If you've driven by the Park Hill Golf Course lately, you've seen fencing and No Trespassing signs blocking off 155 acres of sprawling brown grass and seemingly dying trees.
Weeds fill the parking lots. The buildings are deteriorating.
Westside Investment Partners spent years promising assets to the community. In spring of 2023, the developer lost a fight at the ballot box to lift the conservation easement. Voters blocked Westside's development.
Now, more than a year after losing at the ballot, the company is sitting on a 155-acre eyesore.
"Because the Park Hill easement is unambiguous, the land will return to a privately-owned, regulation-length 18-hole golf course," said Bill Rigler, a former spokesperson for the developers, shortly after voters shot down development. "The site will immediately be closed to public use or access, with no housing, community grocery store, or public parks allowed on this site, in accordance with the will of the voters."
Yet the only promise about the land's future that Westside has kept, so far, is that they have shut down the land to the public.
There's no golf. No park. No housing or grocery store.
Denverite readers want to know: What's happening with the old Park Hill Golf Course?
"It's been more than a year since the vote that refused to vacate the city's conservation easement in the Park Hill Golf Course," Eric Banner wrote to Denverite in May. "As near as I can tell driving by, there has been no effort by the developer to come into compliance with the terms of the easement, and I haven't seen anything in the news about the city taking action to enforce the easement. Is anything happening to the property? And if there isn't, is there a reason the city isn't enforcing the terms of the contract?"
Another reader, Kylee B., is holding out hope for a grocery store, businesses and housing.
"I thought it was to be returned to an 18-hole course," asked reader Nate Hays. "What's up?"
We wondered the same thing. But we can't get an answer.
Kenneth Ho, the Westside developer who tried to shepherd the embattled development, has not answered Denverite's calls and emails for months.
A spokesperson for Community Planning and Development, the city's planning department, says the agency is not aware of conversations between the agency and the owners.
And Mayor Mike Johnston, who said he'd strike a deal to acquire the land and turn it into a public amenity, says he's been in talks with the developers. They're working on a solution.
What could the future look like? He's not ready to say.
"We're optimistic that we're making progress," Johnston said. "We'll get to a solution that the community will be excited about."
Here's what we do know.
A conservation easement — the one voters upheld in multiple ways, both directly and indirectly, over three separate ballot measures — still says the land must be an 18-hole regulation-length golf course for as long as that's feasible.
Other golf courses are open citywide, even a few nearby, suggesting running a golf course is feasible.
Yet there's no golf.
To open space advocates' chagrin, there is also no park.
So when can we expect some news from the city about the future of the land?
"We've been at this for several months, and it's complicated negotiations, but we're pushing aggressively, and I'm optimistic about where we're heading," Johnston said. "That is something we certainly plan to get resolved in this year."
