Economy & Economic Development  September 16, 2016

Ball Aerospace seeks City Council ‘nod’ in quest to upsize engineering center

BOULDER — Officials from Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., are asking the Boulder City Council for a “nod of five” that would allow them to apply for an amendment to a 2005 site-plan approval that included construction of a new 55-foot building on the company’s campus in east Boulder.

While the 55-foot height was approved in 2005, the desired amendment — a substantial one that could add as much as 90,000 square feet of space to the previously approved 159,000-square-foot building — essentially means seeking new approval for the project. That includes new approval for the height exception in an area where only 40-foot-tall buildings are allowed by right.

The informal nod of five out of nine council members is not a formal vote. But it is needed due to the ordinance enacted by council last year that placed a two-year moratorium on granting height exceptions in all but a few designated areas of the city. Without the nod of five, an application like Ball’s could be automatically rejected.

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If granted, the nod of five wouldn’t provide Ball the height exception. But it would at least open the door for the possibility of the height exception being granted in spite of the moratorium. Ball would still need to go through a full site-review process, including a public hearing in front of the planning board. If the project were approved by the planning board, the city council could also call up the project for consideration.

Ball’s proposed engineering center would sit along the east side of Commerce Street and be set back from Arapahoe Avenue. The building would be about three quarters office space and one quarter lab-production space, Guy Fromme, the company’s senior facilities manager said Friday.

Ball’s originally approved site plan called for razing four single-story buildings on the site now to make way for the 159,000-square-foot building. That plan included keeping a nearly 60-foot tall “tech tower” building that is currently at the corner of Commerce and Arapahoe.

Ball’s new plan would include demolishing the 50,000-square-foot tech tower as well and incorporating that square footage into the south end of the new engineering center. Fromme said the ultimate goal is to boost the engineering center to close to 250,000 square feet to maximize the allowable floor-area ratio.

While the building Ball is proposing is considered 55 feet tall for zoning purposes, it will be built into the side of a hill. At the north end of the building, it would rise 55 feet above the ground. But concept drawings the company presented to planners in informal discussions last year show that the south end of the building – where the proposed additional square footage is to be added and the side nearer to Arapahoe Avenue – would rise only about 37 feet above the ground. Visually, Ball officials say, that would make for less impact than the current tech tower in place now.

“We think it’s actually going to improve the image” by tearing down the tech tower and incorporating that space into a lower-profile portion of the new building, Fromme said.

Fromme said no formal timeline has been determined for when Ball would like to break ground on the new building. But he said the company’s intent would be to submit technical documents and construction drawings next year.

“I think it is worth saying that we (Ball Aerospace) consider ourselves to be a long-standing and valued member of the business and citizens’ community of Boulder,” Fromme wrote in a letter to Boulder planning staff in seeking the nod of five. And we truly believe that our new BEC will be a vibrant addition to our neighborhood just as we envisioned it would be in the 2005 approval.”

BOULDER — Officials from Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., are asking the Boulder City Council for a “nod of five” that would allow them to apply for an amendment to a 2005 site-plan approval that included construction of a new 55-foot building on the company’s campus in east Boulder.

While the 55-foot height was approved in 2005, the desired amendment — a substantial one that could add as much as 90,000 square feet of space to the previously approved 159,000-square-foot building — essentially means seeking new approval for the project. That includes new approval for the height exception in an area…

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