Item 3: PH on Resolution Concerning Measure 37 Claim (Brown)

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Mayor Piercy City Councilors Dennis Taylor By C':"CEIVED MANAGER MAR '1 lOOl Re: BM 37 Claim Explanations Mayor Piercy & Members of the Council; In support of my testimony on the claim of DMB Green for the vacant lot on West 12th Avenue I wish to provide a brief explanation of our claim and an example of what we are trying to accomplish. We wish to develop our site located on West 12th between Chamelton and Lincoln streets with a structure that would conform to the 0.65:1 floor area ratio (or FAR) that was in place when we purchased the site in 1994. The current requirement is to build a building with a 1: 1 FAR. The lot we own is currently a parking lot, with most spaces rented by an adjacent property owner. We wish to develop the site with a mixed-use building that would include ground floor offices and second level housing. The building will be appropriate for the small lot and will fit the character of the neighborhood. The lot has 56 feet of frontage on the south side of West 12th Avenue with a depth of 133.6 feet, for a total size of approximately 7,482 square feet. Under the current code, that lot would have to be developed with 7,482 square feet of building due to the requirements of the 1: 1 FAR. A building of that size would be massive on that small lot, and the structure would dominant the area. Additionally, a building of this size would preclude on-site parking. Though the property is not required to provide on-site parking, street parking is always full during the day and the nearest public parking is the West Broadway parking structure, located four blocks north. To accommodate anyon-site parking under the current 1: 1 FAR, the building would likely be elevated over ground floor parking and be excessively tall. This would result in a very large, unattractive structure, and higher construction costs associated with such a project would make development economically impossible. An example of the type of building we wish to construct is the property at 11 78 Charnelton--I have included a photo. The property is an 8,000 sq ft site that was developed in 1997 with ground floor offices and second level apartments, just what we want to do. We wish to build to the 0.65 FAR that was in place when we purchased the property, resulting in a building of over 4,800 square feet and a density 50% greater than the development on the 1178 Chamelton site. A building of 4,800 square feet is a very sizable building on this site compared with others in the immediate area. To my knowledge, there has been no commercial in-fill in the neighborhood built to the 0.65 or 1.0 FAR requirements without some from of subsidies.