Planning Commission Agenda and Packet 2015 12 10

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Planning Commission Meeting Minutes November 12, 2015 Page 8 of 41 Eric Hartronft, Hartronft Associates, p.c., 950 Spruce Street, Suite 1A, Louisville, CO Staff has gone through a comprehensive review of our proposal so I will hit a few items we think are important regarding your decision tonight. This existing site is a well -known corner with the sign, Drive Like Your Kids Live Here. We transition from commercial to residential at this point in town. There is a lot of activity to the east that will be happening with the underpass and the DELO development. This corner represents a gateway, not only from north Main Street, but also from the east redevelopment area. I think it is a really important corner. It is important that we have a strong commercial presence there. We have to be able to connect this north part to Downtown. It is pretty tough to drag retail pedestrian traffic that far north. You have got to have some kind of a critical mass there to be able to do that. I think that Ronda's project intends to do that. We always start our projects with design drivers. A few imports things are: Significant gateway to downtown Address the corner from north Main Street and east Provide rich pedestrian experience Opportunities for outdoor dining and hang out space Accommodate owner's business and residence Provide opportunities for new Main Street busine Maintain the existing house if possible Relate to surrounding residential and comma .reas Respect Old Town and Downtown Design G .es Better utilization South Street and museum par Existing house is better than parking lot Eliminate curb cut and add street •a_'ng Intimate courtyard seating amenit'' ` destrian ex • qce Meaningful usable open space Retain residential building Describing the building, the main floor has ith offices on the second floor. Being able to create some open space betty- existing r- idence and the new building became an important design driver. It created an intimate little courtyard space which can be a lot of things depending on the type of commercial tenant we get on the main floor. To the south is the 931 Main Street building which will be constructing a new building behind the existing building. The new building is about 30' tall with a zero lot line. We have tried to maintain a working clearance walkway through the two buildings, so we are set back from the property line. As far as the parking is concerned, we did look at a lot of different alternatives. To provide more parking, we would have had to take the house down. There was no way to work around it given the position it is in on the site and where you want to have storefronts and commercial energy on the Main Street side. If we put a parking lot back there, we clearly would have had to remove the existing house. We talked to Planning about this and thought our idea was a good one, which was to keep the house. Right now, the parking in the Museum site and along South Street is fairly under - utilized. We think it is important to utilize every Downtown parking space. Being able to pay a fee in- lieu -of for the project is highly appropriate given where it is in town. There may be other areas that have more pressure for parking, but this is not one of them. There is a garage currently behind -the house that accesses from South Street. By turning parking off the alley, we eliminate the curb cut on South Street which gives us another parking space on the street. Staff has talked about expanding the diagonal parking into this block on South. We think it is a good idea and would pick up a couple more parking spaces with that plan. We encourage the City to continue looking at those efforts. Anytime we can use the asphalt we have, it will be a better day. Moving up in the building, we are proposing a third floor which would be the owner's loft apartment and some additional open space with a roof deck for the loft. Looking at how the site responds to our design drivers, it has a strong corner element visibility both from the east and the north as you approach Downtown and has architecture that holds the corner as an important element. We feel that the pedestrian experience along the store front with shop windows (whether it's a restaurant or retail shop) and providing sidewalk seating will help to