Aspen Public Radio town hall meeting, letter to the editor- updated- updated again

"Interpretation" if you take nothing else away from Wednesday's "Keep Aspen, Aspen" Aspen Public Radio town hall meeting keep that one word in mind "interpretation". Let's just pick one example…there were several.. but let's just do one. Current City Council member Ann Mullins said that there had been no variances granted for the Molly Gibson. Former Mayor and would be Councilman again Mick Ireland came back with chapter and verse how the Molly Gibson had been granted a variance with it's FAR. Councilwoman Mullins replied that the Molly Gibson straddled two zones- one residential and one lodging and that the code was up to interpretation depending on which zone you chose.  

If you've read even a small portion of the 524 page code… wait…let's do one better…  here you go:

 "Permitted uses are those land uses which are consistent with other land uses in the same zone district in which they are located and which have been designated as permitted uses for the applicable zone district in Chapter 26.710."  bit like wading through treacle in cement overshoes isn't it?

But what do you do when the proposed project straddles more than one zone?

Well, let's toddle off to 26.710 .022  paragraph B. subsection a. "The use shall be developed by… applying the more restrictive of each requirement." Okay  sounds definitive …but…wait a moment… subsection b. says "The only exception shall be when the area… designated with the ..higher density constitutes more than 75% of the entire land area of the parcel."

Okay- time to take a field trip to the Molly Gibson with a theodolite. 

Ye gads I want more of this don't you?  Errr…didn't I elect someone else to do all of this? How much am I paying for City Government again? Remind me? Oh yeah,  one.  hundred.  million.  dollars.

Follow up: Mick Ireland replied on Facebook citing variance requests in the Molly Gibson, I asked Mick to leave a comment or for permission to copy and paste his response here and have not received an answer yet.  If you're a zoning junkie- please go to Facebook and look up Mick's response. 

Here- posted with permission is Mick's response: "A review of the public record contradicts the claim that variances were not involved in recent approvals. With the exception of the Sky Hotel, which withdrew requests for variances, both the Molly Gibson and Base1 Lodge requested and were granted variances on final approval as was the Hotel Aspen.

In fact, three projects (Hotel Aspen, Molly Gibson and Base 1) received a total of 20 variances including five that are significant and which referendum One seeks to limit, The documented variances are summarized in a table attached hereto and as follows:

Hotel Aspen: The original proposal was for four free market units and lodging. Both the lodging and free market homes were in excess of allowed floor area, cumulative floor area and unit size. The final approval was for three free market homes with one of them reduced in height. The final approval included 36,350 square feet, total, 8,050 above floor area allowable and 1,300 feet more than allowed under Special Review. Neither of staff’s recommendations for bringing the project into compliance were followed. The maximum unit size without TDRs is 2,000 sf by code - this approval grants a variance allowing the units to be much larger than 2,000 sf - up to 3,500 - and allows the three FM units to exceed code to exceed the code by one unit and a total of 4,400 feet of floor area.

Mayor Skadron voted No on this project and asked, “How much does this exceed code?” He concluded, “It exceeds what code allows, it does exceed what code allows.”

Molly Gibson: The proposal requested 12 variances, of which only three are the concern of Referendum One. The project sought 26,959 sf of lodging space, 4,959 or 20% more than the zone district allows even with special review.

The free market component request was for 8,000 square feet, almost double the allowed 4,080 in R-6 zoning according to the staff memo (Exhibit A - PD - Project review Pg 4).

Both of these variances were granted.

Base 1. The applicant asked for $39,733 in fee waivers, calculation of the affordable housing requirement under the Lodge Preservation zone district at a lower rate and complete waiver of the 25.3 parking spaces required under the code.

The affordable housing requirement was either 2.19 or .99 units by staff calculation. Staff recommended using a “LP Overlay” calculation to lower the requirement to a single unit. This was a waiver since the property is not zoned LP Overlay though it could have been. Applicant agreed to pay at the lower rate.

Parking was reduced by council variance from 25.3 to 15 spaces."

Here's Mayor Skadron's reply on Aspen Public Radio:
http://aspenpublicradio.org/post/aspen-development-variances-or-no-variances

I keep going back to the first time I heard "Zoning Junkie" it was only last week in a talk by Jeffrey Brown (hopefully this will go online soon). He was talking about "The Boston Miracle" reclaiming neighborhoods from drug violence. His point was he wasn't a "Zoning Junkie"- all he cared about was listening to people so everyone could live in a safe neighborhood. Amen to that.