Zoning Issues in Other Parts of Denver
Jay
directly affect the Sunflower Project, however it is an example of
zoning & the City Council. This is an article from a friend that lives
in the Highlands area.
Jay
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RedPeak gets an earful
Hundreds of people gathered Wednesday night for the first neighborhood
meeting with RedPeak Properties.
With the passion and fervor found in a fundamentalist congregation,
hundreds of people gathered Wednesday night – appropriately in a
church – and voiced their opposition to an apartment community
planned in the heart of the trendy West Highland neighborhood.
But the only soul the people attending “listening session” in the
Highland Event Center at West 29th Avenue and Julian Street, which is
also a Presbyterian church, was that of the neighborhood, which many
in the audience feared will be irreparably harmed if RedPeak
Properties, a $400 million multifamily housing developer based in
Denver – is allowed to build three, five-story buildings on three
parcels just north of West 32nd Avenue and Lowell Boulevard.
During the four-hour meeting – twice as long as scheduled – applause
followed dozens of speakers – some shouting out from the audience,
others from a microphone at center stage – every time they spoke
against the proposal in its current form.
Even an “Amen,” was shouted out from time to time.
No one spoke in favor of the five-story plan.
Shepherd put on hot seat
The only sustained boos and catcalls fell at one point on Susan
Shepherd, the recently elected city councilwoman, when many in the
audience called for her to take a stand against the current plan and
support the residents‘ desire to down-zone the properties. More than
1,100 people are supporting a grassroots group, No High Rises in West
Highland.
“We should participate in a dialogue,” Shepherd said, and was
overwhelmed with jeers.
Pressed on the spot to voice her position on a down-zoning, she said
she would not call for it that moment, but said “nothing is off the
table,” and she would not rule-out supporting a down-zoning down the
road.
“I will be open to consider it,” she said. If Shepherd called for a
down-zoning, she would need to recuse herself from voting on it. While
property owners have successfully down-zoned their own property, for
the City Council to do so against the wishes of a landowner would be a
long and lengthy process, an assistant city attorney said.
Shepherd, who organized the meeting, the first chance the neighborhood
had to meet with RedPeak and its recently hired architect, Brad
Buchanan, kicked it off by saying meeting that she understood there is
a lot of emotion in the room, and a lot of people are frustrated, but
call for a “respectful dialogue.”
The idea was to have people who signed up to speak to do so, but
happen until two hours into the meeting.
The tone was set early on when a woman from the back of the room
shouted: “You remember Wal-Mart? The largest company in the world and
we kicked their butt. You’re a slam-dunk, honey.”
The woman was alluding to plans by Wal-Mart to open its first
Neighborhood Market grocery store concept in the Highland Gardens
development on the former Elitch’s amusement park in 2004. Following
months of public protests by many in the neighborhood, Wal-Mart pulled
the plug on the project and Sunflower Market built a store at West
38th Avenue and Wolff Street, instead.
Buchanan, who recently joined RNL Design, replaced Humphries Poli as
the architect.
“We’re starting from scratch,” Buchanan said.
His goal was to gather input from concerned citizens, take notes, and
meet again to discuss them in detail, to see if any common ground
could be found between RedPeak and the neighbors.
He ended up collecting almost 200 talking points on four large pieces
of paper from several dozen people who voiced their concerns.
Down-zoning battle cry
“There has to be a down-zoning,” said Bill Johnston, a long-time
neighborhood activists and a past president of the West Highland
Neighborhood Association, said before the meeting started.
That was the call of many people throughout the night.
This prominent sign is on a home on Meade Street
Much of the criticism of the proposed RedPeak project revolves around
the height – opposed by all of the speakers as being too high. Others
worried that an already congested area would become intolerable. Some
neighbors complained they already have trouble parking their cars in
front of their homes and traffic back-ups are common. Buchanan did say
that a traffic study will be conducted to determine the impact of the
new residents.
One neighbor, Chauncey Tanton, said said that a four-story condo
building next to the church property casts such a large shadow on his
home that he cannot use passive solar heat to warm his house. He also
said that snow and ice basically never melts on Moncrieff Place in
front of his home, because of shadows from the condo project. The
proposal includes three parcels on Moncrieff, Meade Street and the
church site on Lowell. RedPeak has the lots under contract. The
current landowner has extended the lease on the church from the end of
the year until March, one person said on Wednesday night
Bill Menezes, who lives on Meade Street, brought a photo of his two
young children to the front of the room when it was his time to speak
from the microphone. He said if the RedPeak sticks to its original
plan, he and his family will lose their view of the “beautiful
downtown skyline,” and sunrise, or what his daughters call “sun-
rainbows.”
Laura Goode, who started the grassroots opposition group, said that
while technically many say the buildings are not high-rises, they are
to anyone who loses their views, their sunlight or deals with the
problems of congestion she said the buildings are sure to bring. The
initial plan called for 160 apartment units, which people believe
could add as many as 300 people to the area. Mike Zoellner, president
of RedPeak, noted they will have more parking spaces than required
under code, they will sponsor a B-cycle bike sharing program, and
will provide a car-sharing plan. Zoellner initially was not going to
attend, because the meeting date selected by Shepherd conflicted with
his mother’s 80th birthday. But he decided it was important to address
the neighbors and arrive at his mother’s party late. “My mother
understands what I do for a living,” Zoellner said.
Minds made up
While Buchanan told the crowd a number of times that he was committed
to doing something that would be good for the neighborhood and there
are design elements that can mitigate height and density, that
argument was a no-started for Goode and many others attending the
meeting. He does not yet even have initial drawings. RedPeak, which
receives funding from a Washington state public employee pension fund,
withdrew the first initial plans submitted to the city by Humphries
Poli.
Design remedies are like “putting a lipstick on a pig,” she said. A
number of people in the audience said they had believed developers in
the past, only to be lied to. Others said they feel their elected
officials are not representing them strongly enough on this issue and
the deck is stacked in favor of the rich and powerful. A number of
people worried that businesses would suffer greatly during the
construction process, as retailers and restaurant owners have during
street work on Tennyson Street in the nearby Berkeley neighborhood.
Signs opposing the RedPeak project are found in many lawns across from
the Highlands church where three, 5-story building can be built.
At the same time, she emphasized that she and many others are not
against development – they simply think this is the wrong development
at this site. A number of people called it a “great project at the
wrong location.” They said such a project would be welcomed on a busy
street such as West 38th Avenue.
“We’re not extremists,” Goode said. In fact, she said she would
welcome to “calmly and rationally” discuss a smaller and less dense
project that would still be financially feasible for RedPeak.
One speaker called for RedPeak to cut its losses now and simply leave
the project, much like an investor might do with a bad stock
investment.
While the suggestion was met with applause, following the meeting a
small group of people who were still in the room said that might not
be a good idea, as then the parcels could be sold to another developer
that would likely demolish the site and slap-up buildings on the site
as soon as possible.
Despite the adversarial relationship, RedPeak, Shepherd and a smaller
neighborhood group, plan to get together for future meetings.
First up on the agenda, will to meet with members of the Denver
Community Planning and Development Department to learn the
justification for rezoning the land last year to U-MS-5, during the
biggest rezoning overhaul in Denver’s history. Initially, the land was
to be rezoned as U-MS-2, which only would have allowed two stories on
the site, which many people described as an “error” that must be
remedied with a down-zoning.
Anyone wishing to volunteer for the citizen committee should email
in...@westhighlandneighborhood.org and include any qualifications or
expertise you might have that could be a benefit to the process. The
committee expects to have its first meeting on the week of Dec. 5.