Commissioner Fadness - Is there a calendar date time limit on the CUP to ensure that the parking lot does not stay a parking lot.

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1 CUP & CVA / YMCA-TREASURE VALLEY / DAVID DURO Location: 1102 w. Hays Street REQUEST APPROVAL OF A SPECIAL EXCEPTION FOR A TEMPORARY OFF- SITE PARKING LOT LOCATED IN AN R-3D/CD AND R-3HD/CD ZONE. THE APPLICANT IS ALSO REQUESTING A VARIANCE TO EXCEED THE 600 FEET MINIMUM DISTANCE REQUIRED FOR THE PARKING LOT. Susan Riggs presented the staff report with a recommendation of approval based on the findings of fact, conclusions of law and subject to the conditions of approval as stated in the staff report. Commissioner Fadness - Is there a calendar date time limit on the CUP to ensure that the parking lot does not stay a parking lot. Susan Riggs The two years would run from the date of the City Council s decision of action. Commissioner McLean We got a letter at some point wondering why this didn t go to the Historic Commission first. Susan Riggs The process this should go through is to come here first to make sure the use is approved. If the special exception to allow this parking lot is not approved, there is no reason it should go to the Historic Commission. They would be reviewing the lighting, the landscaping and the circulation. Andy Erstad (Applicant) I would like to say that we are in agreement with staff findings of fact, conclusions of law and recommended conditions of approval. I think a number of those conditions were addressed relative in response to some of the Commissioners questions. We are very open about this project. We ve had a number of neighborhood meetings and we ve met with NENA. I want to address quickly the letter submitted in that packet that came from the Cathedral of the Rockies. I was unaware of it. When we met with the Y and had been working with them, their position and our position was that any correspondence relative to this project should be copied directly to the City. This letter went directly to the City, so when I saw it this morning I was quit candidly a little bit surprised. The Y does not want to compromise the application. The Y also is a good neighbor in the entire community down there and if need be Mr. Everett or Mr. Duro can address it. David Duro (Applicant) There are about 14,000 members at the downtown branch alone and we get about 50,000 visits a month to this facility. It is a busy facility and is a well used parking lot. In attachment or addendum F, there is a letter that originated from the YMCA and myself to Susan Riggs of the City that calls out our parking needs. In that letter it talks about that we have 232 spaces total available. That includes the 98 that we are losing temporarily according to this loss of lease. The YMCA of the USA recommends that we have 382 spaces to serve a membership of our size.

2 That s 150 less than what we have. We are able to do that because of two reasons. We have a strong commitment to alternative transportation in getting people to walk, bike and jog or take public transportation to the YMCA. At the end of the 24 months we want nothing more than to be back in the spots we have now and ultimately we want to own those spots. The Y is able to serve a lot of people because we cooperate. We cooperate with the school and we cooperate with the churches. Currently on Sunday morning the Baptist Church, the Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Church all know according to our agreement that they are welcome to park in the YMCA lot. We re closed and there is a surface parking lot there that is empty. I think the whole concern tonight is we re talking about limiting surface parking in the downtown area. We need to have guaranteed parking or at least reasonably guaranteed parking for our members, our guests, our participants, our families the hours we are open. Commissioner McLean My major concern is the exit strategy for this parking lot if we approve this tonight. Unfortunately, your example of the play ground made me a little more nervous because it was a temporary use that became permanent. Just talk to me a little bit about the exit strategy, how we are not going to end up with a surface lot at the end of this two year. And then also while you talk about that, I would like to get a sense of whether or not you flushed out the fact that enforcement on a lot two blocks away is a lot different than enforcing the parking lot right by your building and how you are going to deal with that. David Duro I ll take your second question first. On the enforcement, where we are at now is that we have several different lots so we ve got those lots to enforce so we have that person or persons rotating through. I think in some ways that the lot that we are going to be in or hopefully be in, the remote lot, may be easier because all the parking is right there and we can talk to the people and see where their intended destination is. Concerning your other question, we don t want to be there any longer than that. We have four values that we live by at the Y, caring, honesty, respect and responsibility. We come here tonight in light of those values. We truly want nothing more than to be across the street, right across State Street. It s an ideal location for us. We have a great relationship with Rafanelli & Nahas. We re starting to enter into those agreements for possible purchase now so that we re positioned well when the garage is finished. Our long term strategy is to own that lot where we want to be. Commissioner Baskin Do you have a sense of whether or not the church will withhold its support for this project if it is unable to use the lot on Sundays? David Duro I don t know that. We haven t had that conversation. Molly O Leary (NENA Association) At the end of my comments I would also like to hand you the comments of Amy Cook who had to leave, she and I were going to share the time tonight for NENA. I am a board member of the North End Neighborhood Association, and I am also a proud member of the downtown Y. A surface parking lot for a 112 cars in a historic district is contrary to the staff s position.

3 It is not equivalent to the impact of 109 to 146 underground parking spaces associated with the structure that has passed design review compatibility with the historic neighborhood. As you recall one of the standards is that this request of exception can not be a greater impact on the neighborhood than the existing zoning would allow. And the staff report took the position that the 112 parking spaces would not be a greater impact than the potential development of this block. If you do the math, and Amy Cook in her remarks did the math and has experience in this area, if you have as many as a 146 spaces associated with a residential development, that equates to 3 to 4 trips per day that would result into 584 car trips per day total for the entire block. Where as the proposal here is for 112 spaces which would generate in a lot more car trips per day because the average workout lasts one to one and a half hours and therefore we would have a lot more coming and going than with a residential facility. Also the creation for a surface parking lot on a block that once was home to historic homes is now a barren patch of weeds and dust despite the First United Methodist Church s promise of a park like landscaping is not compatible with the historic nature of the neighborhood. The conditions of approval proposed by staff has no teeth and no enforcement mechanism. The owner of the property is not the applicant, and therefore can not be legally bound by the conditions of approval as currently proposed. Such as maintaining any irrigation infrastructure and or landscaping that may be left behind. Section only provides for one six month extension of a temporary parking lot, yet the staff report in explicatively recommends three one year extensions. Section requires staff to approve, modify or deny an application of a parking lot within 15 days of submission, therefore the time for acting on this application has expired. The north portion of block 75 is in the Hays Street Historic District and any land use request for the district must be submitted to the Historic Preservation Commission for approval prior to being considered by the City s other planning departments. NENA would like to make note on the record that they did not receive notice on the neighborhood meeting. That notice was hand delivered to NENA after the neighborhood meeting was held. Mark Baltrus I want to voice my opposition to the temporary parking plan proposed on block 75. As you are fully aware by now, half of block 75 is in the Hays Street Historic District. As a former member of the Boise City Historic Preservation Commission I have experience that both as a neighborhood representative and as a Commissioner. Staff says that a Certificate of Appropriateness is required for this type of development in the Historic District and that is correct. It also states that one was issued at staff level. Issuing a change in use from open space to a parking lot at staff level is not correct. As far as the sequence goes, it was always my understanding that we as a Commission hear a land use recommendation and then we would pass it on to Planning & Zoning. Eric Pray I am both a member of the YMCA and a resident of the north end. I m a recent transplant to Boise from Wichita Kansas and certainly the character and appeal to the north end was part of my decision as to where to live and whether to relocate to Boise. I also believe that the Y is an asset to the north end and that its viability is important to the community as a whole. Therefore the conditional use of a parking lot will have a net positive impact to the community.

4 Susan Graham I would like you to deny this request for the parking lot for the YMCA at block 75 that is owned by the First United Methodist Church. My original reason to ask you to deny really goes back to the basic issue that you have adopted in your code which is that you can not just bull doze down houses and put a parking lot there. And that what s happened. The church expressed directly when they purchased all of those properties and we were here in front of the city a number of years ago, that the reason for them purchasing all of block 75 was that they wanted to have more convenient parking for their members. If you grant this request, they get their parking lot without having to go through the normal steps to do that. Clay Carley This is a very simple issue to me. This is a temporary parking request and a short term variance for the needs of one of the community s great providers. I would ask you and urge you to support this application and allow the YMCA to fulfill it s temporary need and get back to where it belongs on State Street and go on about serving our community the way it does. James Cruz I have not looked at the numbers, but $100,000 is a lot of money for a nonprofit. I think that if the YMCA talked with their members that they would understand that they are better off spending this $100,000 dollars on their programs than on a parking lot 2½ blocks away. The church has not been a good neighbor. I m concerned about the Y being able to enforce it. Commissioner Fadness I have some questions for staff. Help me to understand this Certificate of Appropriateness issued by the Historic Preservation Commission. We had a former member of the Commission say that to the best of his recollection the order was that the Commission issued the Certificate of Appropriateness and then it went to other city planning agencies. Sarah Schafer On this particular application the Planning & Zoning Commission is only making a recommendation to City Council regarding this use. So the determination that was made by the Planning Director and myself was that we would wait to see what the Planning & Zoning Commission s recommendation was on the property and then we would issue a staff level Certificate of Appropriateness on the application if you had a favorable recommendation. The Historic Preservation Commission has adopted a decision matrix which states what applications go to what level of review. The decision matrix does not address temporary uses. Commissioner Fadness Explain for me further the argument about the City not being able to enforce the conditions of approval because in fact the applicant is not the owner of the land. Scott Spjute The permit is being issued to the YMCA with a concurrence of the land owner which is the church. If the permit is issued and there is a violation, the permit would be pulled which would cease the parking operation regardless of who owns the property.

5 Commissioner Fadness Could you comment on past enforcement? Scott Spjute If I have heard correctly, I ve heard that Church practitioners are parking on church owned property for a couple hours on Sundays. The police will not issue citations for that because that is a zoning issue. I have five Code Enforcement Officers that don t work on weekends and I don t see the complaints directly but I assume that it was felt by the Code Enforcement Division that ticketing petitioners for parking on church property may not have been a good use of Code Enforcement time to send them out at time and a half on Sundays. Commissioner Fadness What about the notification that NENA claims they were not notified about the neighborhood meeting until after the meeting took place. Susan Riggs Apparently it must be true; however, there is no resolution to this because it s over and they have been involved in the process for several weeks since this application has been submitted. Maybe the applicant can explain why NENA was not notified or notified after the neighborhood meeting was held. Commissioner Baskin In looking at the back ground and analysis material which reflect that the conditions of approval will require that upon vacation of the site that all new landscaping shall be maintained and irrigated which will leave the site in a more desirable state than it is currently. Is it your belief that the City still has the power to enforce those requirements? Susan Riggs As noted in one of the conditions of approval we are requiring a bond for the removal of the wheel restraints and the improvements that need to remain. Everything will be bonded for. Commissioner Baskin What about maintenance of the irrigation and the permanent plantings? Susan Riggs The landscaping will stay which consists of the eight trees that are highlighted in green. They will be required to be irrigated. We most certainly need to add a condition for bonding. I apologize, I thought that condition was in here. It is a condition required by the Ordinance actually. Commissioner Cooper I don t see a condition requiring that the landscaping be maintained after the decommissioning of the lot. Susan Riggs Condition #5 discusses the removal of the wheel stops and light fixtures from the premises. Conditions #7 discusses making sure there are No Parking signs erected. I believe that condition was not included in here because the Historic Commission will have the final review of the landscaping. Also, the Historic Commission will review the landscaping for appropriateness of an adequate temporary irrigation system to maintain the temporary landscaping in a healthy condition.

6 Mary Watson We can t impose that sort of continual maintenance. Of course the City has requirements that a lot not fall into shambles and that you not create a weed situation and maintain it in some orderly fashion. If they are no longer the renters of that lot, they are not obligated to maintain it there after in perpetuity. Susan Riggs If this application is approved tonight I would recommend a condition that says The applicant shall place a bond for 110% of the cost of removing the temporary lot. It was intended to be in the report and I apologize for its lack of inclusion. On that same note we have to not include item #28 that talked about three one time extensions. That is a general standard condition of approval that we put in all conditional use permits and it was intended to be taken out of this application. I would ask that the bonding condition be included. Condition #28 should be deleted. If the Commission would like a monitoring plan to be submitted, staff is very comfortable with having that done prior to the issuance of the building permit for review by staff, or however you would like to have that reviewed. Also if the Commission feels that a one year approval is all that is necessary, we could revise the condition. We recommended 2 years. If it did go over to 14 months or 15 months, it would negate the applicant having to come back and ask for a 5 month extension. The applicant mentioned that they were going to provide some handicapped parking. I did a count on existing handicapped parking. All they need to come up with their current handicap parking is one additional spot. Andy Erstad I just wanted to address some of the comments that came from the various neighborhood members that spoke. Miss O Leary addressed that is was the Y s own comment that, self serving comment, that the adjacent properties couldn t provide parking, and just so that everyone is very clear from the adjacent churches that were approached by the Y, parking is not available. We don t have the luxury of demanding every reason why they will not give us parking. We requested parking. Those letters state that parking can not be made available for the Y. Those letters are in the application. The issue of NENA s notification, I want to clarify some points on that. We were given Bernie Clark s address and number as the NENA representative so the letter went out to Bernie Clark. It was returned and then hand delivered to Mr. Clark when we actually went to the NENA meeting. And subsequent meetings with NENA have taken place since. We have tried to involve NENA all along. It was not an oversight, it was a system that apparently the name we were given was not the accurate name. Commissioner Barker Mr. Chairman. Commissioner Fadness We do have to be careful. We are in post rebuttal now and can not bring up any new issues. Commissioner Barker I do believe that the applicant raised this issue in his rebuttal and that there is surface parking around the area through the churches. The churches have indicated that they don t have parking available for them. One of the things that I have noticed in the letters is the word exclusive.

7 That is the churches would not give exclusive use to the Y for certain spaces. Could you tell me how you approached the churches in terms of sharing available parking spaces on days other than Sunday. David Duro When we went and talked to them about asking parking for the YMCA, we just really wanted to know spaces would be available. If we were able to direct members over here would it be likely they would find spaces. As far as leasing goes, if we were going to lease spaces it would be in the steward of the community s money. If we are to lease spaces we want to make sure they are there. We would want to know that we had access to those spaces that we are paying for them. Commissioner Barker This is a temporary project, is it not? David Duro Yes it is. Commissioner Barker So how did you weigh the cost of $100, with the possibility of being able to share parking spaces? David Duro With us, membership is everything and if we brought our budgets in here to show you we could show that with our operation in the downtown Y, it is a $3½ million dollar annual operation. So a hundred thousand dollars to preserve that is really a small investment. PUBLIC HEARING IS CLOSED. Commissioner Barker - I not sure I am ready to make a motion but I do want to put my concern on the record. My concern is that I am very fearful that the temporary parking lots required improvements, such as the removal of the top soil, grading to allow for some drainage, the perimeter landscaping be what we had thought might be a hard surface for handicapped parking, and it s continued use for a period of two years with possible extensions. Now those have gone away. All of that would lead to a very strong argument to continue it s use as a parking lot, once the Y had met it s needs. There is nothing in here that gives me assurance that that won t be the case. It just seems as though we might be setting ourselves up for this to continue on as a parking lot. The only way I will support a motion is if we somehow restrain this use to the shortest period of time possible. I would have loved to see some sort of reclamation plan. Commissioner McLean I am going to echo Commissioner Barker s concerns. We have a neighborhood that has been dealing with this piece of property for quite awhile. And this piece of property has a history that unfortunately the Y has gotten involved with. I have not been convinced that at the end of this temporary period that it will be temporary and will not become a parking lot that s used and we don t want to enforce because it is on Sundays.

8 Commissioner Baskin I share those concerns. You know, once a parking lot, always a parking lot. I think that the concerns we have heard expressed tonight are not so much about the Y, as they are about the concerns of the church. I think there is a legitimate concern that there will be continued illegal use of the property, particularly if the church has permission to use the lot during the Y s tendency. Only because I believe that the conditions of approval state that the Y upon the vacation of the sight shall block off all access points to the parking lot with connecting chains or something else to secure from illegal parking. I don t think it s appropriate to insist the removal of the gravel. That is an additional expense that the Y shouldn t have to bear. COMMISSIONER MCLEAN MOVED TO APPROVE CUP & CVA BASED ON THE FINDINGS OF FACT, CONCLUSIONS OF LAW AND SUBJECT TO THE CONDITIONS OF APPROVAL AS STATED WITH THE FOLLOWING MODIFICATIONS: 1. LIMIT THIS TO 1 YEAR. 2. REQUIRE A MONITORING PLAN AND REPORT IN THREE MONTHS. 3. ADD A CONDITION FOR BONDING OF 110% OF THE RECLAMATION. 4. CHANGE THE LIGHTING TIMES IN CONDITION #9 FROM THE CURRENT, 6:00AM 10:30PM TO 6:30AM 9:00PM. 5. STRIKE CONDITION # REQUIRE AN EXTRA HANDICAP SPOT BE ADDED IN FRONT OF THE Y, AND NONE AT THIS NEW TEMPORARY LOT. 7. AT THE TIME OF THE 3 MONTH REPORT, THE Y WILL COME BACK WITH A REMEDIATION PLAN. COMMISSIONER BARKER SECONDED. Commissioner Fadness Commissioner McLean, would you be willing to extend the one year to fifteen months? Commissioner McLean And your reasoning for the fifteen months is three years to build and one year to use. Commissioner Fadness From what I understand, you would like the parking lot to be approved for a maximum of one year from the day of the Councils approval. I m saying that leaves very little wiggle room in case there are delays in construction of the parking garage and if we were to extend that another three months to fifteen months it would at least gives them some wiggle room for unanticipated delays.

9 Commissioner McLean My intent is to cap this as a temporary lot and to be as tight about that as possible. Commissioner Cooper - The applicant does not control the construction process in the new garage. I tend to agree with commissioner Fadness because we can not place the incentive onto the Y to get the garage built faster. Commissioner Fadness Does the seconder concur? Commissioner Barker I do, reluctantly. Commissioner Cooper I am going to support the motion with that change to the time frame. We have a condition that requires the applicant prevent the use of that lot. That can be enforced and it s going to be an improvement over the condition that is there now. In Condition #2 there is a specific condition requires that the lot be vacated as soon as possible. Commissioner Baskin For the reasons I previously stated I will support the motion. Commissioner McLean When we see this monitoring plan in three months and as well as a clean-up plan, I look forward to seeing that and I hope that it will continue this conversation about whether or not it is working and that we will take action if we need to, also that the neighbors will be there too with some information with what is happening. I really hope that the Y will enforce this. Commissioner Fadness My only comment is that I really hope that NENA doesn t come back to us in a year and say see I told you so. We are placing a lot of trust in the Y. I wish there was a representative from the United Methodist Church here tonight. We are placing trust and hope that perhaps there will be some changes in attitude there in their practices. ROLL CALL VOTE MOTION CARRIED UNANIMOUSLY