Boulder business owners are celebrating recent code changes that are expected to make the city’s development review process significantly faster and less complicated.
The existing review process, which involves multiple steps and can require approval from city staff and boards, can be so long and arduous that one business owner described it as a “nightmare.” The city acknowledged in a staff presentation that the city’s use review process is a “significant barrier” for new businesses.
Matt Bernstein has owned a business in Boulder for more than eight years. He’s in the process of moving his gym, Ape Co Movement School, from its former location on Valmont Road to a new spot at 4745 Walnut St. But the process of getting the necessary permits and approvals from the city has dragged on for months.
First, Bernstein said, it took two months for the city to tell him he needed to add sprinklers inside the building. He had previously been told that sprinklers aren’t required for spaces less than 5,000 square feet (his space is just under that), and installing sprinklers would cost about $200,000. Bernstein also needed separate approvals for other changes, such as adding bathrooms, and he said it took weeks to get a response from the city on those.
And when city staffers would respond, Bernstein said, they asked for new requirements that weren’t previously mentioned. For example, he said he was asked to add walls inside the space in case future tenants of the building wanted to turn it into a church and too many people might crowd inside.
“They’ve made us put up dividing walls so that there couldn’t be that many people (in the space) for the next tenant as opposed to having an open floor plan like I want now,” he said. “We had to build unusable space.”
Bernstein started the application process around Thanksgiving and just got his construction permit from the city last month. He plans to open the new location in September.
“Honestly, it was a nightmare,” he said. “… This process makes it so prohibitive for anybody to start a business outside of people who already have enough money to pull it off, or somebody like me who has eight years of experience and has investors.”
Residential impacts, too
Bernstein’s story is not unique. Other local business owners have complained of similar issues. And in many cases, these business owners have been stuck paying rent on their commercial space while waiting for their use reviews to be approved by the city — a process that in recent years has taken an average of 200 days, or almost seven months.
Restaurants especially have been bogged down by bureaucracy. Restaurants are frequently subjected to use reviews and have restrictions on their square footage, patio size and hours of operation. Last year, City Council members expressed a desire to loosen some of these restrictions to make it easier for restaurants to do business in Boulder.
Josh Dinar went through the city’s use review process in 2015 and 2016, when he opened River and Woods at 2328 Pearl St. Dinar said it took almost a year to open the restaurant in a space that had already been a restaurant for four decades.
Like Bernstein, Dinar also found himself frequently waiting for responses from the city, and he also was asked to make changes during his the review process. Some of the city’s requests to Dinar included a parking reduction and installing bike parking outside the building that can withstand 150 mph winds.
“(It was like) something out of a satire for a while there, how long things could take,” Dinar said.
To the city’s credit, Dinar said, there were staffers who helped him navigate this process. But he said that while he loves Boulder and has lived here for a long time, he would not open another business in town.
The development review process also has impacts on the residential side, according to Bryan Bowen, an architect and former member of the city’s Planning Board. Bowen said the approval process for everything from large-scale housing developments to small improvements homeowners want to make can be onerous.
“The easiest thing to do in the city of Boulder is to build a very large house for a wealthy person. … Everything else is more difficult,” he said. “But if you asked the City Council what their highest priorities were for land use in the city, it probably isn’t just more wealthy person housing. It’s the middle-income housing, it’s duplexes (and) triplexes, the missing middle and affordable housing.”
Reduced review time
Boulder’s City Council unanimously voted last month to amend the city’s land use code and streamline the development review process. Although the council made numerous changes, some of the major ones included reducing the types of applications that require a call-up, or review, by the Planning Board. Call-ups are no longer required for floodplain and wetlands projects.
The call-up process adds time and administrative effort to the review process, and the city estimates that Planning Board call-ups could be reduced by about 40%. This change could also cut down the review time for applicants by two to four weeks.
Additionally, the council approved creating a new “minor use review” process that allows straightforward use reviews on nonresidential projects in nonresidential areas to also bypass the Planning Board call-up process if they don’t include any site changes. These types of reviews would also not need to go through the city’s development agreement process. The city estimates about 40% of use reviews in 2018-2023 could have been processed as minor use reviews, which would take less time to approve than a typical use review.
The changes have been celebrated by groups such as the Boulder Chamber and Better Boulder. Jonathan Singer, senior director of policy programs for the Boulder Chamber, spoke in support of the changes at a City Council meeting last month shortly before the changes were approved.
“The one key takeaway that I gave City Council was, this is amazing progress. Don’t stop now,” Singer told the Daily Camera. “These are tangible benefits that will improve every sector of our economy. And at the same time, we know, and city staff knows, that applications need to continue to move expeditiously to make sure that businesses can move forward with their goals.”
And for their part, Bernstein and Dinar both said they’re appreciative of the changes.
“The fact that they’re coming and saying, ‘We’re trying to make the process easier,’ and that they’ve stated that as a purpose — it’s great to hear,” Dinar said. “It’s highly appreciated that they’re thinking about how to do that and what can be made better.”
Said Bernstein, “I’m very, very happy to hear that they’re streamlining this, because it was an incredibly frustrating and tiring process.”
