Fears of “green gentrification” near the Park Hill Golf Course site have the city pushing for a plan around the 155 acres of Northeast Park Hill.
The neighborhood has already faced rapid home price increases in recent decades, along with most of Denver. The community has lacked a grocery store for decades. And while it once was a home of the city’s Black community and entertainment, the area has lost many of its businesses and cultural gathering spaces.
The arrival of a new park also brings fears that those changes will only grow.
In 2022, when the planning department developed its most recent plan for the area, the community identified numerous needs. Affordable housing. Avoiding displacement. Boosting small businesses and the tree canopy. Providing safe access to the park, located along busy Colorado Boulevard.
The 2022 Park Hill Golf Course Small Area Plan was created to pave the way for a big development on the site — one voters blocked in the name of open space in three separate elections.
Now the city is trying to incorporate those same goals in the residential and industrial areas around the former golf course.
Called the Park Hill Action Plan, the document will guide short-term projects in the area, while near northeast Denver waits for a larger area plan.
“The Park Hill Action Plan is our opportunity to make sure neighbors have a real voice in shaping what comes next - from affordable housing to small business support and safer streets,” Mayor Mike Johnston said in a statement. “We’re committed to making this space a place where every Denverite can thrive.”
Councilmember Shontel Lewis, who represents the neighborhood, has been a supporter of the park. But she has also cautioned that the project could lead to displacement. As she tells it, the city is “starting at zero” with the planning.
“We intentionally have not committed to anything because we want to ensure that every step in this process is prioritizing the needs of our Park Hill neighbors,” she said in a statement. “A project of this scale is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build something truly transformative, and when the community gets to lead, it becomes more than a park; it becomes a symbol of equity, resilience, and shared vision.”
The planning for the area will take place in two phases.
The action plan will be focused on short-term action that will bring safe access to the park, add affordable housing, avoid involuntary displacement, provide healthy food, boost the tree canopy and support small businesses.
How will the community actually be included?
Denver Parks and Recreation has already begun a community outreach effort around the park’s future.
The department will join community members for a Park Visioning Open House on Saturday, June 7, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the City of Axum Park, 3200 N. Birch St.
Denver Community Planning and Development will be at the event to present more information about the Park Hill Action Plan and will hold additional outreach events throughout the summer to gather community input.
Johnston has visited the site and discussed his own ideas for the area's future.
Ahead of 2023, Johnston wandered the area with Denverite and presented some visions of his own. He talked about the importance of bringing affordable housing, tiny homes for people experiencing homelessness, restaurants, bars, dry cleaners and grocery stores.
"I'd love to have walkable streets and walkable neighborhoods with some vibrant commercial that is homegrown, that are entrepreneurs from this community who want to start restaurants or retail or businesses and where they can drive easily to downtown or take the light rail easily to downtown, but where there have enough services right here in their community where they can be able to access all the things that make life vibrant in Denver," Johnston said at the time.
He likened his vision of Northeast Park Hill to the City Park neighborhood, where everything a Denverite needs is within walking distance.
He talked about turning underused parking lots into pocket parks or athletic fields and commissioning artists to paint murals on the great and brown walls.
Some of this work could be accomplished in the Park Hill Action Plan.
But a second phase of planning will kick off in 2026 with the creation of the Near Northeast Area Plan — a long-term vision for the various neighborhoods in the area. That program will start in 2026.
