A new eight-unit development for single-family homes called Eight on Metz is in the works for Metz Lane in northeast Durango.
City Council approved a preliminary conceptual development plan last week for the project at 170 Metz Lane.
The proposed development consists of a 2-acre footprint with eight attached single-family home units, which city staff described as a somewhat unique housing style resembling a duplex but with a parcel drawn between each home.
Planning & Zoning Administrator Leanne Bernstein said the site parcel was annexed around 2007 along with the nearby Mountain Trace and Harmony subdivisions, and an annexation agreement struck then requires what amounts to a 10% Fair Share Inclusionary Zoning policy, in which 10% of units would be income-restricted in the interest of creating affordable housing.
Bernstein said it’s tricky to apply its current Fair Share policy, which requires income restrictions for 10-12% of units in developments of nine or more units, but the 2007 annexation agreement requires something. She said there are alternatives to Fair Share available.
Those alternatives include paying a fee in lieu of income-restricted units or by building an income-restricted unit or units off-site. The fee in lieu is a much more common option – Brian Devine, housing policy and planning administrator, said a developer has never selected off-site units as a Fair Share alternative.
Project applicant Mark Williamson said at a May Community Development Commission he is exploring the possibility of building an off-site unit at another project site on 32nd Street, but a fee in lieu appears to be the simplest alternative.
Three Met Lane residents raised concerns about the development at the CDC meeting on May 18, but none of them outright opposed the project altogether. Most concerns had to do with parking and traffic congestion.
Mountain Trace Homeowners Association President Luke Angel said he supports the project but would appreciate it if the development was built with additional parking spaces on site.
“It will take out about four or five parking spots from the street which is normally pretty clogged up. Just having extra spots on site if available for the people who live there as well as guests,” he said.
Mark Seiter said he is also concerned with parking in addition to traffic onto Metz Lane from County Road 250, 32nd Street/County Road 251 and Florida Road.
“The construction that’s taken place recently for the last couple years has exaggerated it. But I do anticipate a lot of traffic on that,” he said.
Bernstein said Mountain Trace is expanding a connection that will connect directly to Florida Road, which will satisfy an existing development requirement for any new units on Metz Lane.
Seiter said he agrees with Angel that the Eight on Metz project will likely reduce parking by five to seven spaces.
“The street’s wide, which is nice, but that parking would be diminished, which would add more congestion, especially on that corner as you’re coming in,” he said.
Jim Colaff said he lives close to the project site and he’s seen traffic on Metz Lane increase with other nearby developments. Like Angel, he said he approves of the development. Also like Angel, traffic congestion concerns him.
“The intersection at Metz Lane, 32nd and East Animas – it is just a total disaster and we are going to be adding more traffic to that with this development as well the developments that are proposed at that intersection.
He said he’s worried about what materials a proposed stormwater drainage would be constructed of, and whether outdoor trash containers would be visible or enclosed. He said the back of the parcel is heavily wooded and asked if any fire mitigation has been proposed.
“My backyard backs up to that area also, and I have tons of oak brush and we have mitigated some of that for fire protection,” he said.
Bernstein said wildfire resiliency code requirements are accounted for and trash enclosures are required to be screened.
City Planner Daniel Murray said the stormwater drainage will consist of a bare grass swale – not a buried concrete drainage system.
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