Steve Pomerance

Relative to  my last column  on the flaws in the site review process, on Wednesday  the Camera covered  the Boulder City Council’s “workshopping” of a ballot item to extend the current capital improvements tax. This tax funded, for example, the rebuilding of the civic center area between city hall and the library. What caught my eye was a failed attempt by council members Bob Yates, Jan Burton (who is running for re-election), and Andrew Shoemaker to remove $2 million of the funds targeted for replacing Fire Station No. 3 at Arapahoe and 30th, and instead spend the citizens’ tax money to make operational the “arts cinema” that the developer of the Pearl West building promised during site review, but allegedly does not now have the funds to complete. This hole in the site review process has been known about for years, so why hasn’t it been fixed? So it’s clear, Station No. 3 is undersized to cover all the growth in east Boulder, and is too close to the Boulder Creek floodway. But

The stimulus to write this came from a recent article in the Camera about how the developer of Pearl West — the huge office building at 11th and Pearl — allegedly didn’t have the money to finish the theater that the developer promised when the site review was approved by the Planning Board. What good is a promise if there is no requirement to deliver? The problem is that there is a fundamental flaw in Boulder’s planning process. Developers of projects, other than small ones, are required to go through the “site review” process, where the judgment of a majority of the Planning Board as to whether the project meets vague criteria is substituted for actual numerical rules about height, setbacks, density, etc. The bounds are much looser, and the Planning Board almost invariably approves structures considerably larger than the underlying zoning would allow. This size inflation generally has a negative impact on the neighbors, so the only guaranteed outcome is a giant fight. And because

The stimulus to write it came from a recent article in the Camera about how the developer of Pearl West – the huge, totally out of place office building at 10 th and Pearl – didn’t have the money to finish the theater that was promised when the site review was approved by the planning board. How is is that a developer could promise something but could not be held accountable?. The problem is that there is a fundamental flaw in Boulder’s planning process. Developers of almost all projects, other than the very small ones, are required to go through the “site review” process, where their project is supposed to meet thousands of words of incredibly vague criteria. But there are no minimum rights or maximum limits that would properly bound the project’s size and impacts. So the only guaranteed outcome is a giant fight. And the staff’s paranoia about violating someone’s 5 th Amendment rights prohibiting the “taking of private property without just compensation” has left the planning