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HomeMy WebLinkAbout10 - Hill Business Plan Written InputHILL BUSINESS PLAN WRITTEN INPUT Page 1 of 2 Molly Winter - Property Owners Meeting From: "Mazk Heinritz" <mark@thesink.corcu To: '"John ArndY" <jda@gebau.cocn>, <zaneC~rockrimmon.neb, "'J. W. "Buck" Buchanan"' <jwbbuck2@comcast.neb, <TCAPRIO@FOXTHEATRE.CO1Vb, <GailCulp@aol.com>, "'Bill Ellwood'" <ellwoodww@juno.coccu, "'Vince Ellwood'" <henri@webaccess.net>, <harveyepstein@hotmail.com>, dinda.foss@comcast.net>, "'Karen Abrams"' dcaren@the- tea-spot.coirv, "'Boyace Holland"' <boyacehollandC comcast.neU, "'Sally Hood"' <shood515@aol.corr~, "'Marty Kinsley"' <mkinsiey@aol.cocn>, "'Dave Mackenzie"' <dmackenzieco@earthlink.neb, "'Robin Manteuffel"' <robinm@colorado.edu>, "'Matt McMullen"' <matt@skillindesign.com>, "'Ronald A. Mitchell"' <ronaldamitchell@mail.cocn>, "'Paul Tabolt"' <paul.tabolt@colorado.edu> Date: 1 1/1 1/2004 6:10 PM Subject: Property Owners Meeting CC: "'Michael Stumpf" <StumpfmC~ci.boulder.co.us>, <Brunof@ci.boulder.co.us>, "'Molly Winter"' <winterm@ci.boulder.co.us>, "'Brad Power"' <PowerB@ci.boulder.co.us>, "'David Rogers'" <dronion@earthnet.net>, "'Bill Curtis'" <bcurtis@unidata.ucaz.edv Hello to everyone, Thank you to everyone who came to the meeting on Tuesday. it was my pleasure to meet the faces new to me and reconnect with many I have not seen in a while. More than anything it was energizing to see so many properties represented in one room! The conversation was very engaging and I think a fot of bridges were formed. It is important to keep the conversation going from this point forvvard. Those of you in the assembly areas need to talk to your neighbors and measure the level of interest and feasibility amongst yourselves. Ron Mitchell already has plans drawn for his property! I know from my contact with the City Economic Vitality Board, the Planning Dept. and discussions with several City Councii members, that if the property owners of the Hiil can come forward with some consensus and wiliingness to act, the city will engage in a true effort to revitalize the Hill through development and business ciimate changes. The ball is in our court and the time is now. Here is a recap of the meeting. 17 property ow~ers were represented which is about 65% of the addresses in the district. I have attached the updated available information for all the properties in UHGID and the email header has the emails for those which I have. The overatl consensus of those in attendance was unanimously in favor of parking solutions, against Historic Districting, lukewarm to Transferable Development Rights, and against street closure. Redeveloping the property between College and Euciid, 13'h to 14~h, received a lot of attention. CU is interested in exploring the possibilities of the Broadway District Assembly as are the other adjacent property owners present. UHGID will focus on the next steps for developing massing studies etc. Please use this email list to continue throwing out ideas and comments to the group. I hope we can all agree to keep the content between us until we are ready to allow public comment. Matt McMullin and I are available to answer questions as best we can. Thanks again to everyone for coming and I look fonvard to more discussions. Mark Mark Heinritz The Sink Restaurant and Bar ii6g r3th St. Boulder, CO 8o3oz r:io•nr• ~n,.,.,...,o..«~rn ~n.,,,arn ~nco«.:....~~...:..«.., i nnrnT ,.,...irn ~nc,..:..,...~~r,......~r_~zn nnnn i i ii ~ i~nnn Pag~ 1 of I , Moliy Winter - Council Email: Historic designation and TDRS From: Jennifer Bray To: Bonner, Vanessa; Hedgcock, Bohdy; Huron, Mary; McHeyser, Ruth; Pollock, Peter; Winter, Molly Date: 10/18/2004 11:23 AM Subject: Council Email: Historic designation and TDFiS FYI only »> "Zane Blackmer" <zaneC~ rockrimmon.neU 10/18/2004 7:30:08 AM »> Dear council and city manager, I just wanted to give you the heads up that there are several of the University Hill commercial property owners working on a draft of a letter stating opposition to the use of historic designation as a vehicle for redevelopment . From most of the conversations that I have had or heard from the property owners, they are all positive in regard to the Ross Study and its assertions with one excepiion. Most are opposed to the idea of using historic designation as the vehicle for upgrading or redeveloping the area. I think many are open to having some self imposed architectural guidelines for new projects to keep a quaint mainstreet feel for the business district, but as far as the city trying to impose historical designation on the property owners against their will may lead to a lengthy legal quagmire that will be undesirable for everyone. I will keep you in the loop. Sincerely, Zane Blackmer , - ~ -- _.. .. _.. ~ Moliy Winter- 4~012 RCG Analysis v3.0.doc Page 1 , ~~~~ ~ ~ Monday, October 11, 2004 Response to Ross Consulting Group Final Draft, dated September 13, 2004 There are many, many detaiis, errors, omissions and irrelevant inclusions that make this report unacceptable as a working document for Uni HiII. But rather than go into those details, I want to focus on the process that produced this report, why that process is unacceptable, and how it will have to change before anyone attempts to do this again. Current Process This report is a classic example of the outmoded, top-down planning process that has ~ plagued Boulder for years. ~ This proCess was Commissioned by UHGID "to gauge (Uni Hill's) development potential..." "RCG's work-product is... a business pla~ for UHGID, property owners and the city of Boulder to consider in evalua6ng possibility for changes on The Hill." This process, and the result, is unacceptable. If the City, UHGID and the Planning Depar[ment has learned anything from the uproar over both the historic designation process in 2002, and the Land Use Aeview for Tulagi in 2004, it should be that the planning process must engage all stakeholders from the very beginning., Othervvise, the process ends in conflict, and in a great waste of time, energy and money on both sides. Even worse, the net result is zero. Both sides end up where they started. This is what happened when Historic Boulder, using a top-down process built in to the Boulder City ordinance, tried to designate over 900 properties on Uni Hill as a single historic district. The landmarks Board allowed Historic Boulder to withdraw their application in the face of overwhelming opposition from Uni Hill neighbors. Two years later, not one properry has been landmarked on Uni Hill, and the City is just getting around to considering possible changes in the ordinance that will involve the property owners in that decision. Three months ago, Daredevii LLC submitted an application to the Planning Department for Land Use Review that would have turned the Tulagi buiiding into a very large bar, serving liquor seven nights a week until 2 a.m. in the morning to over 500 patrons. Both the applicant, and the Planning Department, chose to ignore those objections. The result was that the neighbors mounted a very strong opposition at the Planning Board i, Moily Winter - 410~2 RCG Analysis v3.0.doc _ • Page 2 hearing on October 7, and the Planning Board voted 6-0 to deny both the applicant and the planning staff recommendation. Both of these examples have resulted in a huge waste of time on,both sides. It is time to change the process. Proposed Changes i believe that the City of Boulder, through its Planning Department, must change its planning process to allow for the inclusion of neighborhood input much further upstream. I propose that the Planning Department restructure its process so that neighborhood representatives are offered a place at the table at the very beginning, whenever a significant change is proposed for any neighborhood. This includes zoning changes, Land Use Review, Conditional Review, BVCP, and any other Planning Department functions which significantly impact any neighborhood. The way it works now, the Planning Department works on its projects with almost no direction, other than a vague suggestio~ from Council, and then, way down stream, solicits "public inpuY'. The Planning Department does not need "public inpuY' after it has invested much time in a project. They need public participation from the very beginning, to avoid wasting scarce Ciry resources. This present process must change. It is wasteful of City resources, and it is wasteful of neighborhood resources. I explained to Molly W inter and the UHGID Board at their September meeting (before the RCG report was released) that, unless they involved the neighborhood, the plan would be dead in the water. This plan is unacceptable to the neighborhood, and we will resist it as strongly as we resisted the historic designation of Uni Hill, and as strongly as we resisted the Planning DepartmenYs recommendation to approve the Tulagi proposal. The message is simply this: Bring us, and any other stakeholder group, into the planning at the very beginning of the process. Otherwise, you are setting yourselves, and us, up to waste a tremendous amount of time and energy getting nowhere. We don't like it this way, and we know the Ciry does not like it this way. So IeYs change the process to something that works for everyone, and get on with the job of redeveloping Uni Hili. Moilq W inter - 41012 RCG Analysis v3.0.doc Page 3 Errors and omissions in the RCG Report. Spelling errors Page 1 - "FOREWARD" should be "FOFiEWORD" Page 4 "raised" should be "razed" Page 24 "Significant RoadblocK' should be "Significant Roadblocks" Power Point presentation at 10/11 meeting, under "Preliminary Conclusions" "complimenY' should be "complemenY' Moily W inter - 4~ 012 RCG Analysis v3.0.doc ' Page 4 r Page 5 Stakeholder Findings RCG report devotes 1/3 of a page, listing generalities and assertions with no supporting data. Contrast this to the PUMA Study in 2001, pp 11-14 with supporting data. Page 11 ff. EXISTING BUSINESS CONDITIONS ON UNIVERSITY HILL On page 13, RCG presents a graph (Number of retail Establishments Present on The Hill in Any Given Year). In the text they purport to draw conclusions from the graph. "The average number of restaurants on The Hill has dramatically increased 48% over the last 10 years to the point that the majority of the business on the Hill today are restaurants. On the flip side, the average number of consumer goods retailers on The Hill in any given year has decreased by 31% since the peak year of 1997." Where to begin? First of all the graph is talking about the actual number of establishments in each year, not an average number. It is meaningless to refer to an average number for any given year. Secondly, the base year for describing restaurant growth is 1994, while the base year for describing consumer goods is 1997. That is a meaningiess comparison. If we use 1994, the number of restaurants has increased from 25 in 1994 to what looks like 45 in 2003 (we'll get back to that number 45 in a minute). And the number of consumer goods outlets has changed from 37 in 1994 to 44 in 2003. So, using the base year of 1994, food outlets increased 80%, and consumer goods outlets increased by 19%. Quite a different conclusion from the RCG report. If we use 1997 as the base year, then restaurants increased from 38 in 1997 to 45 in 2003, or 18% (where did RCG get 48°/a?). And consumer goods went from 53 in 1997 to 44 in 2003, for a 17% decrease (where did RCG get 31%?). And finally, there are 44 consumer goods out~ets versus 45 food and drink outlets in 2003 - not exactly a strong case for calling restaurants a"majority." If we now turn to page 14, the RCG report says, "^_003 ended with 13 liquor-licensed restaurants and 29 non-licensed restaurants on The Hill:' That only adds to 42 total food & drink outlets, not the 45 that appear in the graph on page 13. 1f there are only 42 food outlets, then there is no majority. W hich is it? Mollq W inter - 41012 RCG Analysis v3.0.doc Page 5 But wait. On page 14, the left-hand graph indicates that restaurant sales in 2003 were divided between $7,000,000 for non-licensed restaurants and $7,900,000 for liquor-licensed restaurants, or a totai of $14.9 million. This agrees with the graph on page 14, in the middle of the page, which shows food and drink sales for 2003 at just short of $15 million, or about $14.0 million. Then we turn to the right hand graph on page 14, which shows an "average" annual sales per restaurant, divided between liquor-licensed and non-licensed. Directly above, the report tells us there are 13 licensed restaurants. The right hand graph tells us that the "average" sales in 2003 were about $340,000. Total for all 13 then, is $4.42 million. And there were 29 non-licensed restaurants, each with an "average" annual sales figure of about $220,OQ0 in 2003. Doing the math, we get a total of $6.38 million for all of the non-licensed restaurants. The two figures should add to $14.9 million. In fact, they add to only $10.8 million. It appears there is an error somewhere, either in the "average" for the liquor-licensed restaurants, or in the non-liquor restaurants. In any case, the figures lose credibility. And finally, how do you establish a trend, as claimed in the left hand graph, with only two data points? Going back to the middle graph on page 13, the retail sales are presented for nine years in a row. Using nine data points, it would be credible to argue that "Food & Drink" sales are trending upward, and "Consumer Goods" sales are flat or declining from 1994 to 2003. But claiming a trend with only two years data? Over nine years (1994-2003), "Food & Drink" year-to-year sales were up five times, down or flat four times. W hich two-year period actuaily predicts the trend? "Consumer Goods" year-to-year were up five times, down four times. Can you predict the nine-year trend using only one set of year-to-year figures? No. On page 15, RCG makes the finding (graph and t~xt) that "targe" retailers have higher sales than "small" retailers. They acknowledge that "sales volume does generally corcespond to floor area" but one searches in vain for any further correlation in the data or the analysis. In fact, RCG seems to indulge in circular reasoning when they say, "'Lurge Retailers' (are) those that have on average individually comprised more than 3% of sales on The Hill during [he past t0 years:' In other words, if you have large sales, regardless of floor area, you are a"large" retailer. What should matter to the city, to UHGID, and to the retailers is the "gross sales per square foot per hou~". And that should be the parameter for comparing various Moliy W inter - 41012 RCG Analysis v3.0.doc ~ ~ ~ consumer goods and food & drink outlets. The city maximize the gross sales per square foot, to take smail size. • Page 6 ~uid be looking for ways to <imum advantage of Uni Hill's The information may be in the raw data - but the p antation that RCG makes simply does not make sense, and does not allow one to c N meaningful conclusions. And, in particular, there is no data given to suppor e assertion (p. 16) that "Today, food & drink sales revenue is evenly split between largc d small restaurants and in general weighted towazd restaurants oF any size with liquor lice~ ,""Large" and "smalP have been defined using circular reasoning, rather than floor <~ ;~a. And the graph on p.14, supposedly supporting the assertion that restaurar . with liquor licenses have higher sales than restaurants without, does not correlate wi;h other numbers given. Furthermore, "Average" is meaningiess. One or two very large restaurants with a liquor license can very easily skew the results, and most likely did. In summary, the data in this section is riddled with errors, and the conclusions drawn are not supported by what little analysis is presented. This section, from page 11 to page 16, has the strained feel of RCG trying to select those statistics that would support the pre-ordained conclusion that."The Hill needs more~ restauran[s with Gquor license~:" And this does not include the gratuitous slam at the neighborhood on p. 22: "Indeed, the political forces that blame baz activity for wha[ is primarily underage house party activity in the neighboring residential areas, pose a signifcant constraint to entrepreneurial restaurateurs eager to try their hand at a Hill venture and bring a sit-down restaurant that can appeal to a lazger population than just students." Perhaps !'vlr. Wootten would be well advised to contemplate the infamous "burro" poster which was posted in this self-same entrepreneurial restaurateur's window this summer, with the exhortation: ITS HOT OUT HERE, SO STAY COOL (LIKE THIS BURRO HERE) BY GETTING DRUNK, THEN EATING AN ENTIRE ILLEGAL PETES BURRITO AT 2 IN THE MORNING. j Moliq W inter - 41012 RCG Analysis v3.0.doc Page 7 Economics Section (pp. 30-47) This section may be of interest to a property owner considering redevelopment of his property. But there are far too may assumptions concerning cap rates, zoning, transferable development rights (TDR) and other factors to warrant including this analysis in the report at this time. It is simply premature. Pages 30-47 can easily be ignored as irrelevant at this point in time. These calculations may be relevant some time in the future, when some of the assumptions may materialize. But at this point in time, they are a waste of ink, and serve only to confuse rather than enlighten. r Molly W inter - 41012 RCG Analysis v3.0.doc ~ Page 8 Next Steps The only step that matters right now is Step 1 Until a consensus emerges among the various stakeholders (property owners, Planning Department, CU, and permanent and transient residents) the only thing for sure is that this report sets the stage for more contention, more conflict, more waste of time, energy and money, and no forward progress. Changethe process! Molly W inter - 41012 RCG Analysis v3.0.doc ~~ Page ~9 Comments on Mr. Wootten's Presentation on October 11, 2004 In his Power Point presentation, Mr. Wootten presented two slides which did not seem to correspond to the material presented in the "Final DrafY'. One had the title "Goal for the Hill: Main Street Retaii" and presented the following bullet points: Goal for the Hi1L• Main Street Retail • Destination, not Convenience Retail • Entertainment • Eating and Drinking • Lifestyle Retail The other had the heading `°' and presented a similar bulleted list. I did a quick search of the Final Draft, and could find nothing so concise in the report. When I questioned Mr. Wootten, he asserted that those two items were indeed in the report. I would like to ask him to refer me to the pages where that materiai, in that format, appears. Mr. Wootten also asserted that Uni Hill is a regional center, whether the neighbors like it or not, and we would just have to accept that. He claimed, among other things, that because so many CU students had passed through the commercial district over the years, that made the commercial district into a regional center. I think he overlooked Council's designation of the Uni Hill commercial center as BMS-X, which is the zoning intended for neighborhood centers. I think he also overlooked the extremely small size of the district. At 254,000 square feet, it is less than six acres in size. And we all know he conveniently overlooked the current lack of parking, and the inability of the district, because of its extremely small size, to accommodate anything approaching sufficient parking to support a regional center. Indeed, just to provide adequate parking for what is now there would require the entire surface area of the district just for a parking structure. CU may be a regional attraction. But Uni Hill commercial district is a neighborhood district. Because of its size, it has a permanent inability to provide adequate parking, and insufficient space to provide enough retail, restaurant and other venues to ever rise to the level of a regional center. Council recognized this in 1997 with BMS-X zoning, and this is its best and highest use. To try to force it into a regional center is to do violence to its history, its resources and the surrounding neighborhood. We urge Council, Planning Board, UHGID and the BVCP ~o recognize and acknowledge this fact. No amount of heated rhetoric will ever Molly W inter - 41012 RCG Analysis v3.0.doc ~'~?age 10 Hill into a regional commercial center.