The Boulder Planning Board on Thursday voted unanimously to recommend that the City Council extend by 18 months the expiration date on a city ordinance that limits the areas of the city and circumstances under which a person can ask for an exemption on building heights against a staff recommendation that the date be done away with.
The ordinance is expected to be first voted on by the City Council next week. It will have to pass the City Council twice to go into effect.
Building heights are capped at 35 feet in most of Boulder, but the limit is 38 feet downtown and 40 feet in most industrial areas. Property owners can ask for modifications for up to 55 feet.
The City Council decreed in 2015, however, that those modification requests would be limited to Armory site in north Boulder, Boulder Junction, the University Hill commercial district, the Gunbarrel Community Center and Twenty Ninth Street, at least until April of this year.
Exemptions also exist for Frasier Meadows, areas of Boulder Community Health’s Arapahoe campus zoned public, projects with at least 40 percent affordable housing, industrial buildings with special needs and sites with slope challenges that affect how height is calculated.
A survey regarding the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan indicated about 70 percent of respondents were against the height limit restrictions being taken away.
A majority of the people who spoke during public comment on Thursday night were in favor of the expiration date being nixed and the limits becoming permanent — or at the very least indefinite. They mostly said that higher buildings would spoil the mountain views, but there was also some animus directed at developers.
“I moved to Boulder and I enjoy the view,” Dorothy Cohen said. “If I wanted to live in Denver with tall buildings, I would.”
Lisa Harris said she was in favor of the expiration being removed, because she feels the height limits were well-thought-out in that they were not blanketed over the city, but only in some areas.
“We are tired of hearing from developers that they can’t make enough money on shorter buildings,” she said.
Conversely, Elisabeth Patterson, speaking on behalf of the Boulder Chamber, said that the public had not been given enough notice of the possible change, not enough data has been collected to determine whether it has been effective and affordable housing developers’ ability to raise capital has been negatively impacted.
“We believe that the limitation on more substantial infill and redevelopment that this moratorium represents will severely limit our ability to promote efficient land uses that are key to providing lower cost housing,” Patterson read from a prepared statement.
Board member Crystal Gray said she had come into the meeting wanting to completely lift the expiration but changed her mind and proposed extending it three years so it can be worked into the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan and more public input can be gathered. The first motion that came out of the meeting was from board member John Putnam, who proposed extending it for a year.
Board member Harmon Zuckerman said he was in favor of allowing the expiration date to pass or extending it to another date but eventually allowing the City Council to deal with it in the future as needed — possibly via an official moratorium, which is allowed under Colorado law.
“The council has legislative solutions,” he said.
Board member Elizabeth Payton said she was in favor of making the restrictions part of a permanent ordinance that could be modified via “area planning,” referring to a staff member’s comment that the city tries to put a lot of thought into its planning.
She wasn’t sure that the buildings given height restriction waivers had actually contributed to affordability in Boulder, and she was troubled that the view in Boulder is something afforded to everyone, regardless of their income.
“When those views are blocked by a building built and sold to the highest bidder, the hedge fund penthouse, those views are not longer available for middle and lower income folks,” she said. “We’ve taken that away from them.”
John Bear: 303-473-1355, bearj@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/johnbearwithme
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