The Lakewood City Council revamped a controversial land-use ordinance Monday night that city leaders hope will break a logjam in getting badly needed housing projects approved in the city of 156,000.
The measure passed 8-0 Monday aims to balance a fervent desire by residents to preserve as much green space and parkland in Colorado’s fifth-largest city as possible with the need to create affordable homes in a metro area that is sorely lacking residential units.
Most notably, Lakewood’s new ordinance restores the ability of homebuilders to buy their way out of making land dedications in the city — a practice called fee-in-lieu. The change reverses the core of the original measure adopted by City Council last fall that placed a clear emphasis on preserving green space in Lakewood.
Cathy Kentner, a Lakewood resident and former mayoral candidate who helped spearhead the effort last year to put a mandatory land dedication measure before voters, called the council’s overhaul of the legislation Monday a “bait and switch.”
“The ordinance under consideration tonight does nothing to solve the underlying problems of developments that are environmentally unfriendly and unsustainable,” she said during public comment. “The ordinance under consideration tonight does not honor the wishes of thousands of constituents who signed a petition asking you, City Council, to eliminate the option for developers to pay a fee instead of providing parkland.”
The land dedication measure, adopted by the council in early November after qualifying for the ballot through a signature-gathering effort, has resulted in Lakewood issuing no new new residential building permits in the last 10 weeks as more than 100 proposed projects wrestle with how to make plans pencil out while complying with the city’s suddenly stricter land dedication requirements.
Individual families trying to do something as simple as a scrape and build got tangled in the city’s new land-use law, which forced them to set aside a tiny parcel of land for public use to satisfy the open space thresholds. City Council is allowed under Lakewood’s charter to amend ordinances it adopts.
Several representatives of affordable housing organizations, like Metro West Solutions, urged the council Monday to pass the new version of the law easing the land dedication requirements. Lakewood resident Brad Bruce, who counts himself among the city’s renters, said it was time to boost home inventory in the city.
“This is a very basic supply and demand issue,” Bruce said. “We need dense and walkable cities to curb our addiction to fossil fuels.”
Jacob Lujan, also a Lakewood resident, said Colorado’s worsening homelessness challenge will only expand without more housing. Lakewood’s ordinance passed Monday explicitly exempts affordable housing projects and accessory dwelling units from land dedication requirements.
“If we want to do something about the tents popping up in the city, we have to do something about affordable housing,” Lujan told the council.
But for resident Regina Hopkins, the city Monday scuttled its commitment to protecting trees, clean air and wildlife. Restoring the practice of fee-in-lieu, she said, aids developers in “maximizing density and development at any cost.”
“You are dismantling the very heart of what makes Lakewood, Lakewood — parks and open spaces,” Hopkins said. “Where is the environment’s voice at the table?”
Hopkins was a member of a small group that launched a campaign to stop construction of a five-story apartment building proposed for a 5-acre site at the east edge of Belmar Park. They collected thousands of signatures in favor of a ballot measure designed to strengthen open space protections in the city.
At its core, the citizen initiative aimed to boost the amount of green space, or parkland, that must be dedicated as part of any residential project in Lakewood and removed the fee-in-lieu tool that many developers use to skirt land dedication mandates.
The ordinance being considered Monday requires that the money collected from fees paid by developers be spent on establishing neighborhood and community parks within Lakewood.
The fight over the Belmar Park project ended up in court in December, when developer Kairoi Properties LLC sued Lakewood, claiming the city’s new land-use law was effectively killing its project by requiring an unreasonable amount of parkland set-aside on what is a compact site at 777 S. Yarrow St.
A judge placed a preliminary injunction on Lakewood, forbidding the city from enforcing its new land-use policy against the project until the case works its way through the courts.
The issue has dominated the Lakewood City Council’s time since the start of the year, resulting in three cracks at amending the ordinance and long nights of public comment during the council’s meetings this month.