Just how messy has the fight over a vacant office building near Belmar Park become? Well, no one has been able to get any construction projects – not single-family homes, duplexes, or large condos — approved since Dec. 7, thanks to an absolute catastrophe of public policy developed by citizens opposed to the development.
The Denver Post’s John Aguilar reported on the disaster and how the new policy, as it’s written and interpreted, harms families who are just trying to build a home on their own personal lot.
The good news is the solution should be simple: repeal the ordinance and instead enact something that actually makes sense. Lakewood City Council approved the ordinance at the behest of the group Save Open Space Lakewood and Save Belmar Park which had gathered 6,000 signatures to put it on the ballot in a special election. Rather than holding a special election, Lakewood City Council enacted it immediately with the hope the issue would be resolved quickly in the courts.
The reason the city is now applying the requirements for open space to single-family lots has to do with the wording in the new ordinance applying the open space requirement to everyone seeking a building permit — not just projects with large site plans.
Of course, a very small project on a single or double lot should not be required to set aside public land or even to pay a fee instead of setting aside public land. However, master-planned communities developing a hundred acres should be required to set aside land for public use, and a major condominium development should be rewarded for density but required to have reasonable setbacks and sidewalks. The difference is between a subdivision of a hundred families not having access to a park, and a single family not having a park in their backyard.
The real fight is over an important urban infill project proposed at 777 S. Yarrow St. The project would demolish the existing office building and replace it with a five-story condo or apartment building with 412 units and 542 parking spaces.
It sounds like good news, except the proposed building is adjacent to Belmar Park and there are legitimate concerns about how close the new building (and a stamped concrete access road) will be to the park. Those concerns doen’t mean the city should or can force the developer to give them land for a park, but it does mean the city should be offering concessions and incentives to get the builder to do the right thing.
Save Open Space Lakewood was able to change the city ordinance so that no one could pay a fee to get out of the city’s requirement that large projects set aside land for parks. Instead of complying with the new law, the developer of 777 S Yarrow Street filed a lawsuit claiming the city could not force them to hand over some of their land for a park.
The city had already revised the parkland dedication rules and increased the fee in lieu of dedicated parkland to $432,727 per acre (a 70% increase). That is still short of what an acre of land is worth in Lakewood, meaning it does not give the city enough money to buy an acre of land to dedicate to park space.
The proposed site plan from Kairoi Properties shows a proposal to put a stamped concrete driveway just a few feet from their lot line adjacent to the park. The documents claim that the development will provide 66,207 square feet of open space (permeable land), but the building design has most of that square footage in internal courtyards and a private pool area rather than abutting the city’s open space and heavily used park. The existing office building is set far back from the park with a large parking lot adjacent to the walking trail.
None of this is good or courteous design.
The developer should go back to the drawing board and come up with a way to create a larger buffer of trees and permeable surfaces between the park and their development. We aren’t saying that buffer needs to become public land. The developer can decide whether or not they would rather pay the fee or open up that land for public use. But one thing is certain, paving the surface right up to a few feet from the lot line is not being a good neighbor to the thousands of people who enjoy the park.
This is a cautionary tale about two mistakes — the first is the unintended consequences of citizen initiatives and the second is city ordinances that fail to demand good design. Both can be rectified by Lakewood City Council.
Sign up for Sound Off to get a weekly roundup of our columns, editorials and more.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.