Impending construction on a new District 6 police station in Capitol Hill has been paused. The city is going back to the drawing board for new designs — and will consider adding housing to the development, which some local leaders had requested.
“We are exploring new opportunities at the site, which could potentially include housing,” the mayor’s spokesperson Jon Ewing wrote. “We’ll have more information down the road."
Mayor Mike Johnston broke the news to Capitol Hill residents on Thursday night at a Capitol Hill Residents United Meeting.
Frank Locantore, head of the Colfax Business Improvement District, has been campaigning for years for the city to include housing units in the redevelopment projects. He believed the current redesign wasted space on surface parking instead of catalyzing development on Colfax Avenue, where the city is spending hundreds of millions on a bus-rapid transit system.
On Friday morning, Locantore described the pause of the project as “pretty dang great” in a text message.
The city had previously rebuffed requests to consider housing for the site. In November, a city spokesperson wrote, “that this particular development is not the right fit for housing because the police department needs the entire space to meet the needs of a growing community.”
But Johnston has also named housing development as a top priority, especially on Colfax Avenue and other transit corridors. Locantore’s lobbying may have had an effect, too: Johnston announced plans would be rolled back just weeks after Denverite reported on Locantore’s concerns.
The mayor’s office hasn’t yet detailed how the plan could change, who in the city is in charge of the redesign, whether neighborhood input will be part of the project, and whether Locantore’s group — or others — will have a seat at the table.
The city has through 2027 to finish the project, as it’s funded by the 2017 Elevate Denver bond, and time is running out. The project received $25 million in funding from the bond package.
