City Council Agenda and Packet 1997 03 18

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Library parking lot for other than its intended use for Library patrons or future expansion of the Library. Davidson called for the applicant's presentation. Davidson disclosed that he had known and done some work for one of the applicants, Mr. McElvey. John McElvey, 1125 Mapleton Avenue, Boulder, Colorado, partner with John Wolff and Tom Lyon in this project, presented a scale model of the project, which he reviewed. John Wolff, 490 Marine Street, Boulder, Colorado, architect and partner, stated that they hoped to help revitalize the downtown area. He reviewed the project. He pointed out that only half of the lot is being used by Library patrons and the other half is being used by long term parking (8 or 9 hours) by downtown workers. He felt their usage was more important than the downtown workers usage. For their main peak hours, morning drop -off, the Library is not even open. He asked for five parking spaces to be signed as short term parking, five to ten minutes or for loading and unloading. Mayer was concemed that by approving the use of the lot it would limit what the City could do with that property. He wanted to see the whole Library parking lot to be limited to two hour parking. Lathrop wanted to know number of students vs. square footage, as he felt the facility was quite small. McElvey stated that the building met the code requirement of 30 s.f. /pupil for this age group. There is also ample room in the playground to meet their requirements for the play area. Levihn reminded Council of the dance studio at Pine and LaFarge that shares a City parking lot. He asked about a public school being this close to a bar. Susan Griffiths, City Attorney, stated that she would look into the issue of the proximity of the bar. Keany disclosed that he had a chance meeting with John Wolff in the Library parking lot one day and they had discussed this project somewhat. He stated that the existing property there is an eyesore to downtown. He felt that this plan would be an improvement to what is there. He commented that the south side of the parking lot is used all day long. He felt that turning five parking spaces in the Library into short term would be a benefit to the Library for pick -up and drop off of movies/books. As far as allowing use of City property for a commercial business for dropping- off/picking -up, he mentioned St. Louis School using a City street for this use. He felt the standard was already there. Davidson pointed out that streets are for public use and are not equated with parking lots. The parking lot on LaFarge is a City employee parking lot basically, for which the City provides no special service at all. He wanted to be fair to all businesses within the City. The City could not 9