adverse impact.

Uh can you would you mind talking about what the I mean I've heard a lot of numbers thrown around tonight and a lot of things, and it just none of it has led me to believe that there is any kind of from idea as to what the utilization is going to be and or um what's that gonna require as far as um mitigation.

So I'm not satisfied.

Any response to my thoughts?

My understanding based off of all the conversations is some of that analysis is going to be finalized.

There may be part of the conditions of the staff comments is going to be finalizing what these numbers are.

Um significant impact to the infrastructure capacity.

It's not that this is going to overload the system.

I'm not concerned from a capacity or infrastructure standpoint, and I trust the staff to determine how many shares are required to meet the dedication requirements and to do the necessary review every few years to make sure they're not excessively overusing their water allowance.

Yeah, I um it seems like it seems like there's a plan to to me to adequately adequately address the water need or how they're going to approach that.

And I agree, it sounds like there's not a tax on the system itself.

Um though it does have an impact on water, I don't know that it's an adverse impact on the city.

I had a concern with the southern aspect of the photometric sheet, but I appreciated the explanation from staff that it's it's on the drive-through component of the Carl's Jr.

to the south.

So I I no longer concerned about the heightened light levels on that part of the property.

Any other thoughts on this one worth discussing?

Do we there was the comma from staff around whatever that crosswalk is going to be from the 287 trail to the property?

It sounds like it's not just going to be striping, but it might be a material component or race in some way.

I don't know if we want to make sure we can I don't want to condition it, but I want to encourage why not condition it.

I don't know if it's I mean if it's already covered in the staff comments that are embedded within, then I guess it's a cover.

I wish I would have asked staff earlier.

You can ask a clarifying.

We don't have to reopen this as related to a specific thing.

Staff, could you please clarify the comment made earlier as to the heightened crosswalk expectation or expectations for the crosswalk?

Yes, definitely.

Uh let me I'm just gonna read what the key says real quick.

Oh, is it in the sheets?

Yeah, it just says it just says colored crosswalk staff asked for additional information and stated that simple striping wouldn't suffice.

So if you'd like to add something uh to that, I I wouldn't you know be opposed to that.

I would just like to keep it broad enough sometime.

I I mean, even though I I agree that just white striping doesn't always work.

I I do think sometimes an applied an applied uh layer is better than like integral coloring because that kind of fades over time and it's it I don't think it's it's it's and you can't reapply it at a later date when it starts to blend.

So I wouldn't want to limit it too much.

Yeah uh but I think something other than simple crosswalk striping, uh something that uh is more uh uh contrasting that it stands out more visually.

So I I don't know how you'd like to do that.

But that that was staff's expectation.

Just a full hawk.

Right on that.

Yeah, and you know, we don't probably don't want to do raised uh that's a kind of a big ass.

But uh yeah, I mean the detail seems to imply that it's more than a crosswalk, and that's what staff's expectation is, and and we asked for more information on that.

Okay, that's kind of where we left off.

Jake says from the applicant.

Yeah, I thought that's I think yes.

Okay.

Yes, just not yes.

Just about it.

Um if you like there's that um basically it comes in tiles and it's got little dots on it's kind of raised, it's yellow.

Yeah, it's it's it's almost like a small lego, like the top of the Lego.

That's like the the ADA type of crossword.

You can put that across there.

That way it's textured and it's and it's not gonna go away.

We can look into that.

I want to make sure that that doesn't have some sort of implication for ADA, like it doesn't tell a blind person that they're free to walk that across that without without knowing that there's not traffic.

So it might not be an appropriate use given ADA standards.

I I agree with you.

There's there's something maybe more present or uh tangible.

Tangible there.

I think it's not a bad word.

Something with more visual differentiation.

And I think that's what we can maybe entertain a vague condition.

We'll try to be specific as we can.

I I think I've seen very few people walking up and down that, but you know, you get one, you want to want to make sure they're they're safe.

So I biked to the blue there once and they were shocked.

I'm sure.

Anyway.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, you but um so possible condition.

And we also had also a request for a condition for to just note that eight-foot wall around the enclosure.

That was for the trash enclosure.

Okay.

Other anything else on specific inputs?

Okay, and the car wash specific review criteria.

That's the same.

We talked about the hundred and fifty foot.

Yeah.

So I guess that's the only relevant one we've talked about already.

So we've talked through all of the conditions.

Before we move on to this spar, just wanted to check if there's anything we need to discuss further, or do folks feel like they've fully evaluated this.

Are we going to be approving this URN SPAR in one motion or two?

I think we have one motion drafted.

One resolution.

A potential approach commission is to is for our chair to uh take like a straw poll or or see if you you have uh informal decision on one and then the other before you make a motion on the resolution.

That'd be one way to approach this.

Uh do we want to do that now or do we want to proceed to the SPAR application and then come back?

Do you want to?

I think I'd probably have discussion after the spar.

Okay.

So let's talk about the SPAR.

Great.

Um we can pull up this slide for this application.

So also check checking through these criteria.

Uh the first one being architecture.

Any comments from the commission on the architectural elements of the application?

Scale, proportion, character, compatibility, visual interest, durability.

The only thing I noted as just a clarification.

There seems to be sort of a prospective rendering on one of the sheets that's maybe from the pr the other existing building.

And I think just making sure that that's not in somehow confusing the approval of what we're approving.

Okay.

I'm seeing a nod from staff that that's not gonna complicate anything.

I I don't I don't I don't think it's just cleaning up the Yeah, we can make a save.

Uh if it doesn't already, we can open say illustrate a buster development or something.

Uh but yes, I I the darker perspective image.

Is that a nighttime library?

Yeah.

Any other comments?

Okay.

Um just real quick, there's a note that says this image represents material palette and finish level, so I think we're good there.

I I wasn't really worried about it when I saw it.

So you mind flipping back once.

Thank you.

Umscaping comments about the function and use of open areas, buffering enhancement.

We had a little discussion already.

Any additional discussion?

Junipers or otherwise.

I think it's a generous use of landscaping, and I just since we're now in this discussion phase, I would love to revisit the junipers and I will defend my stance to anybody who wants to question it at the city.

It's on the record.

Yes.

I don't expect you to defend it.

I'm happy to defend it.

To the general public, and I have your part.

Sure.

I do it, I I do it a lot, so it's fine.

Uh any other comments on landscaping?

None.

I thought it was state regulation.

No.

Not yet.

Lewisville's done it while we're just thinking about it.

No, but I mean the state didn't come out as part of its wild wild fire monastery plans.

They're native.

We cannot go cut down our entire juniper pinion woodland because everybody's scared of junipers.

They cut them down.

I'm just saying.

This doesn't fall within the map area, so it wouldn't be subject to the movie plan.

Thank you.

Okay.

Let's continue.

Circulation, thank you.

Any concerns with the circulation plan?

Only only concern I have is just the clunky crossing of the exit and the entrance at the top, but this has all been covered through the transportation study and through engineers, so I I'm sure that it's all being assessed and as appropriate.

Well we I mean point is our our job here, as I understand it is not to just blindly accept what staff says.

Staff says something and then we ask questions and determine whether it's accurate.

So necessarily have to accept the fact that staff says that, I mean, it's fine.

Maybe right, may not be which was your which what's the one?

Just the way that the the exit out of the top is kind of intrinsically conflicting with the entrance at the top.

Like it's just the clockwise kind of circulation through the property.

But I believe that is due to I just want to make sure the stream right here.

Yeah, this kind of place.

There's the Zickies.

Well, not even that it's this future curb cut.

And I think it's where it sits on the curve for pro for visibility and just from a uh site site triangle, site visibility angle, that's what was decided.

That's what was decided.

So which makes sense.

And and now having had the discussion about that the line tends to stack up behind the point of sale kiosk, to me it makes more sense that it's located where it is because you're allowing the queue to build up on the site and not create a traffic situation on the private drive, as opposed to if we were trying to really stand by this 150 feet separation.

Yeah, you could put the kiosks farther back, but then you're creating a traffic situation.

So I understand that to me this makes sense for allowing the queuing to happen where it's naturally bottlenecking and then moving cars through as quickly as possible.

So just want to re-emphasize that the circulation to me reiter uh reinforces my um sort of feeling about the waiver for the 150 feet separation.

The site's kind of oh, sorry, you don't have to.

Sorry, we haven't talked a ton about you know additional vehicle trips that would be created by this use.

I must that must have been in there.

Yeah, it was referred to C dot.

Our traffic engineer reviewed it.

Um it was no really concern with this one.

The the worry is there could be pretty significant intersection improvements at exemplar and 287 with the next user that comes in.

And uh there hasn't really some money allocated to some improvement, but it's it could be problematic.

But that's in the future.

They haven't hit that threshold from CDOT yet, but it could uh at a future that was the biggest issue that came up during the review, and and it was deemed that this one did not trigger that.

So this feels like an N-Route use to me, you know, like you're going home, you stop at the car wash.

Like nobody's heard of like getting up in the morning, getting in their car, going to the car wash, going home.

Maybe they are.

Maybe they are we don't wash our cars, we don't know.

It's true.

There's retired people.

That's how we get out of the house.

Yeah, you go take your car for a wash on the Sunday morning.

That's right.

Is there is it built into PIAs for these developments of some sort of proportionate cost sharing for that intersection?

Or where does the where does the expectations for that intersection come from?

Uh from a financial standpoint.

There is some money for go back again.

I don't know the full story either, so like you know, take it.

There was some there was some money for like a signal somewhere, I believe, at this location when it was warranted.

Oh boy.

And then for these ones, it's it's actually I probably overstated it.

There's already the right way for a double left turn lane, but it would be relocating the pole that sits in that fork chop, the signal alarm.

Uh and potentially, and there's already two lanes here.

The question becomes, does it need a receiving lane for the right turn only?

So does it need a third lane?

And uh redo that so and that could be triggered, and and that that hasn't historically been uh proportionately first of all, it's always hard to figure out those proportions.

It hasn't been done, so we had that conversation about is it appropriate now?

And and and we didn't think from an equity standpoint, starting now, especially with such a small traffic generator compared to the overall development and how little that would be contributing to the overall cost.

So we we we did not pursue that.

And it's great.

Thank you for the explanation.

Um we've lost our plate.

Sorry.

Uh that was helpful, thank you.

Sorry, I need my criteria up again.

No, no problem, I was gonna go back.

No people wanted to stay there.

I feel bad like flipping through Rolly so fast.

Oh, we're gonna go down a couple more.

Um great um pedestrian and vehicle.

We talked about the crosswalk.

There's a bike, which isn't pedestrian, but there's the bike thing that you were excited about.

Yeah, a little bike parking.

I do appreciate the applicant connecting this to the broader trail on 287.

So any other notes?

Comments?

Great.

I don't think they would fit in that car wash, so it's I don't think they could make that radius.

So screening.

Um we talked about the eight-foot wall.

Um any other comments on the screening or concerns.

None.

Okay.

We talked about the lighting in the south portion there.

Any other comments on the lighting?

Concerns.

All right.

Well, we've now discussed all of the criteria, so I think it's a decent chance to pause and have the discussion about the holistic circle of the.

One for the SUR and one for the SPAR.

Straw in a strong capacity or you would like two resolutions.

Yes, I would like to.

Two resolutions.

Can we formally separate into two if it was noticed as one resolution?

Yeah, that's a lot of pieces that needs a I I would start by discussing the first application since you're not ready to decide both discuss the first application, see if you've reached a decision on it before you make a formal motion.

But you can do that as a commission.

If we need to separate them, we can.

I would say that you're set.

But I have no issues with the SPAR.

So that's why I would wish to have two separate votes.

And for the record, um attorney I'm charged with asking you to give specific uh criteria that you feel have not been satisfied in fact.

I already did that.

150 feet and the adverse effects on the city.

Government services.

Yeah.

What was the first one, Commissioner Phillips?

Again, sorry, I'm sorry.

The reduction from the 150 feet has required to 80 feet, Jacob?

Which is already probably better.

Does anyone else to find a service in the SUR?

Any other comments from a straw poll perspective?

I'm comfortable approving both with us tacking on some of those conditions as discussed.

I feel the same way.

Okay, and I also think we are really limited in what we are allowed to review in this application.

And I recognize all the comments that came in with concerns about water from the public that many of us share, and I think others in the city share.

But it feels like within the scope of what we are reviewing tonight, they have satisfied the requirements to me.

So I would plan to approve as well.

So uh it sounds like we've done our straw poll.

Would you we have a request to separate the resolutions?

Um I could prepare separate resolutions if we need to.

Um Commissioner Phillips, you you could vote if there is a motion along the lines of the recommended motion, you could vote no, because it does include both applications.

You do you are able to do that.

Um it's important that that to note that these types of applications do usually run concurrently and are usually decided together because without the special use review, the spar can't be approved.

So if if that's not approved, the special um if the special use review is not approved, the spar would not be approved.

Um also the spar is integral to some of your uh criteria for the special use review consideration.

So in my opinion, it's not necessary to uh split the resolution into two separate resolutions, but but it's up to the commission.

I I don't make that decision.

So um if you would like assistance from the city attorney's office to find a way to make two separate decisions, we can do that.

We could also just dispense with the resolution and you could make two separate motions on the applications and just make a motion to approve for example.

I think I made my reasoning clear if the rest of the commission feels that that's not necessary, then I'm fine with the old days we didn't used to do it that way.

I also put a different uh motion language up just so the commission knows it that allows for additional uh conditions.

Thanks.

Yeah, we do have two conditions I think we want to write up.

Um now's the fun for me.

We get to draft up some conditions.

Um the one condition was regarding high contrast or visually differentiated crosswalk.

I'm not sure how we say that.

Um do you want us to take a stab or um no?

I I can work with that so to provide high contrast or visually differentiated crosswalk.

Um I may seek assistance from staff to identify a specific location for that to give me words to identify the location.

Locate uh located at the entrance of the car wash tunnel.

Yeah, as depicted on the plan.

But still compliant with the, I think it's the M U T C or the It's the model uniform traffic control devices manual.

So we would still have to legally comply with that.

But I I can so it would be an M U T C D compliant high contrast slash visually differentiated crosswalk.

Um above and beyond uh standard painted crosswalk.

Painted, thank you, painted crosswalk striping.

At the location depended on the panels.

Crosswalk striping.

Um at the you said it was at the car wash entrance.

Yeah.

At the entrance to the car wash tunnel.

Okay.

So the condition I've drafted on this first one is um the applicant shall provide high contrast or visually or otherwise visually differentiated crosswalk above and beyond standard.

Um sorry, I have to add a couple words.

Hang on, say applicant.

M U T C D compliant.

I am very sorry.

Okay.

All right.

The applicant shall provide M U T C D compliant, high contrast or visually differentiated crosswalk above and beyond standard painted crosswalk striping at the entrance to the car wash tunnel.

I'm gonna suggest, sorry, a change to that now that I've typed it.

Let's say traffic engineer approved.

Sure.

Um because our traffic engineers follow that and it gives them some sort of credence.

Yes, because they may um have additional thoughts based on the conditions right at that site.

Um approved by the city traffic engineer.

Um I took out the M U T C D compliant piece, because that will be in their considerations.

Okay.

Applicant shall provide high contrast or visually differentiated crosswalk above and beyond standard painted crosswalk striping at the entrance to the car wash tunnel to be approved by the city traffic engineer.

Okay, and we have to draft a second condition regarding the wall around the enclosure, the wall that is the enclosure for the trash, which we wish to see be eight feet tall.

We wanted to say shall be a minimum of eight feet.

What was the PC you just said?

The wait, who said to say eight feet or something.

Minimum that's what I was listening to.

Flexibility.

Better not get a 60-foot closer wall.

But not to exceed.

It's gonna be a tower.

Well, then we want buffer for the residential across the street.

Um Jake, do we what is the term if you can pull it out of the SPAR criteria that we use to describe a trash enclosure or waste enclosure area?

So I can use the code term from the code.

Um I agree.

So screening walls are enclosures.

Screening, thank you.

Crash enclosure.

Refuse it's it's can it's R.

Well, talk about used waste and recycling collection areas.

The wall around that's weightened.

A minimum of eight feet tall.

Is that right?

Shall be that was the number suggested by the applicant, I believe.

See the so the way I have it typed right now is the wall surrounding the waste collection area.

I'll use all three terms at a moment, but the waste collection area shall be a minimum of eight feet tall.

And to be clear, that that was because that's where the vacuum units are expected to be located.

So this is a sound, this is a noise.

Um I'm going to say the wall surrounding the waste collection area and vacuum.

Motors.

Producers.

Producers.

Um vacuum producers?

Great.

Thank you, sir.

Okay, the wall surrounding the waste collection area and vacuum producer shall be a minimum of eight feet tall.

Sounds good.

Sorry.

Oh, I think it's okay.

All I know is it sucks.

Um is there any further discussion?

Are we ready to make a motion?

She was getting some line.

Not me.

Last chance endance discussion, additional conditions.

I guess I have a question for staff based on this a little bit.

Are you staff, are you comfortable that the office proposal that's gonna go away?

We also heard from the applicant that that was a mistake, but I'm just clarifying.

Yeah, you know, I there's no I think the the shadow roof and stuff created by the uh office as architectural interest, so I've encouraged them to not deviate from that too much.

Uh so that the form stays relatively the same, but there's no there's no requirement that's optional.

Like uh we can't we can't you know require that.

So if if it were to differentiate itself drastically, we might be coming back for another spa review, but so I'll encourage him not to do that.

Yeah, cool.

Would we have to that's just it would just be for the architectural if the if the change change was deemed to be substantial enough to like change the you know, truly change the form of the building or or the director could say, you know what, I don't feel comfortable, that needs to go back to planning commissioner for an architectural review.

He would still have the rights to the special use review.

Yeah, okay.

So cool.

I'm comfortable with that.

Thank you.

I have no further good comments.

All right, does anybody want to make a motion?

I would like to make a motion.

Um I say the move and then we first and second, right?

Or do I do we do we first and second and then I'm forgetting in this moment?

I think you you move.

You are the first.

Um but the conditions are on that computer.

Yeah.

I'd like to make a motion to approve resolution PC-2026-P13 recommending that the city council approve with multiple conditions the application for a special use review and site plan and architectural review for lot 3C sola filing number one re-plot C with the following additional conditions.

Applicants shall provide high contrast and visually differentiated crosswalks above and beyond standard painted crosswalks striping at the entrance to the car wash tunnel to be approved by the city traffic engineer.

And separate condition, the wall surrounding the waste collection area and vacuum producers shall be a minimum of eight feet tall.

Second.

We have a motion and a second.

Are there any discussion?

Those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Those opposed, say no.

No.

The motion carries.

Do I no?

Moving on to other stuff.

Yeah, for keeping the kids so late.

Nice meeting you all.

Thank you.

Thank you guys.

Um I think now staff and commission comments, yes?

All right.

Right?

Oh.

Okay.

Um they recognize Matt Espinosa for 25 years of service.

I guess he's retiring in the city.

Um we didn't used to have separate open space groups, so he kind of came up through you know, parks and work and all that, and then eventually wound up in open space when they uh created a separate department for that.

Um there was a uh review of 2025 review and uh 2026 staff work plan.

Of course, all that's based to some extent on the wildlife plan.

And then they had some interesting statistics there that 11 acres of restoration.

So we think about that.

That's actually restoring total of 11 acres of open space, which is a lot of that's a lot of planting.

Um to the tune of 2,218 plants and 378 trees.

4.6 acres of weed and thatch removal, 25 pollinator patches.

So that's pretty nice.

Getting into bees here.

Um the uh signed up 46 new volunteers.

So these are people who they'll be going to be used to um, you know, they talked about having people out on the trails kind of hang out in the trails, so you know, in those uh juveniles on their uh electric bicycles going 50 miles an hour, there's somebody there to maybe wave them down.

Yeah, we'll come back to the exactly.

No, it just would be their people of questions, you know, come up and say because uh you know they might want to know something about some tree or whatever.

What else here?

Oh, yeah, so um all the trail maps are bilingual now.

That's cool.

That's a big thing.

Um and then the update of the open space ranking.

It was finally completed.

So we now have a new a new ranking because basically what they did was they went through and you know, and they have like 30 uh somewhere neighborhood, 30 criteria, and for each property.

They have to say how does it rank for that criteria and that matrix then ultimately in assigned points.

So one, two, and three.

You know, three three obviously if it's high, two medium, and one if it's low.

And then you know that adds up on the spreadsheet, and then that helps to re-rank the properties in a new order.

I don't think there's any huge surprises there, but um they will have that available, I guess, on the website in a couple months.

That's not up at this point in time.

Um the other thing is um Boulder County Open Space, they had a a neat program at the library last night on Bobcats in your backyard.

And I learned a few things about Bobcats that I I did not know.

So that was very nice.

There's a lot of these kind of things that are done.

I just don't know if they get as much you know, uh communicated as widely as they could be for some reason.

I mean, I get some stuff because I've got on some mailing lists, but I don't tend to see a lot of that stuff in regular publications.

So I mean when it comes to Boulder County, it's not something we can do something about.

But I know we're working in OpenSpace Group is working hard on always looking for new ways to communicate programs and and make sure that the word gets out.

So that's it for me.

Thanks.

Forgive me if I have talked about it in this forum.

It is late, and I have talked about this enough places, so I don't know.

Uh I went to an aviation conference last month.

Did I talk about the advanced air mobility thing?

Yes.

Okay.

So there just like needs to be on the city's radar, and everybody should learn about it.

And we should make a plan before a plan is made for us.

And I'm not uh I couldn't possibly be more urgent about it because it's coming and we don't want to be caught off guard because it will be too late when everybody starts paying attention.

So that's up.

It's coming our way, so we want to have control over whether or not we have drones flying.

50 feet over everybody's houses with people in them.

Um it can be anywhere.

You can set a drone vertiport anywhere on your private property and fly manned vehicles from it.

And that's a private property, right?

That's and in what plan would this be regulated, would you say it's gonna have to be like a zoning thing or a citywide, like we're gonna have a moratorium on allowing verte ports until we've had a chance to understand what it means for the city, something like this?

I realize this is all insane.

Um I'm happy to talk to somebody about it more, but just I'm putting it on everybody's radar, and you all think I'm crazy, but I promise you it's coming faster.

The FA approved a plan last month, and there's eight states and like twenty-three sites that this is happening right now.

It's coming.

It's already happening.

Do moratoria come before the planning commission first, or do they start with the city council?

Not necessarily council could though, referral would refer it to you.

But they it would start with the council.

Um it would be with the council because it would need to be by ordinance.

Um but if it involved our land use code, it would definitely come before you.

Um otherwise they can't.

This is more just putting it on staff.

This would be the code update, which comes after the land use.

If it's gonna affect the code update, then it would still be reviewed.

So anything that's a text amendment to the language code would come before playing commission.

Well, I'm wondering how to initiate the conversation.

Like would this be a request to council to consider this, or would this be quest to staff?

We can make a motion as a group to recommend to council that they look into creating a moratorium on this until it has been resolved in our code.

That's something we can do.

I would recommend if if that's something that the commission wants to do that perhaps you make that an agenda item for your first meeting.

I think that's a great idea.

Yeah.

Um so in that case.

I can do that.

I yes.

That's not advice group.

Do I do I who do I ask for that?

Um you would talk to an acre or the mean looking.

We would like that on our agenda next time.

Give us uh give us some detail in writing and stuff.

So I will give you a framework without just this big rant at 9 30 on my second night in a row here.

Yes.

That's it for me.

Thank you.

I know the conversation of water is a fun one.

Uh in a different capacity, I did a tour of Northern Water and their Chimney Hollow facility and some other projects last year.

And there was a very interesting statistic shared on what the potential hypothetical maximum development could be in this area.

The front range could if all of the water for all of the different reservoirs got converted from agricultural and other uses into residential commercial urban development.

Their number last year was that theoretically we could support 35 million people.

So no food.

Yeah, you would have no open space, no food.

At this at this design capacity, that would just be endless to Fort Morgan.

But you know, uh the conversation of water is so sensitive, and obviously the drought makes it heightened.

I was gonna say last year we had the snow.

Yeah.

I wonder how I wonder how how fluid that is with the change.

Yeah.

Well, and it's you know, like Colorado Springs, I think their reservoirs have a two or three year capacity.

But I just I I think about what what what could be what's in the market right now and that it's a free market, so the share price will just incrementally go up.

Um I was just curious if that now is taking the water that's currently being used for ag purposes and repurposing it for residence.

Yeah, it was it's basically if everything got converted and bought and turned into development.

Yeah.

Um there'd be no bag.

But it was uh it was like a water capacity study more than it was a densification land.

Yeah, was it it wasn't looking at quality of life or reasonability or feasibility, it just was a number game.

Um I don't have anything else official to say.

Thanks.

Okay.

Any comments?

Frank doesn't trust that number.

If we have three years like this in a row, I won't either.

So we will plan on having a meeting.

Is it the 11th or 13th?

I should have looked at that.

I think it's but uh we have uh we hope to have the we hope to have a meeting.

We think we're pretty confident, and we hope to have the will it be sketch plan for the uh PUD amendment.

So that will be the the 13th, I think.

And the 27th.

And I keep on calling it March, but I know it's May.

Head to scrambled right now.

If not because I was here until one o'clock last night.

Um so that's really the only, you know, the I was surprised I was out of town for uh almost two weeks and came back and like the Dutch brothers, it was like almost I was blown away by how much they built on that in a short amount of time.

Um I think somebody already said like Sundar got an extension recently, so we're aware of that.

I did receive you remember the this was a while back, the Kensington, the BBSD estimated child child count.

I did get a response from them for that, and I and I meant to bring it to you at a previous meeting.

It was I probably predated you, right?

Were you here for you know you were here for Kensington?

That was your first literally everybody in town remembers.

Yeah.

So if you want, we can discuss that, or I can kind of forward out that text from that email.

It's a fairly long, like four paragraph email, so we can skip it tonight if we want to, or if you really want to get it.

I was thinking I was the one making a fuss.

So nobody else wants to listen to the case.

Was this in regards to the anticipated number of children?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, there's some surprising stuff in here.

Like they say they get they and this is these are studies.

They get they assume 0.05 students per apartment.

But this is based on he was even saying this isn't uh this isn't sampling or statistical residual.

Wizardry, it's straight up count of students per every unit type based on housing type.

They keep a seven-year average.

And then he even said, uh, and then they break it up by areas we would be in the East BBSD yields.

Uh and then he says that he even said it.

All that being said, that housing has been crazy the last few years.

We're not even seeing the yields from the last study as of late, so they're even seeing less than that.

So this is an email from BVS.

This is from Glenn Segou, who's been apparently the planner there, like from people I talked to in Boulder County, they've been receiving referrals from him for you know 15 years or whatever now.

Uh forever.

Uh he's like the Donna George of uh Excel.

If if you've had a do you get referrals from her?

Yeah.

So it's the same sort of same sort of thing.

Uh so I can forward that on, yeah.

I don't think there's any issue with that.

But this area is the only one of the only areas that's actually growing in student count, right?

For the whole Boulder County.

He just links it in as the East BBSD area.

And you know, he does go on to say uh our pre uh apart from low yields attached.

Our observations over the years are that apartments, particularly new apartments, yield very few students.

It's not a common for huge complexes of four to five hundred units that generate under 10 elementary students.

Our impression has been the apartments appeal to young professionals and also to uh like empty nesters, but little in between.

And he says uh other districts have this have some similar stuff.

But he goes on to talk about you know a lot.

You know, he talks about he does acknowledge affordable stuff, they see more.

He talks about higher density, they see less, lower density, multifamily, they see more, and then single family detach is like by far and away the highest generator.

And that they put out like 0.25 per unit.

Um, he goes into more detail and just hitting the high level parts of it.

But like I think for single family detached, it's a quarter of a student.

Yeah.

But one of the biggest demographic trends, if you read is single occupancy houses.

Like that's one of the biggest demographic trends over like the last 10 or 15.

You guys tell my neighbor that he's like, no way.

And then we literally counted our street, like we have 28 homes.

And it was something like 30% of them are it's gone from like under 20% to like up near 30% or something.

I don't quote me on this, but it's it's changed a lot.

And we counted just my street, and he was like, oh my gosh, you're right.

Like we have, you know, I mean, people are getting married less often, they're just getting divorced earlier, they're having kids later or never.

I mean, all of that kind of leads to to these numbers we're seeing.

But uh, I can forward that and then we can say that.

Well, they just think there's also you know, losing a thousand students a year on average couple years, really school district.

Did Boulder just like a month ago announced consolidation?

Yeah, no, I think that's a good thing.

Like Jefferson County where I live and work for 10 years previously.

That's the public meetings.

Yeah, that was one of the most contentious meetings I was at in Arvada was a school closure, and they and it was, but there was the disposition of it and and those and like it was pitchforks, and it was like all directed at me.

I'm like, I'm just the city representative here to discuss zoning and what can be done.

It's not my facility or our facility, and yeah.

It was fun.

All right, I don't have anything else.

Okay.

Last call.

Anyone want to move to a journal?

Move to journal.

Also, I remember that.

I know that cards are not going to be a lot of money.