Hi neighbors! In Monday night’s Town Board Work Session and Meeting, we held an executive session to discuss performance reviews and personnel matters, passed four resolutions to amend the 2019 budget, and approved platting and an FDP for blocks 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, and parcel K in downtown Superior. Ready to find out more on what happened? As usual, you may read this post in written form, or scroll to the bottom for a video recap.

Disclaimer: While I do my best to represent an honest and accurate portrayal of meetings and events, the following should be considered an editorial that represents one person’s interpretation of the meetings. At the request of my fellow Board members, I am keeping their points anonymous rather than trying to attribute my interpretation to them personally. For the most unbiased and complete information, I would encourage residents to watch the meeting video itself and draw their own conclusions – visit the town website at SuperiorColorado.gov for the official meeting video and meeting minutes. Finally, I’d also encourage you to check out EngagedCitizens.us, which is a fantastic free tool created by one of our own residents. Engaged Citizens includes a repository of agendas, documents, and meeting videos, and allows you to search within a video to jump to critical parts. I hope you find it as helpful as I do!

Executive Session

Monday’s Board Meeting kicked off with an executive session to discuss the annual evaluations of our Town Manager and Town Attorney, as well as a personnel matter. We decided to continue the executive session and discussion to our next regular Board meeting in January.

Item 3 – Consent Agenda

After kicking off the regular Board Meeting, our Board unanimously passed the entire consent agenda – including acceptance of meeting minutes, approval of a Manager change for Brunelleschi’s, and approval of a development agreement with RC Superior for construction of the Marshall Road Bridge over Coal Creek in Downtown Superior (discussed at our last meeting).

Item 4 – Public Hearing Amending 2019 Town Budget

Next, we unanimously passed four resolutions to amend the 2019 budget with actual numbers based on new things that have transpired in the last year. These included:
• An Open Space budget increase of $550K (for additional operating expenses and unexpected scope increase for completion of the Coal Creek Corridor / Trail project work)
• A Capital Improvement budget increase of $4.94M (for the purchase 1500 Coalton Road, roof/solar replacement for the 2018 hail event, traffic calming, and completion of Autrey Skate Park),
• A Water Capital budget increase of $696K (for expenses associated with the purchase of land adjacent to the Water Treatment Plant)
• SMID Maintenance/Capital budget increase of $900K (for the new trail connection project between the RTD BRT station and Davidson Mesa trail)
• SURA Marketplace Sales Tax Revenue budget increase of $300K
• SURA Marketplace Debt Service increase of $150K

Item 5 – Continued Public Hearing for Platting / FDPs for Blocks 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, and Parcel K

Finally, we re-opened the public hearing from our last meeting to consider a final development plan (FDP) for blocks 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, and parcel K in downtown Superior.

The developer, Bill Jencks, began with a short presentation to orient any new members of the public to the project, and also touched on some changes that have been made as a result of our last Board meeting and a subsequent Planning Commission meeting. The first part of the presentation focused on parking, with a new deck shared that unfortunately hadn’t made it into the packet – you can view it here.

Next, we discussed one of the biggest topics from the last meeting: the request to introduce a “live / work” typology for blocks 6, 9, and 10 – so a small business owner could have a storefront facing the street, while living behind the storefront in the back of the building. In the last meeting, I asked the developer to come back with examples where live/work had been successful – and in Monday’s meeting, the architect shared a few of these; however, the developer also admitted that live/work is typically only successful 10% of the time, though he thinks Downtown Superior could be that 10%. He reiterated that the live/work typology is primarily just as a backup plan for investors who are concerned about retail, and emphasized that he believes the retail will be successful without ever moving to live/work. I asked the developer what price per square foot he would expect for live/work ($2.50), retail ($2.80), and pure residential ($1.75). Mr. Jencks also added that live/work is more expensive for him to build than retail – so it was clear to me that there is financial incentive for these to remain retail if possible.

We then took public comment, and heard from a number of residents of both Downtown Superior as well as elsewhere in town. As with our initial Board questions, the primary points made were about the request for live/work rezoning as well as concerns about parking. Two quotes stood out to me from the comments:

“The whole point is to have a pedestrian-oriented downtown where we can go, versus people getting into their cars and going outside Superior.”

Another new resident of Downtown Superior talked about what they were sold when buying their home:

“A livable, workable, bikeable, green, serene space.”

I completely agreed with these comments – before I was elected, I wrote up my vision for Superior as part of my platform under “fiscal responsibility”. You can read more about that here.

After public comment, we moved to Board Q&A – and questions ranged from looking at bike lanes and street widths, to a need for electric vehicle charging stations, to many more questions about the request to rezone to allow for potential live/work space. After a lengthy back-and-forth, our Board directed our Town Attorney to draft several conditions of approval before proceeding to vote.

There were two conditions we decided should be added to the PD: at least 30 feet measured from the corners along Main Street Block 5 shall be limited to commercial uses; and the work portion of live/work space shall be open to the public at least 50% of normal business hours each year. (This second condition was one I pushed hard for, to prevent someone from opening a pop up shop a few days a year that would otherwise sit vacant and not contribute to a thriving downtown.) There was also one condition set for the FDP: the developer must build at least 6 electric vehicle charging stations, plus add the conduit to expand EV charging further, by June 30, 2022.

With those conditions in place, the Board voted unanimously to pass the PD amendment and to approve the FDP.

Board Reports

While we did not get to reports in our meeting on Monday night (having moved them to the end of the meeting rather than the beginning, and then running over time), there is one item I promised a resident I would bring up. It’s come to my attention that there have been incidents of seemingly race-related harassment in our community… and I’m horrified to hear this. Regardless of how our town may grow and change in the future, I feel strongly that we must be an inclusive community – one welcoming of people from other backgrounds, even as we protect the small town camaraderie that makes Superior such a wonderful place to live. I hope that you too share these values.

Wrap Up

Thank you so much for taking the time to read / listen to this recap – I hope it is helpful! Our Board is always open to hearing your comments, questions, and concerns – you may always email your feedback to townboard@superiorcolorado.gov, or to me specifically at lauras@superiorcolorado.gov. As a reminder, any messages sent to a government email are part of the public record and will have your name attached; if you feel the need to write in anonymously, you may always comment at the bottom of my blog post recaps.