Boulder staff working to simplify next phase of community benefit project

Jun. 20—Boulder planning staff are working to simplify phase two of the community benefit project, which looks to provide affordable commercial space for nonprofit organizations, small businesses, arts and culture, or human services.

Although the Boulder City Council greenlighted the project several months ago, it decided in its Tuesday meeting that the ordinance presented by staff wasn't as straightforward as the Council hoped.

Planning and Development Services Director Jacob Lindsey said it's clear the Council wants to benefit nonprofits and the arts with a community benefit package that's effective.

"We're committed to making that happen," he said. "We hear clearly from the Planning Board and Council that the ordinance as proposed is more complex than they would like to see."

The reworked second phase will come before the Council for first reading July 13 after its summer recess.

Staff intends to create a fee-based system or a simplified ordinance, though Senior Planner Karl Guiler noted that the Council expressed support for an in-lieu fee or a fee that would be collected and used for an affordable commercial fund with money going to help existing or new businesses that are struggling to afford rent.

That was a point of contention among members of Boulder's Planning Board in terms of whether there should be a one-time in-lieu fee contribution to an affordable commercial fund or fees that should be collected in perpetuity and put into an evergreen fund, according to the staff memo from Tuesday's City Council meeting.

While the majority of the Council supported instating some sort of fee, not everyone was convinced.

"It feels almost like buying height," Mayor Pro Tem Junie Joseph said. "And I'm not sure if that's the right way to go."

Of the nine members of City Council, Councilmember Mark Wallach has been perhaps the largest skeptic of the project. In Tuesday's meeting, he said he felt it was "badly undercooked."

"I just don't think we know enough about what its impacts are going to be. I don't think we know enough about how it's going to be working in practicality," he said. "I don't know if the kinds of economics that are involved at 75% of market rate rentals are going to be sufficiently attractive that they can be accessed by most of our social services organizations and arts organizations."

The city did bring on Keyser Marston Associates to conduct an economic feasibility study that focused on providing recommendations regarding how the affordable commercial program could work and what percentages of market rate would make sense for various community organizations, Guiler said.

"When we started ... it wasn't in the scope of the project to have a detailed study or survey of all these businesses to determine whether they'd be eligible," he said.

The Council on Tuesday expressed its intent to let the city's moratorium on requests for height limits up to Boulder's 55-foot limit lapse naturally. The moratorium was put in place in 2015 and had been extended multiple times as staff completed work on the various phases of the community benefit project.

Still, if and when the moratorium ends, planning staff has said there are limited places in Boulder that are suitable for taller buildings, and all projects would go through the traditional public planning process. Most zoning districts, according to citywide caps adopted in 2017, allow for up to 35 feet and some up to 38.

The majority of residential zones will see little to no effect, Lindsey said.

Many of the councilmembers expressed regret over the amount of work that staff put into phase two of the project ahead of the Council's ultimate decision to walk it back and take a simpler approach.

"There are certainly times when a project or an initiative pivots. Policy discussions change. While there is some frustration with that at times ... we're all trying to get good outcomes," City Manager Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde said in the meeting. "It's these kinds of discussions that get us to better outcomes, and there has been a lot of learning."

All of this work builds on the City Council's October 2019 approval of the initial phase of the community benefit project that requires developers to build a higher percentage of affordable housing in exchange for being allowed additional building height or more square footage.

Regardless of what happens with the second phase of the project, that stipulation remains.

"Even though the affordable commercial may not be adopted as early as we thought or adopted at all, we will have a permanently affordable (housing) provision that would apply to projects," Guiler said.