City Council Work Session — January 27, 2026

! Yes, thank you, mayor. ! Good evening, everyone. ! We have two items scheduled for discussion tonight. ! The first one is focused on economic health. So we'll be looking at adapting to a ! changing regional role and integrated proactive approach to economic health. ! And then our second item is transit-oriented And our second item is transit-oriented communities implementation. No changes to the published agenda. So, Mayor, if it's all right with you, we'll go ahead and get started.

And we do have a staff presentation this evening. So, Sana Kendall, who is our economic health director, will kick us off. And then she is joined at the table by Michael Bussman from our economic health office and Clay Fricke from our planning department. So, Sana, we'll turn it over to you.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having us here tonight. We're going to talk about just economic health and where Fort Collins sits within the Northern Colorado region. Northern Colorado benefits from a complementary demographic in terms of workforce as well as different industries. So we really like to leverage that aspect within Northern Colorado. The goal here in the conversation is really to talk about how do we achieve strong economic outcomes through an intentional integrated approach. So first off, I would like to ground in what this presentation is and is not. So it's not about hitting a panic button. It's really about recalibrating and talking about our economic strategy as we move forward. The discussion is also not about incentivizing any and all businesses. You'll see that we're very specific in terms of the industries that we're looking at, as well as an opportunity for an expansion on the retail side. We're also going to be giving a highlight of where we were where we're at today and

Really want to have a conversation with council about where you see our future is and how we might leverage those Tools to really help with the evolution of the business assistance package policy

We also are not really setting this up as a us versus them in terms of our regional partners We want to see everyone succeed This really is about what is Fort Collins see themselves doing as they grow up. So if you can Michael So here really the questions are based on what does success look like if this

policy is fully aligned with city goals and council priorities and to reiterate this is really a

conceptual conversation about what the policy is today and how it could potentially evolve in future

So we're really looking for conversation with council about the opportunities within the policy recommendations.

Next slide.

So we really wanted to ground council on the economic health strategic plan as well as the vision.

So Fort Collins, a healthy, equitable, and resilient community where people and businesses can thrive.

It's really about having a balanced approach with primary employment and Main Street businesses

and knowing that those successes are tied together to create a really resilient, thriving local economy.

So many economic development organizations and communities typically focus on one or the other.

In Fort Collins, we actually, our office focuses on both. And so really wanting to make sure that the whole ecosystem is working in conjunction.

This really is about how do we look at high-quality jobs, upward mobility opportunities and options,

as well as keeping the community characteristics in social fabric and the reinvesting in Fort Collins as a whole.

Next slide. Thank you. As mentioned in last week's Trend in Forces, there is quite a bit of changes happening in our local economy. Economic conditions have continued to change at a rapid pace. We know this. There's a lot of economic uncertainty, whether it's tariffs, high insurance costs, et cetera. businesses are experiencing tighter labor markets, really higher costs and slimmer profit margins, which also puts pressures on the community as the costs go and roll through there, as well as tightening in the labor market. We also know since 2020, labor and consumer behaviors have changed. The opportunities to work from home, as well as in terms of consumer behavior, the online shopping accessibility. So Fort Collins, it really is known for its quality of life, entertainment, shopping destination, and jobs. However, communities around Fort Collins are growing and becoming more proactive and competitive, specifically for sales tax revenue and high-quality jobs through primary employment. As CFO White mentioned last week, this is really the forecast for 2026. economic projects take years to develop so it's not like hey go ahead and start attracting those companies and it'll happen this week the goal is really to talk about long-term outcomes not what is happening in the short term for this

we work through this and some council have seen this I think I believe utilities also shows a similar model we really wanted to focus here on what is those things that the market really controls and what are those items that the city can influence in this space for economic health our areas really are around primary employment quality jobs and upward mobility opportunities the

revitalization of neighborhood centers are main street businesses in 15-minute

city opportunities really the sales tax stabilizing and hopefully increasing you

know the revenues in that come into the city as well as we work on the policy

side and really how do we become business friendly and really help support businesses start and open and thrive here in Fort Collins.

So we wanted to talk a little bit about where we were in terms of our business assistance package policy. I want to remind council that this is actually only one tool and one activity within the

economic health office. We do so much more in this space.

but a good policy really allows us to be

Strategic as well as put some guardrails and parameters around what we are trying to accomplish here

national data actually shows that

Communities lose between five to ten percent of jobs locally every year if you're not focusing specifically on Businesses and helping and ensuring that businesses are not closing or relocating or consolidating in those spaces So we really are focused in that opportunity A couple of things I want to highlight specifically on this one. We also created a performance-based assistance. So what that means is they promise us something and we validate that before the money is given to them. So they actually pay those fees and then we rebate them.

So the example I would like to highlight because I've gone through both projects from start to finish is Avago 1 and 2, which is Broadcom.

In that, they promised to spend about $250 million in investments.

That was 2012 and 2013.

They promised a total of 227 net new jobs paying over the Larimer County average weekly wage. So that was also a requirement within the policy of making sure that they were paying above the average weekly wage of our county.

Avago Now Broadcom actually delivered 639 jobs instead of the 227 of net new jobs with the two combined projects.

In addition, Broadcom continues to invest in our community. So they have spent over $1 billion in Fort Collins alone since 2011.

In addition, last year they've been recognized for their award-winning workforce center that they have created inside their organization for their employees with partnership of Front Range Community College,

really to give their employees opportunities for economic mobility and different career choices as they so choose.

Another way that we wanted to highlight was Woodward. So the project with Woodward was for the corporate headquarter.

We actually were in competition with other states as well as regionally.

And so this was a great project in terms of being able to retain the 700 jobs in Fort Collins, as well as an opportunity to grow further. Woodward had promised 700 jobs. This incentive actually was agreed upon in 2015. The first compliance check was in 2018, so they met certain compliance there. We rebated them some money. And their last compliance check was supposed to be December 31st of 2020. And so they were unfortunately not able to meet their employment numbers. And the city notified them that we were not going to be able to give them their full rebate because they have not met that. And again, we want to highlight Woodward, although they did not get their full assistance and rebate, they actually have doubled in almost quadrupled in size. So we are seeing that their employment numbers that

241 was as of December 31st 2020, but they have actually added quite a significant amount of employment here in Fort Collins as well

So one thing to note about our existing policy is These are our guiding principles. So one size fits all and there is no one size fits all approach in this We are very much performance-based. The company pays in to the use and sales tax, and then we look at that and what their expenditures were and then give them that rebate.

The specific targeted industries that we are focused on through Council's approval of the 2023 Economic Health Strategic Plan is specific to life sciences and climate technology. Again, because we wanted them to align with what our community was interested in. And then semiconductors. Each of these packages do go before council.

And so we wanted to acknowledge that as well.

One thing also to note is the assistance package policy has not been utilized actually since 2015. So although we have done some support for businesses, it has not been in terms of a formal assistance package. We've helped them through assistance through utilities or incentives through county in the state But we have not actually done a formal assistance package through the city of Fort Collins since 2015 So Wanting to share just a comparable of where we're at today in terms of the economic incentives for primary employers

So again, this is specific for primary employers our assistance package up to this point has only been for primary employers in this space

We had two tools that we really focused on one was the manufacturing use tax rebate And then the other one was on the burst a business personal property tax and you will see that our other neighboring communities Actually have an array of tools that they utilize within their assistance packages We also put Colorado on here for you to see because we do compete quite often with Colorado in those spaces. Yes.

Sorry, can I ask a question? So on the row for business personal property tax waiver and rebates, in the item summary, there was a line that said there's no city business property tax mill to allocate because of the agreement with PFA. So there is no business property tax rebate to give so those examples the five examples in the previous one was pre IGA with PFA

Got you. Yes, thank you

One other thing can you go back just real quick? I just wanted to also mention so all of the

Communities in our in northern Colorado have actually a regional code of ethics

So we have all signed a code of ethics that we will not go and poach other companies within our neighboring communities

And that we really want to provide good customer service So if a company is in Fort Collins that's looking to move into Loveland

Loveland economic development is supposed to pick up a phone call phone and call me and we're supposed to have a conversation

About that as well as how we might be able to retain them in the region So if we are going to have to lose them in Fort Collins, how do we keep them in the region? So just wanting to share that as well.

So a couple of things I wanted to point out. First off, what have we been doing since 2015 in terms of business assistance? A couple of things is laying down the foundation. So Fort Collins was actually the first to create a Fort Collins chip zone. That specifically is an opportunity for semiconductor manufacturers in research and development to get three out of the seven Enterprise Zone tax credits.

In addition, this last year, in 2025, we were working with the state and Larimer County specifically to expand Fort Collins' Enterprise Zone. So you'll see we actually added north of Vine, which was not part of the Enterprise Zone,

all the way up, as well as on what we call the South Trilby area,

but from Harmony to Trilby, specific for hopeful redevelopment opportunities there.

So really taking in feedback from others. And then on the other side is the most commonly used tools for business assistance for primary employers. Having talked with both the City of Denver and with Colorado Springs, I will want to point out the expedited review is probably the biggest one that they have said they have utilized the most.

and companies have found the most value in at this point.

So really wanting to share that. We're exploring with our utilities and other partners,

really what type of tools we should be utilizing in Fort Collins. Really the outcome we're hoping to achieve is...

thinking about what the value is and encouraging them to grow and reinvest in our community. So with that, we are also going to talk about the retail side and the opportunity around expanding our business assistant package. That's a really hard word to say right back to back, so I apologize. Really about what does the evolution of our business assistants look like? And you'll see we'll interchange the word business assistants with incentives, so wanting to acknowledge that there is some change there. So oftentimes when commercial development is coming to Fort Collins and exploring Fort Collins, Economic Health is asked to look at what is the opportunities in terms of economic incentives, sales tax opportunities, as well as sales tax leakage. But it's always been these one-offs where we're looking at one development at a time. And we really lacked clarity around what is a citywide strategy around retail development. So in 2025, we spent a lot of time with our partners in planning, sales tax, and the URA to really talk about what would a citywide retail strategy look like. So with that, I want to hand it over to Michael Bussman.

Thank you, Zahna. Hello, council. pretty loud scoot that back nice to see y'all I'm looking forward to the discussion tonight the section of the presentation outlines outlines why retail matters the economic health and neighborhood vitality of Fort Collins and why a more intentional city role could be beneficial as Sana stated our intention tonight is to start the conversation around building a strategic framework to align retail investment with long-term community goals these are new discussion items for our community and we want to approach it slowly and we want to be aware and acknowledge the tensions around it we also want to talk through where action is needed how different retail typologies function and what tools the city could use to remain competitive while maintaining clear guard rails the map on the right i apologize it's not the easiest to read but it shows fort collins regional trade area which is the area in which the city draws its shoppers and so how far people are willing to travel generally. It also highlights current and future residential growth within that area, reinforcing a continued retail demand. While Fort Collins is generating new retail spending, recent data suggests that the city is capturing a declining share of regional retail development, creating an opportunity to better capture future demand by strengthening key retail nodes, protecting neighborhood centers, and aligning zoning and recruitment to attract sales tax generating uses.

With that in mind, the framework responds to two related challenges we're seeing at the same time. Softening brick and mortar sales tax and aging underperforming neighborhood centers. These issues aren't isolated. They affect the city's long-term fiscal health and our ability to to deliver neighborhood scale services and amenities. The intent here is to start to build a clear city led strategy for how Fort Collins participates in retail development, not to create a standing incentive or react to individual proposals. Our strategy should be about lining retail investment with long term community goals. Next slide.

I forgot it was me.

Mm-hmm. So over the past decade and a half, Fort Collins has lost ground as a regional retail destination. we've remained about a steady 50% of Larimer County's population but our percentage of total county sales is declining. While overall sales tax growth has appeared pretty stable much of that growth is tied to online sales rather than brick-and-mortar activity. At the same time our neighboring communities are aggressively expanding retail and using sales tax incentives to attract high-performing stores. The result is less outside money coming in and increased sales tax leakage with our residents shopping outside of the city. Choosing to not act is not neutral. It effectively seeds that competitive ground and seeds the sales tax to surrounding communities. So to talk through kind of another difficult to see map, sorry about that, we're going to go through retail typologies. So not all retail plays the same role, and this potential strategy is built around that reality. Regional nodes, pictured in blue, are primary sales tax drivers and compete at a regional scale. Examples are Front Range Village, the Whole Food Shopping Center, Mulberry Crossing. Typical trade area for this is five miles, which is how far people are willing to travel in those, generally speaking. And that is reflected in the retail trade area that we displayed on the first slide. Downtown is a regional node, but it acts different. It's a large tourist attraction. And when we're looking to strategize attracting large retail development and redevelopment, we're mostly focused on other regional nodes in the city. And so moving to neighborhood centers pictured in green, they're critical to the daily needs and are central to the city's 15-minute city objectives. The examples here are Taft and Elizabeth with Cedarwood Plaza, Scotch Pines. These are grocery anchored and typical trade area of about two miles. Last up is pictured in red neighborhood strips. They serve local markets, support small business. and while they do generate sales tax revenue, they generally don't drive regional sales tax performance. So example here, Campus West shops, Prospecting College, Horsetooth and Shields, a typical trade area of about one mile. The key takeaway is that how these function differently, they warrant a different level of support. And so if we look to the next slide, start talking about desired outcomes by typology. And so for retail nodes, which is another hard word to say, sorry, for retail regional nodes, the focus should be on stabilizing and growing durable sales tax revenue while maintaining regional competitiveness. The potential desirable outcome here is the attraction of impactful retail opportunities. For neighborhood centers, emphasis really should shift to reinvestment, modernization, reduced leakage by strengthening local access to goods and services. We're looking at redevelopment here, alignment with 15-minute city goals to better serve the community. For neighborhood strips, the goal should be to support local business, primarily through indirect benefits and complementary reinvestment. This strategy should not be one-size-fits-all and should be tied directly to the outcomes we want in each of these locations. And so for the next slide, in order to set this type of policy evolution in motion before or at least in parallel to any type of incentive strategy, we really need to ensure alignment with the regulatory framework. So let's quickly jump to Clay Fricke to set that table.

Good evening, counsel. Thanks for having me. I'm like the little sidebar in the book for this presentation to talk about a very specific topic and one of our favorites, zoning. So if you bear with me for just a moment, this slide is showing the existing commercial zone districts in Fort Collins. Their intent statements that are in the land use code. These are summarized. These are not the paragraph-long intent statements of the zone districts. And then generally speaking, what type of housing we permit within those zone districts. and we had our consultants as part of the retail study just do an analysis of what our regulations look like for our commercial centers to see how well they align with these commercial typologies and why this is important is because these commercial typologies are the way that the development community views these commercial centers and it's also the way that people experience our community every day as Michael was mentioning these large regional centers are places that people will go to from a five mile radius doesn't mean they're going to be going there every day so therefore the things that we're going to be looking for and the things that we want to get in those centers are going to look different than your small strips you know right in the neighborhood and so our zoning should reflect that and what you're seeing here on the screen is a we have five but this is a non-comprehensive list of all of our commercial zone districts so that's part one part two is they're all saying almost the same thing and there's not a lot of distinction between them. And so if we really want to align our strategies around retail, we want to make sure that our regulations are also aligned and are basically singing the same tune. And so right now this is something that is a little bit of a gap in our regulatory framework. And this is something that we talked about during the commercial quarters and centers updates. And I'm not going to spoil the next presentation, but we'll be bringing it back during the next presentation. We're talking about transit-oriented communities implementation as well. So we want to make sure that we get those aligned. And Michael started this presentation off and Sana has talked a lot about incentives as well and that's another key component for making sure that all of these commercial centers are able to adapt to the future needs of our community. So I'm going to hand it back off to Michael to wrap us up there and talk to us about some incentives for retail.

Great, thanks Clay. Let's jump to the next slide. So as previously mentioned, our neighboring communities have been aggressively expanding retail. So just Over the last 15 years, Timnith has added about 130,000 square feet of retail space, Loveland, 310,000, and Johnstown, a whopping 1.2 million square feet of retail space. Fort Collins has added in that time frame about 90,000 square feet. And it's worth mentioning, and I think quite obvious, that our position is different. For one, we have a lot less available space for this type of high-impact greenfield retail build-out. But we should look at what we do have. the few remaining parcels and the redevelopment opportunities and build a strategy that moves our community forward. And so next slide, the potential tools that we're looking at, this framework generally looks at two complementary incentive tools that allow the city to right size participation in projects. The first is an enhanced sales tax incentive program or an SDIP. They're intended for large, high impact projects with regional significance, including major retail attraction and redevelopment. This type of incentive is often tied to specific improvements in the project that have extended community benefit. Things like utilities needs, infrastructure improvements, etc. This type of project would be or this type of program would be regional node targeted and typically carry a much higher CapEx qualification. So larger spend gets us into that realm. The next tool is a simple, more simple sales tax share back. And these tend to be more or looked at more appropriately for neighborhood center reinvestment. They offer a lighter touch in an increment based approach. These differ from STIPS in that they're not often tied to specific line items, for lack of a better term, in the project. They're more flexible in their application. It's a rebated sales tax to support a larger outcome. If used as a tool, we can build the total increment based on city benefits. So more benefit, more increment. This can be targeted at specific areas or locations with the main goal to modernize neighborhood centers and be better aligned with our 15-minute city priorities. As an important note for the record, both of these types of incentives tend to be time-limited, cap-limited, entirely performance-based, and paid as a rebate after sales taxes remitted. Any number of qualifications can also be required. Total investment, alignment with city plan, etc. Together, these tools provide flexibility without expanding the city's exposure or committing to incentives by default. There's a third potential tool, not really in the incentive discussion, but worth bringing up to help the local businesses in neighborhood strips as well. It's an economic development fund to help support small business. So in neighborhood strips, you know, mostly tenants, things like that, they need help with facade improvements, connectivity upgrades, interior redesigns and remodels things like that and if there were a way to fund a larger economic development fund to use that word twice it would be worth exploring but today we're gonna mostly focus on these incentives so next slide yeah so I think anytime we're talking about something like incentives especially in Fort Collins with this being a new subject, we really need to define what we think guardrails and operating principles look like. So to reiterate, incentives are a limited tool and they need to be utilized with these clear guardrails. There must be a clear nexus between public investment and measurable public benefit. Incentives will be evaluated on objective criteria, including sales tax impact, alignment with 15-minute city goals, redevelopment outcomes, and infrastructure efficiencies. Every incentive would be, again, performance-based, capped, time-limited, relying only on new sales tax revenue generated by the project. And importantly, all incentive agreements would require city council approval, ensuring transparency and accountability for the effort. So retail incentives, Again, I'm just driving this point home, not entitlements, they're not one-off responses. When used strategically, they can be a deliberate tool to move beyond stabilization and create direct reinvestment into existing commercial areas to strengthen Fort Collins' long-term economic position. By clearly defining priorities and guardrails, this framework can clarify how and when the city engages, improve predictability for the market, and ensure Fort Collins remains competitive within the region while maintaining fiscal discipline and public account. And so with that, I'm going to pass it back to Sonia to wrap up and then we can jump into the discussion.

So with that, you know, we wanted to have a discussion with council in terms of what does the specific ideas and guardrails look like for the evolution of this policy? One other piece I want to acknowledge is around incentives. I think folks think, oh, you're giving away incentives that we in revenue we have today. This is actually for projects we do not have today. So there is no revenue unless this project is to come forward the other piece is It a lot of people will say it's the deciding factor. We know it is not. However, it is an equalizer People will say it's the deciding factor we know it is not however it is an equalizer for us in terms of what our neighboring communities are doing in this space as well ! So really evening the playing field for us to be a strong competitive opportunity for businesses to expand and relocate in Fort Collins so we're happy to answer to answer ! So really evening the playing field for us to be a strong competitive opportunity for businesses to be a little bit of a lot of the

planning! Great thank you so much. Do council members have questions or comments? We'll go to Amy and then Melanie. have questions or comments? We'll go to Amy and then Melanie. Just real quick, did the regional

trade area expand recently? Is that, is it completely in line with the enterprise zone?

So does the regional trade area align with the enterprise zone? Sort of two different parts of a similar conversation. So the enterprise zone is a boundary in which tax initiatives or sorry tax breaks are available to businesses that qualify for certain industries and obligations whereas the retail trade area the regional trade area is really a delineation on a map that is maybe imperfect but it just shows the boundary in which folks are willing to travel for retail goods and

services. Michael, can I add to that? Please do. So, Councilmember Hoven, one of the pieces is actually the Enterprise Zone is for any businesses, right? And we know with future projected projects on the northeast side of Fort Collins, we wanted to make sure that that was included in that space. So, restaurant retail can also apply for the Enterprise Zone tax credits as well. It's for high-paying jobs, job training, benefits for employees, those aspects too. So just wanted to

share that. Thank you. Melanie. Yeah, thank you guys so much for the presentation.

This is going to feel like kind of a random question, but I think something that's been in

the news a lot is the use of incentives in Greeley for their Catalyst Cascadia project. And I I recognize that the scale of that project and probably the degree to which they're incentivizing is very different. But can you guys speak to mechanisms that they are using that have been controversial and how that relates to the kinds of incentives we're talking about, which sound probably a little bit more or pretty measured and pretty controlled?

I don't know how much. It's in the news all the time. So I just want to reassure folks that this is different.

This is quite different. But what I would say is I want to make sure I'm giving you the correct information. So I will probably do that in a follow-up memo. Okay.

That sounds great. And then we had a resident who wrote in, and I think you guys saw the email, but he had some questions about the potential for reductions in money going into the general fund, longevity of businesses who receive incentives and impacts on small business. And I don't know if you could speak to any of those with regard to the incentives that we're proposing. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. I think that the trade-offs brought up by the community member are often the topic of conversation when incentives come up. And I think that there's often this discussion between, you know, public costs for private benefit, I think, is the first piece of that, right? And I think that it's true in some cases. I don't think we can avoid that, that that has happened in other communities. But I think that there's an opportunity to build a strategy here that really leans into public investment for public benefit. And I think as opposed to saying, you know, picking winners and things like that, right? We instead tie it to the goals of the community rather than what the project is. The other piece of that, I think that there is some concern that sort of any deal is a good deal. And again, I want to continue to reinforce that what we're trying to do here is pick and choose where we want these and what we want to happen. So we want to base incentives on outcomes rather than, well, as long as you're coming to town, we'll give you money. And then the other piece is that all of the incentives we're talking about today on both sides of the coin are essentially they exist based on the revenue that the project creates. Right. And so we can talk about specifically in retail development. Most of what we're talking about is increment based. Right. So similar to the way the URA performs or something like that around property taxes, except around sales tax. And so, you know, if whatever the city brought in on sales tax and then the project increases that the increment is what's increased. And that's what we're talking about the potential of sharing back portions of. And so it is not revenue that currently exists in the community. It's revenue that exists because of the project.

OK. The other piece I would say is we have really put in those kind of guardrails already on the primary employment side. So we actually do not pay up front. We are really wanting to make sure performance is had. So we go through a process with our sales tax team to verify whether or not it's sales or use tax, right, as well as making sure that the taxes have already been paid in terms of business, personal property taxes. And then we also do an employment verification. So I can tell you it is a long process, but one that has been really a collaborative opportunity to also have conversations with the companies about the future and potential growth that they are going to have, too.

Thank you guys for being prepared to answer those questions. I appreciate it. My last question is just, and I don't know to what extent you know the sales profiles of the communities that are growing in their commercial spaces. But I'm curious if there's been a shift towards more sales tax coming from services than goods or if people are still buying as many items. Because I noticed like in Fort Collins, people are buying fewer home furnishings and things like that. I was wondering if that is all because of online buying or if, you know, I think younger generations seem to be leaning more into buying secondhand or I would hope so.

So I guess, yeah, are the communities where they're growing, is it actually selling physical goods or are they offering more service based products?

I think that that question is a little bit challenging to answer because we don't know exactly. Right. But we can say that, you know, if you look at, you know, large, impactful greenfield retail developments that have been stood up in the last decade or so, You look at a store like the, I don't care, remember what it's called, but where Shields is in Johnstown. So Shields got built. There's a bunch of other sort of supporting large retail chains. And then there's restaurants in there. And it really is this idea that you could go and buy essentially anything that anyone has ever wanted. Right. But the thing that we're seeing is that their potential growth in these retail node type places focus really on shoppers goods. So again, shoppers' goods tend to be higher priced, less commonly purchased things, not day-to-day essentials. And so when we look at these big, impactful retail stores, like a Shields or something like that, folks are going in to buy sporting goods. But I'm only going to buy whatever baseball bat one time every two seasons if my kid would just slow down growing. right and so you know you you buy you tend to buy things like that in person right and then we start to move towards um you know the day-to-day type stuff which hopefully neighborhood centers can anchor that in our community and sort of reduce the obligation or the desire for folks to shop online and so i don't think i actually answered your question but i can say it's hard to know but there's still plenty of opportunity in purchasing hard goods well and i do

recognize that we are not dictating what kinds of businesses are coming. That's, you know, that's the market. I'm just wondering, I was just curious if consumer habits have shifted at all. But I do hear that we have opportunities to diversify in Fort Collins versus folks going to say Shields.

Yeah. And I think that it's clear to say that online shopping has dramatically increased and even before COVID, but especially since COVID. So that, I think, is the reality. I think that there is an opportunity to try to secure some of that brick and mortar that is left.

Okay. Thank you so much. Other council members?

Mayor, if I can ask, our chief financial officer does have some additional visibility into Council Member Patiandi's first question. If we want to invite him up to give just a little bit of insight in the difference of that structure before we go on to additional questions.

I wondered if you would know about Greeley's situation.

Thank you, counsel. Please be here tonight. What SANA and the team are talking about is very different. I think the key thing is talking about incremental new revenue that the city doesn't currently have. What Greeley is doing is really trying to, through a number of different financial mechanisms, create a hub that will then attract economic development. So, for example, they haven't even gotten to the specific conversations for some of the ancillary economic development in that project for what sales tax shareback incentives could look like. My understanding of the areas that are probably causing the most community conversation in Greeley is that the city of Greeley is extending significant direct financial support to the project, which is an ice arena, a hotel water park, and youth hockey center. And that includes both a commitment to make an annual appropriation for an economic development payment, which the payment is then repayment to the city is dependent on project performance. And then secondly, the city is lending credit support to the total financing package for that, which could potentially lead to financial exposure for the city in the future if the project wasn't successful. So as I understand it, I think those are probably the most, the elements of the project that are generating the

most commentary in the community. Thank you. None of which we are talking, we're talking about

something totally different. I do not, this is not a similar type of incentive structure to that

project. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Caleb. Other council members? Yeah.

Thank you so much for your joint presentation. It was really interesting. I have a lot of

questions. I spent a lot of time with the retail strategy report especially. I think I have

questions for all of you. So we'll see.

So the first one, a lot of the retail strategy report deals with projecting the future, looking into the future. I was trying to walk back the metrics and figure out how that was generated. I think I got there, but this is outside of my normal realm.

So on page 15 of the retail report, and it's page 30 in the packet, it gives a number of residential units that are planned to be developed within the trade area over the next 20 years. That's a pretty long time. And how is this a meaningful number?

I'm sorry, could you repeat the end of your question, Councilmember Nelson? Of course.

So the report gives a number of residential units planned to be developed within the trade area within the next 20 years, which is a long time. So how is that a meaningful number? Because I think then they take that number of planned or proposed future homes and then translate that into eventually like a number that results in like 400,000 square feet of net new retail that the city of Fort Collins can support. So I'm just trying to figure out like how reliable is that number? And I mean, is that the benchmark that we're using to evaluate like what what our community can support? It's all interesting stuff. I just want to make sure that we understand like how concrete these numbers are.

Sure. So, yeah, economic planning systems got these numbers from the planning department. And so the 20 year outlook, especially for some of the anticipated growth in northeast Fort Collins is based on the metro district service plans. and the phase schedule of build out for some of those larger communities like Montava and Bloom. So I would say that with anything that's a 20-year projection, there's going to be some noise in there. It's not going to be perfect, but I think it's based on some of the financial planning from these developers that we got from the Metro District Service Plans and their anticipated build-out schedule. So I would say there's some rigor to it, and so I think there is some degree of certainty, but it's obviously going to be imperfect.

And then I think the second part of that is, is that how we formulated that 400,000 square feet of supportable retail space? In a sense, yeah. But I think the important piece of that 400,000 square feet is similar to what Clay's saying about the semi-theoretical nature of that growth, right? This is semi-theoretical in nature as well, right? And so I think that based on those growth projections and sort of sales per square foot, which a lot of these retail businesses utilize, it's not out of the question to say we could support 400,000 new square feet of retail. That said, do we have that opportunity? Are those parcels available?

How are we breaking that up? And I think that as we move through this discussion, it's important to really sort of lean into the conceptual alignment and then understand that.

that growth is coming and there's retail opportunity and how best do we seize our

portion of that? Okay. So we're not looking specifically at like, okay, well, you know, I imagine one of those like fundraising thermometers and we've made it to like 200,000 net new units or net new. I think we'll install one of those in the office. Yeah. No, we won't.

I just heard, but, but I can say, right. When you're talking about, we're not talking about specific parcels. There is some look into say, hey, we could benefit from an I-25 adjacent retail development with an impact retailer.

There are currently some plans for some of those parcels. So is there a way to help affect the outcome of that with these type of numbers with growth projections and potential for retail in mind when continuing to talk about things like that?

Yeah, that's helpful. The retail report also focuses a lot of attention on attracting larger regional, national, even some international chains. So I want to make sure that I have an understanding of the net benefit to the community in supporting national chains like that versus any potential net cost.

Yeah, I think that it's when we're talking about this type of attraction, large national and international chains have a predictable size, shape, requirement, revenue figure. Right. And so from an incentive or assistance package perspective, it's easier to work with them to understand what the potential benefit to the public is, what the revenues are, things like that. So, and again, back to the shoppers goods category, again, these are typically national chains that are in sporting goods or home furnishings or appliances.

And so, again, when we can predict the needs of those businesses and then align those with the things that people are leaving the community to purchase, it creates gaps.

And those gaps, we can see specific large regional or large national international chains to fill those.

All right. Clay, I think these questions are for you now. So I know that the recommendation in the retail strategy document was to probably get rid or like simplify the five planning zones or sorry, five commercial zones. But I'm curious if you can give us any insight into why they were so specific in the first place. And did we see any benefit from that? Were they successful in some way? I could not tell the difference between them.

Yeah, to try and answer that succinctly, a lot of this came from when we adopted city plan in 1997. And some of those commercial zone districts were in response to the conditions on the ground. Some of those were a response to the community that we want to be. So the neighborhood commercial zone district is a good example. That was a new zone district that we created and mainly to try and create complete neighborhoods that had residential and commercial close to one another. And so the concept was that at major intersections, you'd have neighborhood commercial, grocery anchored commercial center with multifamily around that and then a neighborhood beyond it that's all connected to try and get people to live, work, play close to together. And so that was a concept behind the neighborhood commercial zone district. I think it's had some mixed success. We have some good examples. We have some examples that have never been built, which is another topic for another day. But so I'd say mixed results there. Some of them, too, came out of sub-area plan efforts and looking at more specific parts of our community and what those communities need. So, for example, in the community commercial category, what you did not see on the slide are the two other community commercial zone districts. One, the community commercial river district, which is downtown, and that came from the downtown plan. And then the community commercial North College zone district, which is on North College, which came from the North College quarter plan. And this desire to try and acknowledge that North College is different than the rest of the community. And so have a customized zone district that is trying to deliver a neighborhood that has a different character than perhaps other parts of the community. And I'd say the interesting case study there is what we learned is that allowing short-term rentals in there because we alLod lodging establishments, which was different than other zone districts, meant that we saw lots of short-term rentals in Old Town North. And the way that that all built out was mainly residential, not commercial, because the commercial was taken care of on College Avenue. And so I would say that was one of the learnings there is that we had this aspiration for what those neighborhoods would look like and they ended up being different.

So I think that's also to just part and parcel of just these zone districts evolving over time and us adopting things over time as needs arise. And now is a good chance for us to take a step back and ask ourselves what's going to serve our community best in the future. and that's why we partnered with economic health on this retail study was to try and make sure that what economic health is doing and planning is doing is aligned and so I would say that's where the consolidation effort is coming from is wanting to make sure that we're yeah that we're we have regulatory framework in place that's going to serve us best for the future awesome um so two

further thoughts on that I think or questions really so the retail report seems to suggest

that residential units are something to sort of protect the commercial zones against um I think packet page 52 which I'm not in but I will be in um yeah it talks about the Harmony Road corridor district and how it restricts residential significantly. The approach of restricting residential and higher value employment in commercial zones are typical in many communities. And also back at page 52. Oh no, that's the, sorry, 56.

Yeah, talking about limiting non-supporting uses, i.e. residential, when you're changing

the zone district standards. So I'd like to hear a little bit more about the city planning

department's position with that. And is that something that resonates or something we should

be aware of or just does not reflect our 15-minute city goals. It felt like a very strong statement.

Yeah. So I'll take a few things there. So one, just to talk specifically about Harmony Corridor first, pertaining to the first part of your question. We did recently update our land use code to try and permit some more flexibility. And the reason why is we have some large sites that have sat vacant for a very long time waiting for primary employer that's never materialized. And I think acknowledging that when we adopted the Harmony Corridor Plan and implemented those standards in the 90s, the office environment was very different than it is today.

And so that's why we made the move to move from a 75-25 split of primary uses to secondary uses to 50-50.

still preserve some opportunity for large employers to find a home in the Harmony Corridor, which I think would align well with what we want to achieve, while still allowing some more flexibility for housing, knowing that that's a top priority of our community. And so I think that's probably the same story actually for the other commercial parts of our community as well is, I mean, I would say balance is kind of the key. And I think the report is very strong in saying And we want to preserve spots for larger retailers, knowing how important they are for our economy and trying to provide goods and services for folks that live here and to also make sure we remain competitive in the region.

But, you know, it's it's also to if we want to achieve our 15 minute city goals, getting people to live closer to commercial areas or introducing more commercial into neighborhoods. Those are sort of our two options with the way that we're built out.

And so part of what we want to do as the planning department is to approach both of those strategically. And so I think from the planning department's perspective, we absolutely want to support and make sure that we're not taking every possible commercial space away from potential retailers, small businesses, things like that. But we also want to make sure that we are achieving those goals around sustainability, reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, and just creating a more urban place. And a way to do that is to bring some more housing to those areas. And so it's a balance. And so I think that was kind of maybe my takeaway from it.

Okay. One just follow-up question to that, and then I think this is – then I'll have one more question, and then I'll be done. so I'm curious about the the pedestrian experience with a lot of these existing commercial zones and some of the the retailers that we're attracting in that style of development right I mean we're not we're talking about like holding space for essentially a big box and what incentives or like what strategies do we have to to make sure that this development One, I mean, it's a great financial opportunity. I don't discount that. But making sure that we're not neglecting pedestrians in that approach.

Yeah, our land use code has some really specific requirements around block size to try and address that. And also to pedestrian connectivity and street connectivity.

So we've updated those over time as well to try and introduce either sidewalk connections, things like that to break up parking lots. So that way it's not just a big box, big sea of parking and then your street.

So step one, Landy's Code requires the building to be brought to the street. So that's number one. We have some exceptions. The most noble one I can think of is the new King Soopers because they were occupying an existing building that was already there. And so there is some special consideration for those sorts of circumstances. But in general, what we would look for is to bring the building to the street and then for the parking area, minimize the size of the parking field. And as part of our recent updates, Landy's Code, we also limited the size of those surface parking lots, which we did not have before.

So we're currently, yeah, we're recently strengthened some of those standards to try and address and get better urbanism. We also have outdoor space requirements in the general commercial zone district and in the TOD. And that is to try and get some better spaces for pedestrians to go hang out and it's not just

Building and parking lot and so there's a lot in the land use code to try and get at that

And then the last piece is our is our street standards and trying to get our streets to also

Be more pedestrian friendly aligned with our visions your goals Also another topic for another day, but I think is another important factor that is worth mentioning

Okay, so last question and I really I don't know which one of you gets to answer this. But so what does this incentive process look like? A business comes in, they're interested, like who do they talk to and what is that timeline in working together to come up with a process? See, I did get every one of you. All right.

Yeah. So currently how it works today is we will get a request for information from a company in terms of what they're looking for. Might be building size, door size, roof side, all of these aspects. Utilities is a big one. Water is a big conversation as well. We'll fill that out. And then they'll actually come back with additional questions. This process probably takes about a year, year and a half, depending on the project. So I can talk about we're working on a project right now that we responded to for the first time in December of 2024. And they have just kind of started to narrow down which sites, right? So we gave them sites based on what our commercial brokers provided, gave them all the information. We kind of get out of the way. And at that point, we're still competing against other states. So that takes a while. And then once they have finalized so we're in the top four of this site And so they'll come for a visit and we'll go through that process So it takes about a year and a half two years Depending on these projects so a long kind of runway from start to finish

Is that a primary employer or a retail?

Yes, so we actually don't have a process for a retail because we've never had a retail strategy

besides those that have approached the Urban Renewal Authority in that process.

So I would say they'll typically come from city manager's office if they've made an inquiry from city managers,

or, again, they'll go directly to the URA, and we have some conversations at the URA side. But we've typically not responded to retail.

Now, tourism, sports kind of conference centers, we will respond to those as well.

Great. Yeah, Julie.

Thank you. I'll start on the retail side and then I have a couple other questions.

So in the study, it talked about retail vacancy rates. I don't know if you're going to be able to answer this, but it looks like we're back up to where we were actually higher than 2018, 2019, but it doesn't feel that way.

can you explain why is it just because we've lost some of the bigger and maybe it's just because of

where i live in district two and where i happen to go but there seems to be a lot of emptiness

can you refer to the page that you're looking at do you have it yeah um it is in the report on page

11 and it's the first figure three retail vacancy rates 2010 to 2025

yeah i'm not 100 sure that i could speak directly to that but i can follow up i think would be a better option i think at this point

I've got a firm enough grasp on it to have what I would classify as a responsible answer. I can say, yeah, I think in some cases it does feel that way, but in other cases it doesn't. And so I think that there are more successful areas of town currently than others. And so, again, I don't have an explanation as to why, but I can see if I can't dig in a bit more on that.

Okay, thank you. And it isn't, I admit, it is not a very fair question. It's just because it's about feeling. It's not about data. So quick question on the retail strategy. Is there any piece of it that's about retaining business or is it only about attracting?

Yeah, so I think that if we look at sort of the two main prongs that we talked about, which would be sort of large, impactful retail recruitment, right? And then we talk about the second opportunity, which would be neighborhood reinvestment, right? So I think that when we look at neighborhood center reinvestment, a lot of that I think is about retention, right? So how can we update these centers, keep the anchor, keep some of the other tenants, and then potentially increase the mix of what's in there? And so I think that when we look more towards that simple sales tax share back for neighborhood center reinvestment, it does focus a little bit more on retention rather than recruitment.

Thank you. Okay. And then going to the broader questions. So I remember when we passed the CHIP zone, is it too soon to see if that has, well, can you answer if it has brought about any interest?

Yes. So actually, the state of Colorado has incentivized one company in an expansion in that zone. It went under a project name, which most projects do because the company does not want competitors to know that they're expanding. So they received about a $2.5 million tax credit from the state of Colorado in terms of the chip zone. Again, performance space, so they'll need to spend that money. And we do have two other companies in that area that are looking at what does expansion look like and how they might be able to take advantage of the CHIMS zone.

Okay, great. Thank you. And then my last question, and this I think is, it's in reference to slide eight.

Yeah, I'm not gonna be able to get there, but I know what it says.

Is it typical that these things are always brought to council for a decision? Like is that because I didn't also see that as something as a comparable to other communities

Yes, so almost everything goes to council I think what I listed there was the city of Loveland has a economic development fund that can go and be done administratively It is capped at 30,000 per company and a maximum of 150,000 annually, but everything else is a council approved Project that goes through okay. Thank you

I have some questions. So if I was reading this right, we're really tonight focusing on larger employers and high impact dollar projects. Is that correct? So the primary employers and then for the retail it says high impact regional projects and then the neighborhood center reinvestment. So we're really talking about like addressing some of the economic concerns and having primary employers and like more Chains or large box stores come here Is that accurate mainly because I'm I'm wondering I Think I'm missing if it's in here what we're doing if this any incentive strategies for small businesses or local businesses And not to say they have to be exclusive. So

That's an interesting question. So I think that when we look at things like sales tax share back style incentives, when we talk about local business moving into a commercial area, they often, as a person with a dream, they rent the space, they open their business.

And so they're often tenants in all of that. And so when we look at the ways to help support those businesses, it's challenging to build TIF districts around that type of thing or sales TIF districts.

around that type of thing. And so that's why we would look to something like an economic development fund.

So I think something like an economic development fund is better positioned to help support those small businesses. The challenge there is how do you fund it? So there's lots of different ways that communities fund these. Sometimes it's just general fund allocations. Sometimes it's a specific fee or tax, whether it be business licensing fees or whatever. We focus tonight mostly on how to incentivize the redevelopment within or updating of neighborhood centers and the stabilization of sales tax through large recruitment. But I think the total strategy encompasses all three levels of those retail typologies. I think there's just a challenge in understanding how to fund the small business programming, which I think we're working towards getting at, But I don't think we've got a clear pathway forward. Initially, we hoped to tether it to, you know, create a TIF, a sales incentive for a large development. And then, you know, shear off a couple percentage points on either side of that increment to then go into an economic development fund.

But based on some research, it doesn't appear that TIF pooling is legal in Colorado. And so we're going to do more research to sort of get to the bottom of that.

But I think that there is an opportunity to understand how to fund that a little bit better before bringing it to council

That said as it's a priority for you all It's an important thing to figure out in this in this piece and we're open to

How to do it and then on the primary side a couple of things I would say Compliance is very burdensome. So we are also trying to make sure what can we do in terms of supporting small mid-size? And this is where I believe enterprise zone is one where we've been talking about not enough Fort Collins businesses actually are aware of the enterprise zone. So how do we communicate that? And our small business team is actually doing a lot of outreach specific to that so that those businesses are aware of the resources and the tax credits that are available for them, as well as our business connectors are kind of helping walk them through when they are looking at expansions what type of resources there might be out there. Because we do not have an economic development fund to be able to support that. The most we have is the small business grant fund and the capital projects technical services But that's it at this point The other piece I would say is you know We do have support agencies that are working with small businesses as well We like to really help our small businesses go through and navigate city processes But also connect them to the right people quicker and faster than them having to search five different layers to get there So we are helping through that and then I do want to mention we do have a What's called the lighter grant and that was specific for small businesses? That was a workforce grant because primary employers get that it's called skills advanced grants through the state of Colorado But it was not meant for small businesses. So we partnered with Larimer County workforce and economic development specifically because we know professional development and professional training in Fort Collins is important and so we wanted to make sure it it also met a for small businesses in that space.

Okay, yeah, I think that's helpful. And I think it's great to try and attract primary employers. I think that people find it really difficult to find livable wage jobs in Fort Collins. So I think it's definitely a space that we need. And there's a time and a place for larger box store, I hate to use the word chain, but chain in our strategy. So I appreciate that. I'm just wondering, is there a timeline for the kind of economic development fund? Is that the name of it? Whatever it is with that fund is it something you need council direction on like I think it's just an important piece because It is so costly to open a business in Fort Collins that I think it would be fair to offer incentives for

You know arranged in small business. So yeah, I think this is why we wanted to come to you council and talk about Here's the outcomes. We're trying to achieve Here's where we're at today and really build that with council So our plan is to come back to council at the end of Q1 in another work session to say we heard you We heard your feedback and here's what we would recommend And then develop the policy and and then bring it back to council for adoption as a resolution

Okay, well, I want to lend my voice to the small business fund whatever or just exploring it or trying to get some better Understanding about what are some ways that we can address this whether it's feet, you know Reducing fees for small business or finding a package. I think I just have if we're going to include that one Concern I would have is the guiding principles has performance-based compliance in there And I don't understand how it apply to something smaller like you're suggesting

Yeah, I think if you if you're sort of working down that stuff the

things that economic development funds typically

Are oftentimes fund or things like facade grants, right? And so there there is

requirements for qualifying for the money, right? And then there's receipts to, you know,

support the compliance of that nature. But it, you know, it's different than the compliance checks for primary employment on, did you invest this amount of money? Did you hire this many people? And so, is the facade upgraded or not, I think could be a good enough compliance check. But I

think, again, and I hesitate to name it anything at this point. And so I just, but that said,

I think that there is an opportunity for some council direction on how to explore that funding and so again I'm not asking for that answer now Totally and that's I think where we're gonna come back and say, you know as we look at the incentive packages Here's the three tiers. We're talking about. Here's the guardrails

Here's qualification measures do they make sense? Okay, that's helpful. Thank you and then um

For kind of updating the incentives package. I think Sonny talked about like having a EV even playing field for our communities around us is that right we're trying okay so my question is is how does it work if if now we're an even playing field incentivized with our surrounding community but we're still the most expensive land and like building wise so then how do we remain competitive if we're still more expensive I would say

That's where really investing in our community in the workforce components That has what really what has portrayed us as competitive when we're talking with our primary employers It's about the skills and really talking about the demographics and the opportunities within that so That's if I understand your question right of how do we stay competitive besides just evening the playing field as you said, right? it is that because again this is not the deciding factor but it is one that shows those businesses that the city is invested with them and moving forward in their expansion or their relocation

to the community okay yeah i just and i was just going to end mayor and i do think there are some other things that again when we're talking about across the city that we haven't necessarily always been as straightforward as some of our competitive advantage in places like utilities right our underground light and power we have a reliability factor that may not still be consistent in all places so there are other things that give us some competitive advantages that we can bring forward in the mix a

little more okay that's helpful thank you and then kind of to Julie's question about some of the vacancy so do we prove is there a are we looking at a difference in incentives if you're instead of building a new building if you're a box store coming in to reusing one of the our existing empty buildings yes that's the kind of feed that super

helpful feedback you know i think that there is this idea that you would incentivize greenfield development for high impact development but there are um several opportunities within the community

of vacant big box right and so being able to offer the incentives for that type of project as well

and potentially change the parameters to make it more appealing or or likely to be in the choice

matrix right and so i think very much we're talking about especially within sort of that upper you know the larger piece of retail attraction both including greenfield development

but there's not a ton of that left but there is redevelopment opportunities and so how do we incentivize the desire to want to do it that way and I do think that that's a

goal and so structuring incentives to favor that direction is a great piece of feedback in it and I think a piece that could be a priority yeah I would

personally like I mean we have limited opportunities as we were talking about in Greenfield and so if we can incentivize kind of somebody moving in and into something that's already developed I'd be in favor of that so I I think overall, this is new for Fort Collins to talk about, but I think that we're on a good, in my opinion, on a good path of thinking about thoughtful incentives.

We have heard that it's hard for people to find jobs here. It's hard.

I would love retail, a better retail here in Fort Collins to not have to order things online. And so I appreciate you all kind of taking the initiative to work through this and bringing in other departments, such as planning and the URA and really like having more of a cross department

conversation because I think instead of siloing it and then not knowing why these things are happening so I appreciate the work that's done on this and I think that overall we're on the right track and it sounds like you'll be back with more information okay great thank you I'm Julia and then Melanie I just realized I didn't answer your questions when I spoke as well so for the three bullets yes I agree keep going and I support what you're doing looking forward to see

what you bring back at the end of Q1 and then what Emily said made me think of a trade-off as well as maybe possible incentives incentives for reuse if there's way that we

sometimes that can be quite a bit. Thanks. You stole my thunder. I was going to say the same thing. I just, I really like the idea of differential incentivization of reuse and I guess that's it. Reuse, redevelopment versus Greenfield. So I third that suggestion and thank you for the hard work.

Any other council? Yeah, Josh. Sorry. I also agree at least with the first two, definitely yes. I kind of support an all of the above look at this and so thank you for bringing all this to us

It's it's interesting. I think on Saturday when we initially talked about our priorities We were looking forward to this work session to help maybe think about some of those and a lot of

Other areas this touches like land use and zoning and all that so thank you

I think it'll help inform at least my thinking when we finalize those priorities next weekend. Thanks

Yeah, Chris

I guess I just have a round of questions too.

I was looking at slide number nine, which looks at the economic incentives for primary employers.

And one of the things I was noticing is that in Fort Collins, you know, the things that other cities are offering like expedited review, inspection fee and waiver rebates, capital expansion fee, waiver rebates, like these are things that council's talking about in our priority session a lot.

Can you talk about what the difference between an expedited review process in a place like Loveland, Greeley, or Colorado Springs, or Denver is versus just making it easier to get through our review process writ large and then not needing this separate track for big employers? Or is there some special meaning behind expedited review that we can't just improve in general?

Can we improve in general? Yes. I can't like what is expedited review mean usually what it means is for for each community we most communities have a targeted time frame for review so when somebody submits something we say we'll get it back to you in x amount of time you know that's going to look different for each community so like I don't know what the target turnaround times are for the city of Denver or the city of Colorado Springs city of Greeley for Fort Collins first round review generally speaking for a larger project is four weeks for the first two rounds review than any subsequent round review is three weeks so the way that we do expedited review for affordable housing projects just by way of example is we take one week off of that and and so that would be one way that we could do expedited review for a primary employer if that's what council wants us to pursue because we have those very specific time frames for review already established

yeah and i guess part of my thinking is like uh if what we're doing is we're taking primary employers and we're shoving them to the front of the line that seems different to me than like can we take one week off of our timeline in general right and then leave and then improve the ecosystem for small business and retail at the same time as for primary employers is part of my thinking i guess and so how much of that how much of expedited review to us would mean like you get a week off whereas other people are gonna take longer and then how much of it is like some second track I would say I'm having talked to

just Colorado Springs in the city and county of Denver a lot of that is

actually having in essence a navigator walk them through the process and make sure everything is kind of taken care of so it's very much like the development

review coordinators but throughout the whole process so I'm happy to follow up and find out how the other communities that are listed here are doing their

expedited review they've just labeled it expedited review but sometimes it really is the navigation of the system to make sure that they're not having to go through multiple rounds maybe it's only two rounds versus four thanks that

would be great

So some of the questions I had, I guess most of the rest of the questions I had were about retail in specific. So I was thinking about if part of what we're doing is trying to compete with places like

Johnstown or Loveland or surrounding communities,

how are we doing but for analysis in terms of offering these things to make sure,

I guess the worst outcome for me would be something like we incentivize big-box retailer stores,

and then we end up cannibalizing our own small businesses that already exist.

And so we're just shifting revenue from inside Fort Collins to national retailers.

How do we assure we're not doing that and instead like trying to get some folks from Johnstown, Greeley, Loveland to come here?

I can answer quick, and then I know Michael has follow-up.

Currently today when let's say a grocer is interested we actually look at a sales tax leakage report.

So we work with our consultants to really understand where is that area, how many would be coming from within Fort Collins and how many would we be attracting from other areas.

So and we take that into account in terms of the leakage of when are we taking it from within Fort Collins, if that makes sense, and how much of it's going out as well.

My answer is not actually any different, really. I think that the idea would be to be prioritizing, you know, where prioritizing the outcomes we want to see with these incentives, right? So whether that be location, you know, business type, et cetera, right? And so we can build these guardrails that then prioritize the things that are shown as gaps in our community, right? And so I don't think anybody's interested in just putting up a giant box that then runs everybody out of business. And so how do we ensure that we're not doing that?

I think that work is still to be done when we're crafting sort of the specific principles of these policies. But the idea would be we can find it within how we prioritize the projects that qualify.

I should also note we do do economic impact analysis for every one of the business assistance packages that we have passed thus far. And while we're exploring those projects, we also will do the economic impact analysis. So we hire a third party to do it so that we can really understand what the benefit is for Fort Collins, for county, for the school districts and all of those. just in also what are the constraints and what are you know some of the burdens that might be put on them the example is we looked at how many new students that would put into PSD when we were looking at the Avago one and two projects right the USDA hub we're also looking at what would that impact look like to the school districts as well as to all the other special districts too I guess when

you guys are thinking about the like regional economic story how much of this are you thinking about in terms of recapturing people from Fort Collins going to like Costco and and Shields and how much are you thinking of

like trying to attract back places from surround or trying to attract in people

from surrounding communities I'm not sure one or the other is prioritized at

the moment right I think that supporting our community is obviously our number

one goal, right? And so that said, we support our community by attracting outside money and

reducing the amount that leaves the community. And so, again, I don't want to take a cheap answer

out and say it's, oh, 50-50. But, you know, I think that it might be yet to be identified,

the exact trail to walk, right? But I can say both of those things are important to the, you know, economic stability of four columns moving forward and growth.

And then have we what kind of agreements do we have have we reached out to other surrounding communities to talk to them about how we prevent this becoming a race to the bottom right like we offer 50% then somebody offers 75% etc etc. Is there some way we can do regional partnerships so that we like align the kinds of incentives we're offering to companies so that we're not like directly competing with our surrounding communities.

As mentioned, we do have a regional economic development group. So every economic developer in northern Colorado, we meet monthly. And we have, on the primary side, really talked about where's the value add into the different industries. The example is Fort Collins, bio life sciences and medical devices are a big, you know, component. So we have talked a lot about code of ethics and what is complementary. So actually we worked with the city of Loveland as they were looking at their identified sectors and really saying what is complementary to each other in those spaces. So we have a lot of those conversations. We have stayed out of the retail conversation because again, there was no clarity on where economic health's role was in that. And so that's why we were saying let's do a retail study and see is there a need and what is economic health's role in this purpose.

I just had a few more just clarifying questions just to get my head around in general the economic picture. I guess it's part of it is how much of how much of our sales tax revenue right now comes from our downtown area versus these other commercial centers.

We can invite Caleb back.

Yeah, we can we can follow up with the exact answer.

I know we send a monthly report to the Downtown Development Authority on sales tax activity, and my recollection is it's about 12 or 13 percent of our overall sales tax, but that also includes the development with Walmart and Home Depot there at Mulberry and LeMay.

my last question is just like is all retail uh square footage the same or are locals like how

how does local small business you know like get reinvested in the community versus these larger

chains i don't think you can um say that all retail square footage is the same right so i think and again different retail not just sort of nodes but stores play different roles right so So there is this general sense that local business on its, like a single local business, doesn't drive regional sales tax performance, but it does in fact contribute to the overall, right? And so I think that's where we would need to find the specific drivers, fill those gaps, and then understand how to support the small businesses alongside because it's a complementary system. Just I think, you know, we were talking earlier of primary employment and small business kind of working together, right? But I think the retail playing field plays together as well. And so I think defining, you can't just say $12,000 per square foot per hour or whatever. That's not going to be applicable from Costco to a downtown shoe store.

And so I think, again, trying to figure out how to prioritize what gaps we want to fill, where we want to fill them, and how to approach them with intention and individuality.

I guess I'll just say that I'm also largely supportive of this stuff, especially on the primary employer side. I think as much as possible, like improving the systems in general would be a great way to go, right? Like I think as I think all the council in our priority setting session talked about just making it easier to build in general. And so to me, creating a more business-friendly environment in general seems like an important part of this process. And I'm hoping that's something we can get out of this process as well so that we're not incentivizing big box stores and creating a two-track system for different types of businesses. In terms of the retail, I'm interested in seeing more information about how we make sure that we're not cannibalizing other business in Fort Collins and rather like generating new things. Because I guess like with a TIF, it makes sense to me that you see regional economic growth and then you can see that there's some kind of but-for analysis that tells you like, without some of our actions, the property values wouldn't have gone up. But it seems harder to me to tell where the sales tax growth is coming from because you don't always know who's shopping at what store. Yeah. And then in terms of housing and

some of the recommendations about the commercial, I would just say my general philosophy is that

continuing to try to be extremely prescriptive in each of these zones seems like a mistake to me, given how quickly some trends around employment and the types of places people have offices, home work from home and things like that and to me simplifying the commercial zones but also keeping them available for housing as well seems like something that I would support personally I think yeah I think we're going to see a lot of like change in the next let's say 10-15 years in terms of regional transportation patterns and employment with just with the rise of AI and self-driving cars and so I think staying flexible to me makes more sense than trying to be prescriptive and guess the next change that's going to happen.

Thank you. Yeah, Amy. I'll just be really quick because I'm dovetailing. You brought up an interesting point in regards to the uniqueness of downtown and how it's a regional node yet it's brick and mortar that doesn't some of like brick and mortar traditionally doesn't perform at at the level that other midsize or whatever businesses can so i'd be curious to see how to continue to explore that dynamic in this um in this proposal but overall i think you're doing a really good job of um aligning this proposal with what we've discussed and i i'm really appreciative of it So thank you. Yeah, yeah. Just the smallest of questions. First of all, Moana- So, I think, to circle back to something that Mayor Francis had said, that I'm not sure I completely understand have, so, we are typically more expensive than some of our surrounding communities, what sort of feedback have you gotten from either primary employers, like primary employers, we haven't really been in the retail sphere yet about cost of housing?

So we do quite a bit of business retention and expansion visits. A lot of it is understanding what the city's kind of goals are because they are also feeling the pressures as employers. So I think they're interested in what is the opportunities and really just kind of hearing the information and understanding it so they can also relay it to their employees.

There is a lot of concern of how many of their employees are driving in and how many can actually live in the community so we've heard that we've collected that information and You know, we had a company that said hey when I'm trying to attract

In a high level employee right a corporate person The conversation around housing affordability ability comes up

So we've been talking about, is there a way we can create a one pager to be able to share that with the employers so that they can also communicate that to any of the employees that are attracting, but also any of their employees that are having some challenges in that space?

What would be in the one pager?

So when we were talking about that, it was they typically hear we're more expensive than peer communities. And they're talking typically Austin, North Carolina. And so being able to kind of dispel some of that, but also say, but here's the strategy and here's where the city of Fort Collins is focusing. So not only giving them that tactical kind of information, but also saying here is the strategy that we're working and heading towards.

Great. You mentioned the economic impact analysis that was done. Is there a way that we could have a copy of one of those? Is that private?

or okay that would be really I'm happy to pass one along so probably the one that I would say is

the Avago projects I'm happy to pass that along as well as we're working on a what was promised and what was delivered in the economic impact which is where I was saying oh we know that Avago has invested one billion dollars since these projects have passed right so we're working through some of the economic impact analysis kind of recap after that so happy to provide that when

that comes through too great thank you um yeah overall i think all three of you have been very forward-looking and i appreciate your percept or your excuse me um your perspective on just the challenges that we're facing i i think absolutely we need to address the the city's economic challenges as our community grows and evolves and the strategy with the business assistant excuse me business assistance policy that is it's like dr. seuss um

both from a retail environment and um primary employer i think it's smart and strategic and we should absolutely move forward with it i will say on the the planning and zoning side any type of incentives that we can provide towards mixed-use development or

redevelopment of existing properties would be I think in line with where we want to see our community going but thank you for being patient with my I don't know like 300 questions I think okay Chris go ahead for 300 question I

want to ask I guess I was just wondering too like what lessons have we learned

from the Foothills Mall efforts. I understand that that was an effort to get some big retail, and I don't know how it's gone. It doesn't seem like it's gone that well, so I'm wondering what lessons have we learned from that.

So I was on that project as well, just helping with the analysis of it, right? I do think this is where consumer behaviors have really changed.

you look at going from the big department stores to now really more

micro sites where people can maybe go in and touch and feel it but they will go

home and order it in a different color or those aspects so definitely I would

say that I would say I don't want to have I know Foothills Mall is coming

back up in terms of potential Metro district conversation so I don't want to

maybe address that piece of it because that is something that Deputy Director of Social

Sustainability Services area, Josh Birx, is working on. So I would prefer he answer that more than me because, again, I was on the analysis side when I started way back when.

Yeah, I think one thing that I'm just thinking about as I'm listening to this conversation, so lessons learned is a great thing that I think we can kind of pull that together. I also know, you know, Sana and I and others do some corporate visits and interaction with some of our primary employers and we hear a lot from their perspective as well that I think is really valuable into this conversation that we can maybe summarize but certainly we're talking about housing and that is an important thing from workforce. They also frequently talk about how much they value the attractiveness of the community from, again, our bike trails, our parks. Those are things we hear about frequently. Other concern areas certainly speed through the review process, but also cost of other regulation or the uncertainty of regulation in spaces. So I think we have a lot of additional context that we can maybe put together as we Prepare to bring this forward. I'm hearing that we'll be bringing something forward in the next round so we can expand that context a little bit

That just that makes sense to me and I think just thinking about what we what Didn't I guess what didn't maybe go well in that last one and how we're gonna do something different this time I guess my only thing that I was thinking is just like I was looking at them just a map of like where these

i-25 centered retail spaces are and they seem to be like right at the center of a triangle between

Greeley, Loveland, and Fort Collins and so I don't know what effect like being at the northern tip of

the front range has but it does seem like I guess I'm worried that there's a sense that like we're not attracting that many people from the north and like if people are coming from Greeley and

Loveland they're going to hit Sentara and Costco before they hit us and so to the extent that our strategies to pull people up I I wonder how much our geography is it limits our ability to attract people up by 25 but I am just a layman so anyone else I just

had two additional items if you're reaching out about the expedited review would you mind just following up on what their position similar to our coordinator does and just I'd be curious to see if how they've modeled that Position through the development review process and then I did also forget to say thank you for the neighborhood centers piece I feel like I've been harping on that and I'm just really excited to see some movement in how do we help revitalize these neighborhood centers because I know that's been a big barrier To getting these neighborhood centers looking better and attracting so I'm really excited that we're focusing on how do we Improve the look and the field and the opportunity there. So thank you With that, do you all have what you need? Okay, well, thank you. With that, we'll take a 10-minute break and come back at 7.50.

All right, welcome back, everyone. We are on to our second item. Is there a presentation for this? There is a presentation. I am going to turn it over to Clay Fricke, our planning manager, and he's joined by a A couple members of his team, Megan Keith and Ryan Mounts, who will also join in. So, Clay, take it away. Great.

Thanks, Kelly, and hello again, Council. Welcome back from your break. We are here to talk about transit-oriented communities implementation now, and we wanted to pair this item with the retail study intentionally so that way Council could get a more holistic perspective on some of our strategies on how we address our commercial centers in our community. because really trying to support the resilience of our community centers requires this multifaceted approach that is something that we share across the city organization. The transit center designations that we're going to put forward to you this evening is an opportunity to implement what we've learned from recent policy work, including the retail study that you just heard about, but also to our 15-minute city work from the previous council, also to city plan, our place-based strategies for growth, and our economic health strategic plan. Some of the things that we've learned from some of this recent work is that the viability of different forms of development through our land use code work is really important and we updated our code recently to try and improve outcomes for small businesses to get through the review process quicker, introduce different uses to our commercial corridors and get those to be more adaptive and resilient in the future. The retail study also provides some more context around the different types of commercial centers and what they need to be successful. So that was that sort of typology thinking. And so trying to pair that up, the transit center designation can be an opportunity for us to try and essentially pair that work up and make sure that we're working in tandem to create these resilient commercial centers that we want for our community. And so with that context, we have two questions for you that you can read on the screen just about whether or not you agree with our approach for designated transit centers, and then what support does council have for designated transit centers outside of our transit-oriented development overlays, which we'll talk about in subsequent slides. And so with that, I'm gonna hand it over to Ryan Mounts to give you an overview of the Transit-Oriented Communities Bill.

Great, thanks Clay, and good evening, Mayor, and good evening, Council. As Clay mentioned, we're gonna start kind of with a high-level overview of what this recent state legislation is all about, kind of the goal, and this is referring to HB 241313 also called the Housing in Transit-Oriented Communities or TOC bill. This was passed in 2024. It was one of the series of kind of housing and land use related legislation of that year but this one has a much longer runway in terms of kind of the compliance requirements and the time frame for that and so we're about halfway through that point right now and we're really kind of at a point where we're seeking some council direction. Kind of the overall goal of this bill was really to ensure that communities that have either existing or proposed high-frequency transit are developing or creating a supportive kind of land use environment around those routes in those stations. And so there's kind of four key main requirements to the bill. The first one is that subject jurisdictions need to develop what the state calls a housing opportunity goal. So this is really a benchmark for dwelling unit or zoning capacity around those transit corridors, specifically high frequency. So We're looking at basically a quarter mile buffer on either side of high-frequency bus service 15 minute or better headways and then any rail transit or stations as well. So once that kind of goal or that benchmark has been set then each community must designate their transit centers what Clay was just mentioning. And so these are areas that each community will select. But the goal is that these areas in total will have enough zoning capacity to meet or exceed their housing opportunity goal. There's also some additional requirements to what trans where transit centers can be located and we'll get into that in a little bit just as well The third key main component of the bill is that because the state expects that there's going to be more infill and redevelopment occurring in these areas They do want communities to be Developing or employing several different housing affordability and displacement mitigation strategies We're not planning to touch on this aspect too much tonight because for the most part we're already meeting this goal for a long time the city has been employing strategies like our land bank program or fee credits you know we talked about the expedited review for affordable housing projects in the last item so those are things that we're already employing and then finally this bill also requires some ongoing reporting so our overall timeline for certification for this legislation is the end of this year end of 2026 and then there will be every three years reports that we have to supply to the Department of Local Affairs so those will start in 2029. So kind of drilling down what this looks like in Fort Collins context and on the ground we're gonna start off with our transit areas in Fort Collins and so that's the map you see on the left everything that's in that blue color that blue shading those are our state designated transit areas and so this was a snapshot in time in 2024 of any existing high frequency service or any proposed future high-frequency service that was in our transit master plan. And so you can see you we've got the Mason corridor, we've got the College Avenue corridor, parts of Lincoln near downtown, Elizabeth west of campus, and those are all kind of existing high-frequency transit corridors we have in the community. And then you also see East Drake and East Harmony Road. And so again there's transit service there right now, but those are really included because our transit master plan at the time designated or showed future high frequency service there again. So all told that that amounts to about 6,200 acres in size across the community but the state also recognizes not all not all areas are gonna be suitable for high frequency service or high intensity development so they allow us to exempt out certain categories like government owned properties, schools, parks, mobile home parks, industrial areas, things like that. You can see the full list on the screen there. So after we net out those exemptions our transit area actually shrinks down to about 3,400 acres in size. And so that's what we use per the legislation to develop our housing opportunity goal. So we're required to basically multiply that amount by 40 dwelling units per acre. That's kind of their target capacity around transit stations and transit routes. So that gives us a local housing opportunity goal of about 135,000 units. It's a really large number. And so when we're talking with community members about this, we like to be crystal clear that that's a benchmark for zoning capacity. it's not actually a requirement to build, physically construct that number of units. And in fact, when the legislation was being developed, the research arm of the legislature found, on average, physical units built or

already been certified on this aspect of the legislation so we submitted our housing opportunity goal report to the state last summer they reviewed it and certified us last fall and so we're really at the point where we're ready to move on to designating transit centers and so again just reminder these are areas that the city selects unlike the transit areas and whether they're you know scattered throughout the community or one large contiguous area the goal is that the zoning capacity and wherever we designate these meets or exceeds our housing opportunity goal some of the additional requirements for where we can designate these transit centers. Generally they have to be along our transit routes. It can be in those areas you see in blue, our transit areas. It can even be potentially in certain circumstances, buffered areas around that or other transit routes even if they're not high-frequency service. But for the most part, the legislation anticipates we're going to be locating the bulk of our transit centers in those blue areas. To be a transit center, you also have to have an underlying zone district that supports at least 15 dwelling units per acre. And then on the approval process side, it does require administrative review, meaning the city can't require a public hearing or public meeting for that if the development is meeting all of our standards and it doesn't require some kind of discretionary approval.

So those are the key requirements for transit centers. There's also some financial incentives that are also part of this legislation as well. So there are funds already appropriated at the same time. One of those is the Transit-Oriented Communities Infrastructure Grant.

And then there are also some tax credits for affordable housings located in designated transit centers through the Colorado Housing Finance Authority.

So the transit center designation is also, you know, it's a defined term at the state level now. And so potentially there is also the ability for other state agencies in the future to use transit centers in those locations to determine eligibility for future projects, programs, and incentives.

We do want to point out a lot of or the bulk of the the financial incentives are likely going to be occurring in 2027 once most communities subject to this legislation are certified. Late last year the state did open up a pilot round of funding for the transit-oriented communities infrastructure grant and so we did apply for that as the city in conjunction with a proposed affordable housing project in Midtown.

We should be hearing back any day now on whether we receive an award for that. but we do know if we receive an award the funding would be contingent on the

city getting early certification so certified in spring 2026 and we'll kind of touch on that consideration in some of the coming slides so where where could we potentially look at designating transit centers in Fort Collins so the map you see on your screen again we have the transit areas in blue and then anything that's shaded in in a color those those pinks and reds and oranges those are zone districts that are eligible to be designated as a transit center at least based on the zoning we have in place right now in the minimum density requirement so you can see those are primarily our employment commercial and downtown zone districts none of our primarily residential zone districts are really going to be eligible at least based on our zoning currently and again that's that's primarily related to the density but that does open up a lot of our corridors where transit's already located and some of those different commercial areas and nodes around town as mentioned anywhere we do select or designate as a transit center

we are going to eventually need to update our land use code and kind of switch over to that administrative approval process to be in alignment with the legislation.

And so, I wanted to show that same map here and kind of juxtapose this with a map, kind of a visualization of our growth framework from city plan.

And so, you can see very clearly, you know, this is kind of the encapsulation of really decades of kind of our growth strategy and framework, really trying to incentivize infill and redevelopment and some higher intensity residential along that commercial core, the commercial spine along College and Mason and areas around downtown, North College, near campus, and then in the future in places like Harmony as well, especially as we sort of anticipate future redevelopment occurring in the coming years.

So this is really strong alignment between kind of the existing transit areas where we have been designated so by the state and our kind of existing growth framework. And so we're pretty uniquely positioned in Fort Collins. There might be some communities that really struggle. They might need to really change or alter some of their underlying zone districts to meet the housing opportunity goal. We're probably in a position here locally where we can be very choosy about, do we want to just kind of meet the bare minimum? Do we want to go above and beyond that and consider some of the additional incentives that come into play with that?

So that's what we're really going to focus on with the latter half of our presentation. But we wanted to just do a quick pause

and see if there's any questions or clarification on the legislation itself. Any questions on what's been covered so far? Yeah, Julie.

I just have one. How often can a transit center designation be designated?

That is an excellent question. Something we're kind of in dialogue with the Department of Local Affairs right now. Kind of the initial phase of kind of designating them is by the end of 2026. And we can always go and designate additional areas as transit centers after that fact. There is some question or clarification we're still seeking about

at least in terms of state eligibility for other grants or incentives programs things like that would any areas we designate after 2026 not really be recognized until we do our next compliance report in 2029. So that's still a little bit of an open question. Thank you.

Anything else? Yeah, Ann. Could you explain or help me understand why mobile home parks are exempt?

Yes. Let me go back to the list of exemptions here. Mobile home parks are specifically exempt because thinking about the state requirement that they want cities to be employing affordable housing and displacement mitigation strategies, they don't want essentially to further incentivize redevelopment of existing mobile home parks,

which are one of our last best choices for private affordable housing.

Got it. And then what are the amounts that you're talking about? like in terms of the grants and the tax credits? Both are competitive, right?

They're both competitive. So the pilot round grant that was submitted was for a little bit more than $800,000. For the next kind of primary grant round in 2027, it's variable, but sort of the state was suggesting grant amounts might be in that $1 to $3 million range.

That's per project, not total pot.

Yeah, for each project from the community.

I just had a, oh, go ahead, Josh.

Thank you. So I'm glad you labeled this clarified questions, because just to clarify, the purplish shades along Harmony, those are eligible because of their zoning currently to qualify as a, okay. Yep, that's correct. I'm sorry.

I was going to say, so, you know, Harmony right now, it is included as a transit area. It's considered that by the state. It doesn't have high frequency service currently But at least in 2024 our transit master plan did show that and so it's included by the state And then most of the zoning along harmony road specifically would be eligible to designate as a transit center if council wishes to do

So so we could do that even though that high frequency service is not yet there. That's correct. Thank you

My I had an additional question about the exemptions is this exempting Land owned by like the gov like say it's government-owned property that's developed or undeveloped or both both and so did we decide to exclude undeveloped government land or is that a state requirement we just

excluded all government-owned land from you know what you see on this map so and that includes a really wide variety so it includes obviously City Hall where we're at tonight includes parks and natural areas what about vacant vacant it did it did include that so that Lors our overall housing opportunity housing opportunity goal calculation, but we of course can go above and beyond that if we want to.

Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Yeah, go ahead, Chris.

Yeah, I guess I was curious about like why we were going to exempt government-owned properties, schools, industrial sites, things like that.

These are just, I believe, areas that the state recognizes, you know, as a general category might not be suitable for development and so you can see there includes a lot of different categories one of those is you know if there is a government facility within your transit area next to a transit station is there how realistic is is it to expect that to redevelop into additional housing units and should that count or not be counted towards a community's housing opportunity goal

i guess i'm just wondering as a city why we wouldn't count some of these things especially considering some of the legislation coming through that it's going to make it easier to build housing on government, nonprofit, school land, and given some of the school consolidation

discussions that are ongoing? Yeah, I think that's really kind of the policy question is, do we want to go above and beyond our minimum required housing opportunity goal? And just kind of spoiler alert, we certainly can. We are not going to be in a position where we're scraping by trying to meet that goal. I mean, we can really go above and beyond if council wants to push and and designate additional transit centers beyond just kind of the bare minimum.

So just to make sure I understand it, it's just to get our housing gold number. It doesn't say that we can't apply the transit-oriented community to government properties in the zone that we designate. That's correct, yes. Okay, it's just to get the number. Okay, it's easier to reach the number when it's Lor, too. Okay, great, thank you. All right, any other questions? Okay, proceed, thank you.

okay thank you for those initial clarification questions so um as was kind of alluded to already following um the modeling and analysis work that we've been doing we know that we can meet our

housing opportunity goal requirement by designating transit centers within our existing tod overlay using the five zone districts that are listed on this slide and those areas are shown on the map

here with that black outline that is again our existing transit oriented development overlay

zone and so in a moment we'll look at the other eligible areas but our staff recommendation is to pursue this area as the first step so that we can meet our requirement and then consider allowing additional time to phase in more transit center designations if we use the existing tod overlay as our first transit center designation,

we feel confident about making the necessary land use code changes

within that spring timeframe,

thus maximizing our opportunity to be awarded grant funding for that affordable housing project in Midtown should that manifest.

And part of why this is our staff recommendation is for where we designate first

is because there's significant policy alignment

with the type of development envisioned in the TOD overlay and a transit center designation.

And secondly, while there would be that change moving to the administrative review process, we've done a lot of recent engagement on the TOD overlay and what that means in terms of the higher intensity development appropriate in this area.

And so because of this, we also foresee the engagement process

to inform about this change to be fairly straightforward, forward and we would plan to create public facing informational materials about this change

see if that works okay so the other eligible areas that could be designated as transit centers include the commercial zoned areas along north college employment and harmony corridor zoning and the otc or old town high zoned areas within and adjacent to the tod overlay these additional areas obviously have the density and proximity to high frequency transit routes to

be eligible as transit centers but we just want to be strategic and manage primarily the community engagement considerations that could arise within these areas and ensure that we have time to bring the community up to speed and address any concerns that may arise and so I'll go through some of those

considerations on the following slide so just to spend a few minutes talking through each of these with particular focus on the engagement needs and the policy alignment column the minor moderate

major categories that we've assigned for engagement needs are based on how significant a change there

would be in the review type moving to that administrative review that is required for

transit centers so in some instances going from the existing level of development review to the administrative review would mean that zone districts that currently require a neighborhood

meeting and a public hearing would now be reviewed at the staff level and would in many cases not require that public hearing for multi-family and mixed-use development projects so we view that as

a significant change for many of these areas that have not had engagement about changes like this

and then the policy alignment column these categories are based on the poly red policy readiness of these areas from a few angles including how recently there have been community conversations about land uses around high frequency transit and that again level of

review to expect for projects within these areas so the staff recommended option to begin with is covered in the first table as I mentioned we feel like there is strong policy alignment for

this option and engagement needs would be minor and could focus again on informing about the

change to the review type these areas that are designated within the TOD overlay would be eligible for the grant funding this year and next year because we would be meeting that spring

certification timeline the other three options from the previous slide are shown on the Lor table outside of pursuing the early certification route for the grant funding opportunity. As Ryan mentioned, the actual deadline for designating transit centers is December 2026. And so we have listed the certification timeline as December 2026 for these additional areas of the community where we feel like we need more time to inform and check.

as well as the transit master plan. Engagement needs are moderate because while some recent engagement has been conducted with the community here about the future of North College Corridor with that BRT line, we'd like to specifically engage this community on what the transit center designation would mean. For the areas around Center Avenue zoned employment and the Harmony Corridor, as well as the areas zoned OTC near downtown, we've listed the engagement needs as major to reflect that there will be a significant change from the current review process for multi-unit and mixed-use projects and for policy alignment we've listed those options as moderate or moderate low respectively we're happy to delve into these further if there are specific questions but generally there have been fewer recent community conversations about transit service and how that relates to the land use vision in these areas council members may also have curiosity about some of the other corridors particularly west elizabeth street which we know has a brt line planned there is a portion of west elizabeth street contained within the tod overlay the area just west of shields that is included in the staff recommendation for the tod overlay however the majority of west elizabeth street is zoned rl low density residential which would not be eligible currently to designate as a transit center and we'd also consider the community engagement need to be very high because this would also be a very significant change in how projects are reviewed in this area and we do have a slide specifically on West Elizabeth Street that we can look at if more detail on that is desired and so here is the timeline for that April certification for the first transit center recommended by staff if pursuing this route next

month we would finalize the areas we're designating as our first transit center

and then we'd conduct our informational community outreach about this change in february and march and then would bring the amended land use code to the planning and zoning commission for their recommendation and then to council for adoption in march and april and then april is when we would submit our reporting and data modeling to dola and meet that certification deadline by by april and just to mention once more this timeline is driven by and enables us to be eligible to receive that pilot round grant funding for this affordable housing project which requires that certification by april if we kind of forego that opportunity we again have until the end of the year to designate transit centers and so this is my my last slide before we go into our discussion just wanting to touch on some of the other upcoming related work fortunately we are able to continue some of the work from our most recent commercial corridors and centers land use code updates and so tasks that we've identified include studying consolidation of our commercial zone districts and as has been discussed this evening already this work would be informed by the recommendations from the retail study right now we have many different commercial zone districts and bringing more intentionality to the purpose and scale of these zone districts will help simplify and implement our approach to retail centers and we feel like this work can also really advance previous feedback we've heard from council members about reducing complexity and layering where we can and in that same theme there's also ongoing work to perform within article 5 of the land use code more reorganization for ease of use and clarity is sort of what we have slated right now. So with that, we'll return to our questions for the evening and happy to return to any other slides that you'd like to look at again. Great, thank you.

Can we go ahead and just go through the West Elizabeth slide?

Sure, yeah. So what you see here on the slide, the top is just a current zoning map of the corridor and so all the different zone districts are labeled and

And then we've kind of color coded in the map below. So the green color shows zone districts that would be eligible for transit center designation

right now. And then the kind of orangish red color, those would not be eligible.

And then again, it's sort of hard to make out depending on the screen, but the transit

oriented development overlay zone is the black line. And so that would kind of be the boundary of where staff recommendations is at least

the base level of transit center designation to include. So it's kind of the area just west of CSU, just west of Shields.

okay thank you council members yeah melanie thank you for the presentation i loved all the diagrams i thought that was so incredibly helpful so thank you um so i only have four my first one

is just a comment that i think housing opportunity goals acronym is really unfortunate

um and every time i read it it just bothered me but i know that's not you guys's choice um

On the surface, I think at first glance, I just wanted to comment that I do think the additional designated areas make a lot of sense just intuitively, but I did want to dive a little bit more deeply into some of the implications.

So first, I was wondering if you could talk a little more about potential loss of leverage about affordable units if we expand, because I was reading that, you know, that would do away with our ability to require that of developments within more and more zones if we expand that. Is that correct?

Yeah, it to clarify that council member pat yandier but we are trying to call attention to is right now We have incentives in the land use code that say if you're Going to bring us affordable housing you get administrative review What this does is it? Really waters that down a little bit So with prop 123 the other benefit is is that we have to get through affordable housing project review in 90 days So that would still be a potential incentive Okay. Compared to just going through normal administrative review. However, our goal is with our Prop 123 implementation without spending too much time on that is to try and apply some of those lessons to other projects that come through the review process so that way everything gets through a little bit quicker. And so I think we just wanted to acknowledge that there's just some interesting policy misalignment at the state level that could lead to unintended consequences. Not to suggest that you don't do anything as a result of that, but just wanted to make

sure council was aware more than anything else okay my third question oh no my last question

actually looking at slide 13 you know at the additional areas that we could expand into and the engagement needs and policy alignment do we have concerns about a higher risk of gentrification and or displacement in any of those three areas. I would say like intuitively I have suspicions about that, but I'm hearing that that's a potential liability and I was curious.

Yeah, I think that's something that we've started to think about as well and acknowledge that that is something that we would need to pay careful attention to when designating these areas. um and and so i think there are other kind of mechanisms that we can explore and um as ryan mentioned we already have some anti-displacement policies in place um but yes i think we would just want to be aware and try to um yeah supplement any guidance that we already have but do you want to

add to that ryan yeah i would i would also add you know i think designating them as a transit center doesn't increase the risk beyond what is already in place right now. I mean, that's kind of a state level designation. The only change we would really be making at the local level is that administrative approval process, which I'm not sure in and of itself would drive additional development. It could a little bit. But there are other factors like existing plans and policies that we already have in place that would be driving a lot of that displacement risk. So, increased intensity along North College, for instance. And that's a big component of the North College BRT plan itself is talking about, well, what are some of the different strategies the city could employ if we're going to, you know, for instance, expand our TOD overlay zone to that area or when we do bring BRT to that corridor?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think I'm alone and and you know, we've been talking about North College a lot. I don't think I'm alone and wanting to make sure that we are making really, really smart and deliberate decisions about how we develop in that neck of the woods because there's there's a lot happening and a lot could be good. And also there's there's a risk of some vulnerable populations being impacted in a negative way. So yeah, thank you. Other council members?

I'm not sure that I've had the chance to like completely organize my thoughts but I'll just go about this on the fly um so uh Ryan you asked a couple of questions um and I think especially

like do we want to go above and beyond as a council and personally I would say yes um yeah we want to go above and beyond and make housing like as attainable as possible in our community

um so can you talk a little bit more about the impact of making these three areas um transit center designate or yeah designating them as part of the transit oriented communities um because it sounds like if we don't we might have to wait until 2029 but we don't know am i getting

that right? Yeah, there's a lot of intertwining here of different options. So we'll try and clarify. I think at the highest level, the big change is if we want to designate additional areas outside of the TOD overlay zone, what that means is our approval process for multifamily projects would change. So right now, essentially everything, unless it's an affordable housing project, has to go through a public hearing, whether it's the Planning and Zoning Commission or what we call a hearing officer. And in many cases, they also have to do a neighborhood meeting. And the state legislation is basically saying to be designated as a transit center, you can't require that. So it would all go to a staff level review. The exception is if there are any kind of discretionary approvals that are needed. So those would be things like if a project needs to go to the Historic Preservation Commission or a rezoning or it has certain modifications, then we could still require that public hearing process. So that's the big change from like on the ground, like what people would notice is there would be all of our normal kind of outreach for development review process for a proposal we'd be posting things online people could email and talk with you know city staff there's still the appeals process but we wouldn't be requiring that public hearing process anymore or potentially a neighborhood meeting and then in terms of how the state recognizes that if we get it designated by 20 the end of 2026 i think we're good for the grant eligibility for future grant rounds. If we want to designate after 2026, we can do that is the latest word from the state, but it might not be recognized until the next compliance reports are certified by the state in 2029. As Megan mentioned in some of her slides, we're shooting for at least a base level of certification this spring, so we were eligible for the pilot round grant if we receive that. But then we could also take additional time and look at additional areas throughout the remainder of this year by 2020 by the end of 2026.

Okay. So as long as we get it figured out by the end of 2026, we're not jeopardizing anything in our community. That's the latest guidance we have. Perfect. Okay. Because I was feeling like I was between a rock and a hard place. Like, do we support one project or like what's best for our community? But it seems like we could, if we're like, really efficient, could do it all. Okay. So what is the impact on staff time then if you're going to an administrative review? Is it more efficient? Does it take more time?

No, just a different decision maker. So it's the same review process and all of that.

Okay. How much community engagement is typical for what would be expected, any sort of development? that is a big question. Let's narrow that down a little bit. For the type of projects that you would expect to be

supported in this type of development area. Do you have examples of?

I'm going to take this one.

When we're looking at transit centers specifically, I mean, obviously there's a lot of variability, project by project and what's being proposed, its context, its location, compatibility issues. so with that kind of in mind you know in these areas we're looking to designate as transit centers they're primarily commercial areas or downtown so there are already areas where just in general we don't see as many compatibility impacts when we're seeing multi-family proposed there are already busy areas when it comes to traffic and noise and not that a new development can't negatively contribute to those and we'd want to look at mitigating that but these are areas that just in general, you know, we don't see as much public comment at public hearings or at neighborhood meetings. And so from that factor, you know, there might not be as much of an impact as if we were looking to designate transit centers in, you know, some of those buffer areas or purely residential areas that might be eligible.

Okay, that's helpful. So it seems like although you have those categories of moderate and

major for engagement needs, like perhaps the actual impact to the community is not

substantial on an average project? For someone who wants to directly participate, like they want to show up and provide their comment in person, it is impactful because that won't be available. But as mentioned, there are going to be other avenues that we utilize today that will still be available. And it's just, I think the alignment and those engagement needs kind of represent where does our current plans and policies, you know, what does it mean?

decades we've called for higher you know more mixed use more multifamily more residential development in those areas we really encourage it we incentivize it through increased density bonuses parking reductions height bonuses things like that so this is an area we've said for many many years we want additional this type of development and so we feel it's really well aligned even if we're going to kind of a reduction in the public participation process and i might

just add to just in case this addresses some other questions from council just some other things that was captured in that is by for one example you know megan talked about how we have the north college bus rapid transit plan so we've done specific planning about this topic for north college therefore policy alignment's really strong you know for harmony corridor that's like third in line for bus rapid transit behind west elizabeth and north college and so therefore that's something that council should be aware of when designate that as a transit center is that we'll be getting pretty far ahead of when the transit will actually be available and with that being said we also update our land use code to try and get more housing in that quarter because that's what we heard from the community. And so it's very well aligned in that way. And so we're just trying to balance those things. And obviously it's very difficult to capture that nuance in one word, but that's kind of what's behind some of those words is just understanding that there might be either less readiness in terms of timing between when we might see redevelopment and delivering transit service, or we've just not had those specific conversations yet. And so we just want to make sure that we have the opportunity to do so. And in all those areas, we have the zoning that allows the density, which is really the critical thing, and the plan for transit. So those are the two most important components. And so we would feel very comfortable with moving forward with those options so long as we just enter into those conversations deliberately with the community. And so I think no nervousness. And in fact, we think that phase approach makes a lot of sense. But just wanted to kind of talk about those words a little bit more so council can understand that a little bit.

Thanks for clarifying. With West Elizabeth, do you think that that sort of engagement could happen at the same time? There are a lot of college students, it's prime, you're going to have the rapid transit there, so it feels backwards.

So West Elizabeth, I think, is a little trickier because to even start the conversation

about designating that as a transit center at the far west end we need to talk about either rezoning

it or changing the zoning and so if we're talking about changing the zoning that also impacts every

other area of the community that has that zone district as well so that is a much larger and probably lengthier conversation to have with the community or at least specifically that corridor

so you can either i mean you can change the the requirements of the zone district or wholesale like along that that corridor change yeah we would either need to rezone areas of

that corridor that have a zone district that is ineligible like rl or we would need to change the rl zone district but if we do that that impacts more than just the west elizabeth corridor

got it okay um i just i think it's a wasted opportunity quite frankly and i don't know how to

like remedy that at the the actual policy level but it you have rapid transit you have a community need for affordable housing like it seems like i would love to see a solution and there there

certainly are opportunities there's small pockets that we could you know if council desires designate within the entire corridor um so for instance uh the retail center there at um taft hill and elizabeth so that is an option that that zone district is eligible uh but if we're talking like the entire corridor that's where you know again at least it would have to be a lengthier conversation probably a lengthier process to look at either rezoning it or changing the underlying

zone district i assume that it has to be contiguous it does not need to be contiguous okay so parts of west elizabeth could at least be i mean i i would say as much as possible and that's that's me and I understand that I'm not speaking for the whole council but again housing is such a critical piece and this feels like it unlocks a lot of benefits to our community and especially if it doesn't have to be contiguous doing more study of that would be something that

I would personally be interested in seeing but I think what you've presented overall the strategy of like jumping into this for the spring and then addressing additional areas in our community by the end of 2026 so that we're not holding up the process makes sense to me. Amy? Excuse me. No, I'm happy. I'm excited to see Center Avenue in one of the options. I'm just curious, does CSU have to play a role in the approval process since they own property and don't they even own some of the streets around

there too there is a lot of uh csu owned properties in the in the corridor and there's also some some large natural hazards you know floodplain in the quarter so those essentially came out of our requirement to bump up our housing opportunity goal because those were exempt areas but again if there is a site that is eligible and and you know we the city would like to pursue higher intensity development there that that would be a possibility and see you is a you know they don't have a direct this is the certification is through the state but they are enabling essentially the Center Avenue because they're funding so much of especially the around the horn service which is kind of the high-frequency service there along Center Avenue I have some sorry I just have

some follow-up questions about West Elizabeth okay um so with the area that that is not currently in the West Elizabeth, how many of those parcels are either vacant or would accommodate multifamily?

And you're talking about the areas outside of the TOD or within it? Outside of it, very few. Like, it's pretty much all developed. Right. So I guess I'm not understanding why we wouldn't develop it. Sorry. Why we wouldn't designate it TOC. I get really confused with CO TOC and TOD even though I know that but why we wouldn't because it's not like I Understand the community engagement and like this would be a big change But development takes so long and there are very few properties that would actually qualify for it right now And so then we would have to see single-family homes or these areas really have to redevelop to actually make it happen But we would be able to provide the foundation for future and this is where the first line of our max is going in So I don't understand why we wouldn't set the foundation to enable that in the future because I understand like if there are a bunch of vacant properties and all of a sudden we're putting up 15 unit multifamily along this corridor. That would be a huge change for that community. But right now there's very few properties that would actually accommodate it. And it wouldn't be a huge change if those did develop into the max. So I don't I guess it's not a question for you. It's just my I think that we should add it. And after I just making sure that there weren't that many properties. But in my opinion, I mean, I think we should any of the corridors that we're thinking about putting the max on, which is the West Elizabeth North College in Harmony, we should definitely do the TOC. And then also that OTC, because that's right near downtown and CSU. I think it's a great opportunity to help enable that and start facilitating that conversation to move towards those. And so I guess with community engagement around this, what does community engagement look like? And did we do community engagement to establish the current kind of main TOC that we're talking about?

I'll start with that one. Currently, we haven't done engagement on the TOC designation because we've, you know, just finished working on our calculations. So the answer to that is no.

And then I think pending and kind of depending on the timeline that we were asking you for feedback this evening, we would, you know, use some of the usual channels that we deploy to inform the areas about what the changes would be, especially utilizing some of the connections that we've made from our other recent like land use code changes, particularly, you know, in the Midtown area.

We can rely on our also our connections with economic health to ensure that we're kind of informing the right people, post things on our website, utilize our existing newsletter distribution. I think that's what we were thinking in terms of that spring time frame, like what we would immediately act upon to start informing about those changes. And then if we have, you know, longer up until December to consider some of these other transit centers, you know, we'll probably do similar, start informing what these changes would entail and maybe some specifics for each area. and then the additional time would allow us to have probably multiple touch points to kind of identify where more concerns are coming up and spend more time in areas that we need to, with the community there, continue our communication and probably think about in-person setting if needed, virtual kind of a variety of what we usually deploy for some of our engagement actions like that.

Okay, I think that helps. I mean to me it's aligning our kind of areas we identified on our transit plan of where we're going to have high frequency transit. So it makes sense to me to put the TOC over that and kind of match that and align it. So I think to like the engagement to me is that inform is an appropriate level that this is something that our plans have identified as TOC areas. And do we use TOC and TOD interchangeably or are they two separate things? They're gonna be two separate things. I just want to make sure it's staying with that. Okay. Thank you Yeah, so I'm in favor of all four going forward Along with our main one that we already identified so Julie shouldn't let you go first because you took my question. Um, no, it's okay But I do want to add a comment about it. Um, I think So everyone around this table that was elected Was asked tough questions about housing and we were all elected and so I want to make sure that in your engagement, if we're asking you to go where I think is farther than what you are probably comfortable with because of past experience, make it a policy. I mean, this is a policy decision. This isn't a decision like you should not be taking the brunt of that. And so I am hoping that in your engagement strategy, talk about like the housing that we're hoping this will bring the housing shortage that we're trying to help trying to alleviate so I too agree with the original and then the three that you brought up as well as East Elizabeth or West Elizabeth sorry not East everyone from East Elizabeth calm down it's fine so West Elizabeth and maybe let us know like what your engagement plan looks like because i think that that would be super helpful um for us to see too so thank you great yeah chris yeah i would just agree with i think a lot of julie's

sentiments and um i don't know i got i got i get the sense when reading this document that part of

the goal here is to present like the least the Lost viable option to comply with state laws

around housing and I think when we're doing our spoiler alert on our some of

our retreat things right like everyone put housing on the board everyone put

make it easier to build and especially in filling around transit and so I guess

part of what I'm thinking is first of all when staff is thinking about setting

these these putting these policies in front of us I would ask that we think

about the triple bottom line first right just environmental social economic health, which I think all three are met with density and along transit lines and increasing

our housing production goals, and then let us do the politics, right?

And if we want to strip things away, then we will strip them away, right? But I don't see that slow-playing density along transit as meeting any of our goals.

And so that's what I would ask, first of all. So I'm supportive of all four.

My other thing that I would say is just I would like us as a and this is just one of seven I guess.

I would like us as a community to be aware in which the engagement process favors certain types of people over others and excludes other voices entirely. Only a small percentage of people in Fort Collins even know what a city engagement process ever is or has ever heard of it. Almost nobody I've ever met does to be frank. And so I think it's really important to express what we're doing clearly out in public, but I'd also like us to figure out ways to reach out to the entire community as a whole about these things in general.

Where we put housing affects not only the people in the neighborhood where that housing is going, but it affects the economy and the social health of the entire region in general.

And so I'd like to be able to bring, you know, a vulnerable population to are at risk of displacement into that conversation earlier rather than just letting the familiar voices dominate the conversation.

I had I have a few actual questions.

too. On page 95, it talks about the Old Town C zoning as being intended to primarily serve as

a buffer for residential neighboring neighborhoods and existing development patterns. What does that mean to act as a buffer? Like a buffer from what to what? Yeah, at kind of the highest level,

it's meant to just sort of slowly transition or not have such an abrupt transition from

kind of the intensity the heights the the impacts of downtown or csu to the surrounding neighborhoods

like that but you're not going kind of to the full downtown or csu level of impacts okay and um i guess

on slide i was thinking about slide 13 um and when you guys are saying that there's strong policy

alignment or moderate or low policy alignment with these various zones like what is that in what way is the policy alignment strong moderate or low

well i think uh just using the the past example of otc i mean that has a sub-area plan associated with it so there was a lot of specific engagement around like what should be the shape and what should be some of the development parameters of that zone district and again these are it's like

a hyper specific zone districts it's maybe a block or half a block wide in certain areas it's really

meant to just be this small transitional area and so for that one we put at maybe moderate or low in

terms of alignment because there is such hyper specific you know policy guidance and land use

guidance for that that we shouldn't necessarily like it is meant to be an area for maybe like triplexes and a couple stories,

but it's not meant to be at the same level as a CSU main campus or downtown type of built environment.

Yeah. So that was policy alignment with what the current zoning already looks like,

more than policy alignment with what the city is.

I think it depends on the context in the area. So like North College, as Megan mentioned,

we did just do a pretty intensive effort for the BRT study

up there a couple of years within the past couple of years.

So there is that really strong recent policy guidance saying, hey, we already said we should do this, essentially.

So I think it does depend on the specific area of the community and kind of what plan or policy we're speaking to. Okay. Let's see. And then I had a question on, I guess I was looking at that same passage that Melanie was looking at on page 96 about the possibility of impact on affordable housing. So is it that the impact is that people, our current process for market rate housing is onerous, and so then people opt into the affordability, opt into affordable housing to escape the onerous process? And so we're incentivizing affordable housing by having an onerous process on the market rate side?

No. So I would say that, yeah, I don't agree with that entire characterization. So I would say that it's not a way to justify having an onerous process. It's a way to incentivize people that want to deliver affordable housing to us. And so we've had one developer build an affordable housing project and give us affordable units to get a staff level review rather than it going to planning and zoning commission. So really the only difference there is that it's going to a different decision maker and there's no neighborhood meeting requirement. All the review standards are the same. The way that we review the application is the same. It's just a different decision maker. That's really the main difference.

And a different speed at which you go through the process because of the meetings that you have to schedule and stuff?

So yeah, so you might save two weeks. So it's a two-week difference. Yeah. Okay. From that perspective. And then you do get the expedited review. So I will mention that. So that's built in for all affordable housing projects. So like we talked about for the previous item, they get one week quicker turnarounds. On comments and stuff like that. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, I would just say for me, I think making sure that speeding up the process,

making sure that we're not using speeding up the process as a carrot to incentivize affordable housing.

by having a sLor or a harder process on the other side.

I think market rate and affordable housing are both part of the affordability strategy that we need to be tackling. And sometimes pitting them against each other, to me, seems like we end up pitting Lor middle class people against people who really need subsidized affordable housing.

My last comment is just a little bit about the transit zone.

I'm really supportive of designating as much of these areas as in these zones

because I think what we're trying to do ultimately long-term is maybe move towards more basic development review.

And my worry is that we're focusing a lot of infill development possibilities

along the college corridor.

And I'm concerned that we're gonna end up putting

like apartments where Lor income people will tend to be

in the places that have the most traffic,

the most noise and the most pollution

rather than expanding multifamily opportunities

into places that are further away from

busy arterial streets, right?

And so I understand the reasons why we are putting a lot of our density along busy arterial streets, but to me, as much as we can push that into neighborhoods that are calm and further away from noise and pollution, the more equitable we're going to be as a community.

So I'm super supportive of making all these places TOCs.

Is that right? And especially West Elizabeth, too, and which way we go in terms of rezoning or changing that zone district. I'm open, I suppose. So, thanks.

Great. Thank you. Josh?

Sorry, just so I agree with everything that's been said about approving all of the corridors and making them TOCs. whether it makes sense to do the TOD first to get it out of the way and then the TOCs after that, I guess is fine. I just want to make sure I have this, so if I'm at Target or the gym and somebody asks me what did you all do, it means that, especially along Harmony, those areas shaded in purple are already zoned density. And so when there's a housing project that would go into those areas a quarter mile off Harmony in either direction, basically the big change is that it would get an administrative review instead of the full public process. And that's basically the only change that would be the five-minute elevator pitch. Okay.

I think you should say a different public process. It's not like a full public process because there still is plenty of opportunity for feedback.

I think that's a good point. And it's with the same requirements you mentioned. It's just, okay. Thank you.

Great. Anyone else? Yeah, Anne.

Just to sort of jump on something that Council Member Pinotero said, we're asking you to do more than you came here with, right? And like by a lot, enthusiastically. but recognizing that there is public feedback that will be you know we would like it to be directed at us but you may get it so wanting to make sure that you feel like this is a collaboration um with you and also that we are able to to the best of our ability like sort of check the fact that you guys are going to get phone calls too um possibly and how do we mitigate that as a team

Clay is just raising his eyebrows. Okay.

That might be a better conversation, a follow-up conversation

than they think would be tough to talk about on the spot.

Absolutely.

Just acknowledging that we would, this is policy, I think we're all in alignment, but making sure that we recognize that feedback comes from all angles to all people.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that and on behalf of the staff team, I think we all appreciate that and that we are really looking forward to some deeper dive conversations with counsel about engagement and again

how we approach that and

You know again get you all what is going to be the most meaningful information and

recognize the reality of You know when we collect when we collect feedback We want to make sure that we're authentic and representing to you all of the different voices that we're hearing so More conversation to come on that

Great any other questions or comments Okay, see none. Do you have what you need?

So let me recap just to make sure I'm 100% clear. So yeah council

Mainly my questions around phasing. Do you want us to pursue designate transit centers for all four that we present? by April or by the end of the year? So do you want the phase approach with TOD first and then the rest by the end of the year or all of them right now? I'm going to say end of the year

because I think that phase approach, you may have some lessons learned each time you do it.

So that would be my preference. I'm seeing thumbs up.

Okay, thumbs up across the board. So we'll start with kind of TOD as part one and then the rest as part two, three, four,

And then I think the West Elizabeth one, I do want to talk more about just whether that's a realistic time frame.

So I think that's the one that is giving me a little bit of pause.

But I think that for now, we'll just move forward to trying to get this all done by the end of 26.

Okay, great. All right, anything else? Okay, thank you so much. And we will go to council for any announcements. Okay, seeing none, we are adjourned. Good night, Fort Collins. Thank you.