Bozeman City Commission — Black-Olive
Live updates from the Bozeman City Commission meeting on April 11, 2017, concerning the controversial Black-Olive development.
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I'm planning to post occasional updates throughout the night here, and you can catch the city's live stream of the hearing at http://www.bozeman.net/Video.Have questions? Hit me up on Twitter (I'm @eidietrich) or comment on the BDC site below. I'll answer if I have time tonight, or follow up once the dust settles tomorrow.
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As we get going, Acting City Manager Chuck Winn notes fire department staff are trying to manage the crowd size for the sake of fire safety. They have TV viewing areas set up in other parts of city hall, it sounds like.Mayor Carson Taylor asks anyone who speaks publicly to step out of the main commission chamber finished so anyone stuck on the outside can get in for their turn.
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This being the commission's weekly meeting, they have some non-Black-Olive business to take care of. Accounts payable, a new street sweeping truck and an asphalt patching machine among other non-controversial items up first. Then a presentation on the city's commitment to gender-based pay equity.
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Now on to the Black-Olive agenda item. It's a "quasi-judicial" proceeding, which means commissioners are supposed to act like judges in interpreting the city's building rules instead of legislators in making or changing rules.Because of that, commissioners are starting off by disclosing the conversations they've had related to the project. Most are saying they've had people approach them on the street and attended a prior public meeting or two where the project was discussed.The decision, Mayor Taylor says, "needs to be made on the public record that's before us."
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Krueger says the single-family households south of Black-Olive site in the B-3 downtown commercial district are technically a "nonconforming" land use. As I understand it, that means the city would require something bigger if the owners wanted to redevelop the site.
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Krueger details the project's parking requirements (familiar numbers if you've been following this whole thing). 56 apartments, ranging from small studios to two-bedroom units.Per city parking code, that means 56 spaces are required. The design proposes 33 spaces in an interior ground-floor garage, plus counting three on-street spaces.Controversially, it also proposes using four car-share spaces, which count for five spaces each — something city code allows "with the approval of the review authority."(Review authority here is the city commission — this is one of the key decisions tonight.)
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Krueger now discussing the project's review by the city Design Review Board, which advises the commission on major projects like this. It's gone through twice, to negative reviews both times. Holloran did make modifications to the design following the first hearing, though.
Holloran submits revised design for 5-story Black-Olive project
Bozeman Daily ChronicleDeveloper Andy Holloran provided city planners with revised design drawings for his Black-Olive proposal this week, maintaining the apartment building’s five-story height but adjusting exterior materials in an effort to(And what it looked like when it was initially submitted)
The Black-Olive building as rendered in its initial design submittal -
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Krueger says the city has received nearly 200 (!) pieces of formal public comment for and against Black-Olive, a bit less than half since the final design.Arguments con, he says: Mass, scale, aesthetics of the building and how it relates to downtown and the adjacent historic district. Plus parking concerns, the viability of the car-sharing program and traffic generation, along with a few other things.Arguments pro: Support for downtown infill, saying project complies with city development regulations, argument that projects like this will support downtown businesses, provide housing opportunities for a car-free lifestyle.
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Commissioner Chris Mehl asks what other cities require for downtown parking.Krueger responds that the general trend in many cities — including places like Billings and Missoula — is toward actually eliminating downtown parking requirements entirely.“In general, we are one of the higher parking demand cities within the state," he says.
(My understanding is that those policies are aimed at encouraging denser, urban-style development) -
Krueger also says the city is in the process of hiring a consultant to do more study of parking in downtown Bozeman, getting better data on how many spots are available and how much of it is being used.Aside — I've been seeing debate in BDC comments and social media about whether downtown really has a parking challenge (development skeptics seem to be concerned about it, while folks who are more gung-ho seem to think our current status isn't really that bad).
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Questions from commissioners now about the possibility of setting up a residential parking district in downtown-area neighborhoods (something some neighbors have asked about).Acting City Manager Chuck Winn says the parking data they're planning to collect this spring and summer is necessary to know whether that's a good idea.“We need to be thoughtful and use the data that we don’t have right now,” he says.
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Deputy Mayor Cyndy Andrus questions Krueger on how he's thought about how the project relates to the nearby residential neighborhood.His answer hinges on the adjacent properties to the south and east that are currently homes, but zoned B-3 for downtown commercial.“This is part of the downtown neighborhood," he says. "It’s adjacent to a lower-density residential neighborhood. We didn’t find that there were impacts presented.”
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Mayor Carson Taylor now asking questions about the proposed car-share program.Krueger says staff haven't made a formal finding about whether they think it'll work or not (that ball is in the commission's court, it sounds like). He also says the city hasn't received a signed copy of the planned car-share agreement, one of the things their policy says is necessary for them to sign off on the program.
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A commenter question in the interim—
Matsen brings up some valuable points about the feasibility of the car-share program when parking spaces are available at no cost to tenants. Eric - were you able to catch the parking space leasing situation? Do tenants have to lease a parking space or is it free?
-DaniQuick answer: See the 'The Black-Olive pitch' section of this:
Vehicular uncertainty: Can car-sharing help solve Bozeman's parking conundrum?
Bozeman Daily ChronicleEven as one of Bozeman’s more vocal bike commuters, Taylor Lonsdale can't quite make life work without a car in the picture. -
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Holloran: “The Black-Olive is not for everybody, but we have studied the market. We believe there is tremendous demand for quality rental housing in our downtown core.”He points to tech company employees as likely tenants, saying that their employees may want to live and work downtown.(He doesn't say it now, but he told me last week that many companies coming into Bozeman were planning to relocate employees from places like San Francisco, where they'd be already used to not having cars.)
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Commissioner I-Ho Pomeroy asks Holloran about his car-sharing plans.He says he has two companies interested in coming into Bozeman, and that he'll "engage in those serious discussions immediately" if the project is approved.Holloran doesn't directly answer a question from Pomeroy about whether he thinks Black-Olive tenants should be able to get on-street parking permits if a downtown-area residential parking district is created.“That’s a great question that I think the whole neighborhood should address,” he says.“If anyone should be worried about our parking proposal, it should be us," he adds. "We’re the ones who are taking the risk to do this project.”
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Holloran has hired parking consultant Rick Williams to discuss his car-sharing proposal. Williams has also worked for the city, drafting its current transportation plan (the one mentioned earlier, that says the city needs to collect more parking data).That rubs Mayor Carson Taylor the wrong way, and makes for this exchange:Taylor: “You’re aware no doubt, that there are people, some of them are probably here, that think the city commission is basically in the lap of the developers?”Williams: "I'm not aware of that."...Taylor: “Did you bother to ask the city whether it would be politically wise for you to consult on the case?”Williams: "No"(Taylor also says he doesn't think the city is in the lap of developers)
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More from Holloran on his car-sharing program. He says neighbors would be able to join in, too, once it's established.“We think it's really exciting, and we’re happy to be the catalyst for this,” he says.
And he wraps up — it's on to public comment (I'm going to slow down on the posting a bit and focus on the highlights, since this is going to be the meeting's marathon stretch). -
Seeing a variety of perspectives in our first few public commenters —Among them, a tech employer saying he needs housing for the people he wants to hire (who want to live in a walkable downtown), and a blonde little girl who equates the Black-Olive design to a "big, ugly dumpster."
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More comments, from a variety of folks (I don't have spellings for names, unfortunately):“Not everybody needs Toyata Tundras and a drift boat to be happy in life.”“Mr Holloran, you could lower this site from five to three stories and make it compatible with the neighborhood.”“Who in their right mind would use Zipcar to visit their family in Livingston?"
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More quotes:“Who wants a monstrosity like that in their own backyard? The only people who are for this… are the people who are going to profit from this or don’t live near it.”“Adding these units should have an effect on affordable housing in Bozeman.
“Zoning does not determine context.”
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Mayor Carson Taylor expresses concern about how long the meeting is dragging on and suggests delaying the rest of their conversation (there's another hour of public commenters lined up waiting against the wall, for context, and more on the commission's agenda).“If we go on much longer, we will stop thinking as clearly as we need to,” he says.
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A morning-after follow ups answering a couple good reader questions I didn't get to last night:Question
Is this housing going to be affordable? Or upper class only?
-Darrin AckermanAnswerI wrote about that some in my preview piece here.Holloran said in a March 27 letter to the city that Black-Olive rents will likely range from $1,000 for a studio to $2,000 for a two-bedroom apartment.
Some opponents have decried those rents as suitable for little beyond providing crash pads for the Yellowstone Club crowd. But with a third of a family’s income devoted to housing, the units would be affordable for households making between $36,000 and $72,000 a year. That doesn’t necessarily equate to a modest salary, but it is within typical pay ranges in better-compensated professional fields like technology, engineering and law.QuestionWhy are neighborhoods nearby zoned B-3 when they clearly have homes residing there?
-Darrin AckermanAnswerAs I understand it, the B-3 zoning designation is applied because around the Black-Olive site because city leaders at some point decided it was a place where it made sense to plan for eventual downtown growth:The subject property is zoned “B-3” (Central Business District). The intent of the B-3 District is to provide a central area for the community's business, government services and cultural activities. Uses within this district should be appropriate to such a focal center, with inappropriate uses being excluded. Room should be provided in appropriate areas for logical and planned expansion of the present district.These sorts of zoning-versus-current use discrepancies aren't uncommon in Bozeman, actually. There are quite a few older neighborhoods that are mostly single-family homes, but are zoned R-3 or R-4 for higher-density development like townhouses and apartments.If you're curious about the zoning designation applied to your neighborhood, the city has an online mapping system you can look at. -
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