If You Go What: The Boulder County Housing Authority will present its goals for a proposed downtown Longmont affordable housing project and solicit comments from residents and employees in the area during a community outreach open house. When: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m Thursday Where: Boulder County’s St. Vrain Community Hub, 515 Coffman St., Longmont More information: Boulder County’s website describing the proposed project can be viewed at bit.ly/2fMnkwX

Several Longmont City Council members said on Monday night that they and their constituents want assurances that a proposed affordable-housing project, and its residents, will be compatible with other homes and businesses in the downtown Longmont area.

The council members’ comments came during and after a joint meeting they and city staff members had with Boulder County Commissioners Elise Jones and Deb Gardner and members of the county staff.

During that meeting in the City Council Study Session Room, Boulder County Housing Division Director Norrie Boyd reviewed the development the Boulder County Housing Authority is considering for a mixed-use building on the site of a county-owned surface parking lot on the east side of the 500 block of Coffman Street.

The development would include 50 to 80 units of permanently affordable housing, about 10,000 square feet of ground-level commercial office space and a parking garage.

Councilman Brian Bagley said that while he’s not against the idea, he had questions about its compatibility with and impact on Longmont’s revitalizing downtown area, which Bagley said “is just now getting to the point where things are happening.”

Bagley said he would be concerned about “anything that would throw that off.”

Councilwoman Bonnie Finley said after the meeting that “I’ve gotten several calls from neighbors” of the proposed housing location, including one from a person “who said she didn’t want Boulder County to dump homeless people downtown” with such a project.

Finley said that while she knows that affordable housing rentals wouldn’t necessarily equate to a housing project specifically or exclusively catering to the homeless, that misconception “just scares people.”

“We do have a big investment down there and need to make sure it gets done right,” Finley said of the downtown area and any county project that might be developed there.

After the meeting, Councilman Jeff Moore noted that there are concerns about whether the county Housing Authority housing units would be available only for tenants at “the lowest level of income” rather than for a “wider distribution” of income levels.

Existing and future downtown-area residences should include a balanced mixture of housing stock that reflects the ranges of incomes in the overall Longmont community, Moore suggested, saying that “we don’t want to get that out of whack.”

During the meeting, though, Mayor Dennis Coombs said that “if more people live downtown” as the result of a county housing project, “that’ll help everyone” living, working or owning businesses in the area.

And Councilman Gabe Santos said the 150- to 200-space proposed parking garage, with spaces to serve county employees as well as residents, could ease the daytime parking problems that now occur in the neighborhood because of people visiting or working in the St. Vrain Community Hub, the county office facility at 515 Coffman St.

“I’ve heard from businesses that they’re being overrun with Boulder County parkers,” Santos said.

Boyd told the council members at the meeting that “we’re not trying to do something that’s not going to work for the downtown.”

Boyd said Boulder County’s staff has worked closely with the Longmont Downtown Development Authority and Longmont city staff as the county crafted its proposal, which will be presented to members of the public during a Thursday night open house at the St. Vrain Community Hub.

“We’re not here to bring the neighborhood down,” Boyd said, adding the county intends that its development “will be something we’ll all be proud of.”

The discussion of the proposed affordable-housing project was one of several topics covered at Monday night’s joint meeting, where Boulder County and Longmont representatives reviewed past and future partnerships between the county and city on transportation projects, parks and open-space improvements, flood-recovery work and sustainability programs.

John Fryar: 303-684-5211, jfryar@times-call.com or twitter.com/jfryartc