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A RESOLUTION WAIVING DEVELOPMENT-RELATED FEES FOR CERTAIN NEW COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE CITY OF COMMERCE CITY
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Summary and Background Information:
City Council desires more commercial development, especially new restaurants, hotels, family entertainment businesses, grocery stores and health care facilities. Construction materials and labor costs have risen substantially over the last five years, making incentive programs that bring down market entry costs important to a developer and end-user. They look to the city for any financial assistance to help fill financial gaps that will move a project forward.
City Council passed Resolution 2019-53 waiving certain city development fees for preferred types of new commercial development--restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Staff is actively marketing this program as a benefit to bringing these types of projects to Commerce City. However, the program is set to expire May 31, 2022. Staff is asking City Council to extend this program for another five years, until May 31, 2027; and update and expand the project definitions to include grocery stores and hospitals.
Staff presented this request during the April 18, 2022 City Council meeting for preliminary discussion. One of the discussion topics was around the definition of fast food restaurants. The 2019 Resolution did exclude all drive through restaurants from being eligible for the program in support of the City Council discussion at the time. However, since then, there are a growing number of new restaurant concepts that provide fast casual or full service amenities but also have a drive-through option and the city would not want to exclude these restaurants from the program.
To accommodate for this change in restaurant delivery options, staff originally proposed taking out the drive through exclusion and adding an exclusion of all new fast food restaurants instead. During council discussion, there were concerns on how this would affect t...
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