Two high-end townhome developments on the east end of downtown Pearl Street are pitting two of Boulder’s most pressing concerns against one another: housing vs. local businesses.

It’s unclear what support the projects might have from the City Council. City officials twice this week have spoken about the need to preserve businesses, with a City Council member specifically calling out the east Pearl blocks as a place where services, not more housing, is needed.

Boulder’s Element Properties is planning 17 units with detached garages on two lots at 2116 and 2126 Pearl. Details on the project, such as pricing and timing, are scarce; the development is not listed on Element’s website, and neither Element nor the Louisville engineering firm working with them, The Sanitas Group, responded to repeated requests for comment.

Just one block east, Pace Development is planning eight high-end townhomes at The Mark on Pearl. Pace owner Ali Gidfar purchased the land at 2304 this week for $3 million. Gidfar hopes to start construction as soon as he is granted a permit; he plans to apply next week.

Selling the land was Mark Jurkiewicz, owner of Mark’s Auto Services. He bought the property in 1981 for $258,000, according to county records, and has run the repair shop there for 35 years.

Jurkiewicz said he wasn’t sure whether the business would relocate or close, declining to comment further or answer additional questions.

Snarf’s Sandwiches, Alchemy Face Bar, Jet’s Espressoria and marketing agency Fearless Unlimited will be displaced by Element’s townhomes. All the businesses are looking for another location, with varying degrees of urgency.

“I would love to relocate,” said Jetty Plooy, owner of Jet’s Espressoria. “There’s cool places in Boulder, but Pearl Street is definitely changing in terms of what you can afford.”

For now, her biggest concern is that customers continue to visit during the seven months she still has at 2116 Pearl. “Keep coming in,” she said. “We need your business.”

Plooy said she was hoping to find a smaller space or co-locate with another business, two solutions that have been proposed by downtown officials as a way to preserve local retail in an increasingly pricey area.

At a Thursday morning presentation by consultants studying the long-term health of Boulder’s downtown, City Manager Jane Brautigam said the city was particularly concerned with preserving “services” for residents as small businesses are being pushed out by high prices.

In a followup email, Brautigam said she has “asked city council to approve a budget request that would allow us to study the entire retail and service sector in Boulder to make sure that we have a viable mix of goods and services available to the residents of our community.”

Brautigam did not respond to additional questions.

City Council Member Jill Grano during Tuesday’s meeting referred explicitly to Element’s plans for the Espressoria site, saying, “We want commercial there.” Grano declined to comment for this story.

Mayor Pro Tem Aaron Brockett said he was unfamiliar with the townhome projects but said the conversation around affordability — so often dominated by housing — has expanded to include businesses as well.

“It is becoming increasingly clear we need to preserve affordable commercial space and add new affordable housing space,” he said, which the city will be attempting to do with a redevelopment at 30th and Pearl on the former site of Pollard Motor.

Mixed-use redevelopments are a good solution to both issues, Brockett said.

Units at The Mark are already available for pre-sale — at $1.29 million for a three-bedroom, three-bathroom townhome. Both projects will have to either provide affordable units or pay cash-in-lieu; Gidfar will contribute more than $300,000 toward the city’s affordable housing fund.

Affordable housing and retail were both elements Gidfar considered. But given the limited space, it would not have been financially feasible to make one of the eight units permanently affordable, he said.

“On a project this small and land value being this high, I just couldn’t make it work.”

Though not affordable, The Mark is filling an unmet need for this type of housing: Mere days after the property sale, with permits still to be granted, three of the eight units already have buyers under contract.

Shay Castle: 303-473-1626, castles@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/shayshinecastle