A developer has a key approval for building more than 300 apartments on vacant land near the Park Hill Golf Course on Colorado Boulevard.
Denver City Council members voted on Monday to approve a rezoning plan for 4050 North Colorado Boulevard that paves the way for the project. Councilmembers voted 10-2 in favor of the rezoning, with Kevin Flynn and Amanda Sawyer in opposition.
The rezoning applies to a block along Colorado Boulevard just south of Interstate 70 and near the 40th and Colorado A Line stop.
While the primary goal of the plan was to rezone the empty 7-acre tract of land owned by the Urban Land Conservancy, the vote also rezoned an area currently occupied by a strip of restaurants and another affordable apartment complex, even though it is not part of the development project.
Both city officials and the Urban Land Conservancy described the plan’s details as “complicated.” The parcels occupied by the empty tract, the restaurants, and the existing apartment complex are all under a planned building group, which sets rules about what can be developed and how.
Urban Land Conservancy wanted to amend that plan in order to build hundreds of affordable housing units on the empty parcel of land. However, in order to do that, they needed to rezone the occupied southern parcel of land, which they were able to petition for due to owning over 51 percent of the land within the planned building group.
The petition to rezone the land received widespread support from the neighborhood, including that of the Northeast Park Hill Coalition, the local neighborhood group. The council also received some opposition to the plan, with critics citing increased traffic, lack of grocery stores, and other concerns.
DelWest, which owns the apartment complex in the southern tract, wrote to city council that they did not plan to formally object to the rezoning, but the company asked Urban Land Conservancy and the city to consider several concerns DelWest had about the future vision of the area. Their concerns included changes being made to the agreements outlined in the planned building group.
OK, that’s interesting and all, but what are they going to do with the rezoned land?
Urban Land Conservancy is now free to develop the northern tract of land, pending the mayor’s signature. ULC's development partner, Elmington Capital, plans to build an apartment building with about 300 units, all of which will be permanently affordable, according to documents and public discussions. The building may be between five and 12 floors tall. More buildings could be added in a future phase.
A park, accessible paths, urban plazas and playgrounds are also included in the proposal. Urban Land Conservancy said plans for those features are not finalized, as conversations with stakeholders continue.
There are no plans in the works to redevelop the southern parcel of land,occupied by the strip of restaurants and the existing affordable housing complex. That means residents there, as well as the Popeye’s, Starbucks, Carl’s Jr., and Neko Ramen & Rice, aren’t going away anytime soon. (Ed. note: Unless they want to...)
The upcoming development isn’t the only complicated rezoning issue to impact the area.
In 2023, voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have turned the nearby Park Hill Golf Course, which at the time stood empty, into a massive mixed-use development. The ballot question was highly contentious, and after Denverites voted against it, city council voted to rezone the area to bring tee time back to the former golf course. However, the developer that currently owns the golf course hasn’t put a timeline on when the putting green will reopen.
Editor’s note: This article was updated on Oct. 3, 2024, to clarify that there is only one building in the first phase of the planned development. A previous updated added updated information from a more recent version of the development plans.
