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HomeMy WebLinkAbout04-01-25 Public Comment - N. Nakamura - Support for appeal #25033 against Guthrie applicationFrom:Natsuki Nakamura To:Bozeman Public Comment Subject:[EXTERNAL]Support for appeal #25033 against Guthrie application Date:Monday, March 31, 2025 10:23:34 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Dear City Commission, I am writing in support of appeal #25033 regarding conditional approval of the Guthrie. Below are some of my concerns with the staff report and my reasons for supporting the appeal. 1. Can we get a clear explanation why the developer submitted two separate applications (23354 and 24493) for the Guthrie? Application #24493 often references the previous application and narrative. The staff report also references #23354 and at times refers to the “original design.” It is unclear to me if the “original design” means the design of #23354 or earlier iterations of #24493. Regardless, because there are references to changes made to the Guthrie since what was proposed in #23354, I believe the large amount of public comment made since March 2024 should be acknowledged since many of the changes between #23354 and #24493 were made in response to public comment, not in response to staff (who were ready to administratively approve #23354 before the City Commission reclaimed review authority). The staff report acknowledges the 113 written public comments received for #24493 within the official public comment period for this application (Dec 6-31, 2024). However, that number doesn’t include the dozens more of oral comments made on the application within this window, nor the written or oral comments that came in after December 31 (some people were unable to submit within the time frame due to busy holiday and end-of-year schedules). This also doesn’t include the 350+ (I didn’t have time to count all of them) written and oral comments regarding the first Guthrie #23354. This large amount and detailed public comment on #23354 identifying concerns about safety and unaffordability resulted in the City Commission reclaiming review authority on a project that would have been administratively approved, voting down the Guthrie last summer, and prioritizing reevaluating the AHO incentives. The newly adopted AHO included changes that directly addressed some of the issues seen in #23354, including requiring affordable units to be more affordable, having minimum standards for 1-bedrooms (including needing a door), and reducing the height and parking giveaways. The new AHO even tries to include a required neighborhood engagement piece. There were 200+ written and oral comments about the AHO, including early requests to pause the use of deep incentives (which were ultimately repealed and replaced) while the City reevaluated the AHO so that neighborhoods like Midtown didn’t have to suffer the brunt of problematic projects before improvements could be made to the incentives. The unaddressed AHO was likened to a “loaded gun” where another Guthrie could reach adequacy and waste hours for the Commission and residents alike. However, because the Guthrie 2 (#24493) was deemed adequate last December, a few months before the tweaked AHO was implemented, #24493 only had to comply with the previous iteration of the AHO. While #24493 does comply, the fact that the Commission soon after repealed and replaced the AHO is an acknowledgement of some of the comments and concerns of residents regarding the first iteration of the AHO that not only allowed, but incentivized the problematic and unaffordable Guthrie proposal. In the Guthrie, an “affordable” 1-bedroom of less than 450 sqft would cost $1,745 a month, while under the new AHO, an affordable 1-bedroom would have to be at least 450 sqft and priced at no more than $1,308 a month. Part of the concern of residents filing the appeal is that it feels like the developer was pushing hard to quickly reach adequacy with #24493, knowing that under a new AHO, the incentives they wanted might become unavailable and affordable units would actually have to be priced lower than market-rate units. Because the public comment being considered in the staff report narrowly includes the end of December (a busy time where normal routine and workflow is often interrupted, including for the City Commission), it does not include any of this larger conversation that has happened over the last year around the Guthrie and the AHO (let alone the wider UDC update conversation that has included many discussions on housing and neighborhoods). 2. Since the City Commission was the reviewing body for #23354, residents expected it would be the same reviewing body for this alternate proposal #24493. As the staff report states, the Commission reviewed and ultimately denied #23354 in part on grounds that the application failed to meet certain NCOD criteria. Due to the denial, a stay on the issuance of a demolition permit for a period of two-years was imposed. Since the Commission denied a project that staff would have administratively approved (despite issues raised by the public), it makes sense that the same body would review the alternate proposal to decide whether it adequately meets the criteria the first iteration failed to meet and if the two-year stay should be terminated. When the City Commission did not reclaim review authority this time, residents were forced to pursue the expensive and time-consuming appeal process. A $2,700 filing fee may not be a lot for a development that has budgeted $24 million for the construction of the proposed project, but it is substantial for residents who don’t do this for a living. Residents have spent countless unpaid hours reviewing documents and illuminating concerns with the proposed Guthrie, and in addition to the filing fee for the appeal, have spent thousands more dollars to pay for a lawyer to help navigate this process. The concern of this financial hurdle was not brought up during the narrow public comment period because there was the hope/assumption that the City Commission would reclaim review authority before the staff conditionally approved the application. After all, the City Commission voted to reclaim review authority for #23354 after the public comment period had closed. The amount of time, energy, and resources that the neighbors (including the aggrieved persons) have sunk into the Guthrie, not just in this appeal process, but over this last year, has taken a toll. This can be seen by some emotional public comments given, asking the City Commission for help. 3. The alternate proposal #24493 does not meet NCOD criteria, especially regarding mass and scale. Termination of the two-year stay on demolition is contingent on #24493 successfully meeting the NCOD criteria. The staff report seems to argue that, because the NCOD was established a long time ago and likely anticipated mostly single- household residential construction, the NCOD is outdated and are guidelines (ie. not compulsory) for the staff to consider as they see relevant. When the NCOD was written, it indeed likely did not foresee the rapid growth that Bozeman is seeing now, but that does not mean it is not relevant or not part of our code. The point of an overlay district is to add extra regulations or guidelines to a specific area beyond the standard zoning rules, and the NCOD has guidelines for mass and scale for infill in residential character areas. In #24493, the surrounding buildings are mischaracterized as being much larger than they are, suggesting that the mass and scale of the proposed Guthrie appropriately matches this neighborhood in the NCOD. In their justification for the Certificate of Appropriateness, HomeBase describes the surrounding buildings as, “3-story church to the east, a 3 story multi-family building to the south, and a 31- room motel to the west that is zoned B-2M and will eventually become 4-5 stories.” The nearby buildings are not 3-story buildings and the Sapphire Motel, which is also currently in the NCOD, has maintained their 1-story structure and 31 units for decades and was honored with a Historic Preservation Award in 2023. This mischaracterization of surrounding buildings suggests that nearby buildings are already or will soon become buildings of similar mass and scale as what is proposed in #24493. The staff report does not acknowledge these mischaracterizations in #24493, but does correctly acknowledge that the nearby parcels zoned R-3 or R-4 are,”developed to only a portion of their allowed height, density, and development capacity,” and that, “both districts provide for a range of different types of homes and much taller buildings than presently in place.” The staff report also acknowledges that the proposed Guthrie would be 11 feet taller than the maximum allowed height in nearby R-3 parcels, if those buildings were built to the maximum. But since none of the surrounding buildings are built up close to the maximum, the inappropriateness of the mass and scale of the proposed Guthrie is understated. Sure, maybe neighboring buildings could one day be built up closer to the maximum allowed height if residents sold their houses to be demolished and redeveloped, but otherwise the maximum height allowed is not very relevant to the residents currently living in their homes that are significantly smaller than the Guthrie. In regards to mass and scale, the NCOD guidelines state, “new construction should not be so dramatically greater in scale than the established context” (emphasis added). I would argue the established context is not hypothetical future buildings if built to the maximum allowed height based on zoning; the established context is the existing buildings in the neighborhood, most of which are 1-2 stories. Even the neighboring church at the peak of its steeple is only around 30 feet tall, 17 feet shorter than the proposed boxy Guthrie. The staff report narrows the scope of what is being considered. Please expand the scope as wide as legally possible to properly respond to the concerns that have been raised by residents over the last year, and please vote in favor of appeal #25033 and deny the Guthrie #24493 application. Thank you for your consideration, Natsuki Nakamura