Zoning & Planning Committee
DATE: Saturday August 30, 2013
LOCATION: 1201 Williams St. – 19th Floor Party Room
TIME: 930am to noon
AGENDA:
- Discussion with City Forester Rob Davis about tree issues.
- Continued discussion about upcoming ordinance to regulate retail marijuana establishments. How can neighborhoods be protected from harm? City Council will be voting on this in several weeks.
- Discussion of redevelopment process/plans for former St. Anthony’s Hospital.
- Discussion with Tim Watkins of CPD about South Platte River Corridor Study.
- Discussion of zoning code text amendment to re-instate “protected zones.”
- Any other business.
INC ZONING AND PLANNING COMMITTEE MINUTES – July 27, 2013
By Michael Henry, Committee Chair
The committee celebrated the 95th birthday of very longtime Park Hill activist Marge Gilbert, a regular attendee of ZAP committee meetings.
City Councilman Paul Lopez from District 3 in southwest Denver (Westwood, Barnum) discussed with the committee ideas for neighborhood protection that he hopes can be included in the ordinance that will establish a regulatory system for facilities for retail marijuana, pursuant to Constitutional Amendment 64, passed by Colorado voters last November. He said that the city needs better tools to regulate this new industry. A special City Council committee is currently developing an ordinance and all neighborhood groups should pay attention and communicate with City Council. His ideas included:
- A 2500 foot straight-line distance between any retail or medical marijuana centers
- A needs and desire hearing should be held for each new retail medical marijuana center
- More inclusive designated neighborhood to allow more residents to testify at hearings or sign petitions
Some committee members encouraged him to consider adding parks to the spacing limits and not to allow too large of a designated neighborhood. The committee informed him that several years ago INC successfully advocated for the designated neighborhood in liquor license hearings to be reduced from a 12-block radius to a 5-block radius, so that only neighbors who would be meaningfully impacted by a new license would be allowed to participate. Councilman Lopez encouraged anyone with ideas to contact him at paul.lopez@denvergov.org.
Several committee members reported on activities planned in their neighborhoods for Denver Days.
Denver Planning Director discussed the following with the committee:
- A new Director of Development Services, Steve Ferris, has been hired and will begin work on August 7, to replace Kelly Leid, who is now the Director of the North Denver Cornerstone Collaborative.
- Someone will be hired to replace Mike Sizemore, the director of Neighborhood Inspection Services (NIS), who left city government a few months ago. Our committee will meet with that person after the hiring.
- NIS conducts approximately 100,000 inspections per year, of which approximately 15,000 are based on first-time citizen complaints. The rest are re-inspections and proactive inspections.
- There are approximately 144 buildings in the city designated as vacant and derelict and about 42 of those have remedial plans in progress. City Council and Community Planning and Development Department (CPD) will be working to improve the ordinance regulating such buildings.
- CPD is committed to accuracy and quality in their permitting activities, in addition to speed. Some committee members encouraged him not to focus primarily on speed. He stressed his belief that CPD is not the Department of No, but it is also not the Department of Anything Goes.
- The best development is where developers and neighborhoods work together.
Committee members received the latest draft of a Planning and Zoning Platform for Inter-Neighborhood Cooperation. The subcommittee working on the platform will meet next on Wednesday August 21 at 6:30pm at 1201 Williams Street in the 19th-floor party room.
