A Failure To Communicate
Denver’s $100M Zoo Plan Another Dog-and-Pony Show
By Tom Morris
Special to the GPHN
If a developer buys the house next door and has a plan to build a restaurant and bar, you can rest assured that he or she will face a gauntlet of questions and answers before the project will be approved. You are assured that you will receive timely notice of what is proposed. You will have time to think about it, ask questions, suggest changes and testify during at least two public hearings.
If you live near a park, you are not guaranteed anything at all. You may not learn about the change until the bulldozer shows up to tear off a piece of your public outdoor space. You may see your park diminish before you know it.
The Denver City Council recently approved a 20-year, $100 million plan for the zoo. No Registered Neighborhood Organization was informed of the public hearing before council until 10 days before the hearing. Only a single RNO in the city could speak at the hearing because the elaborate rules laid out in the Municipal Code require numerous conditions for an RNO to speak. The commenting neighborhood is headed by a member of the city’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and apparently spontaneously voted in favor of the plan.
This is not to say that the zoo did not try, in its clumsy way, to notify the surrounding communities of its plan. The zoo conducted a series of dog-and-pony show presentations to anyone who had time for it. At these shows, the audience watched a power point presentation and could respond with clickers to show how much they loved each picture.
They also put out an online survey, which sought much the same kind of responses. As an example, the first question on the survey was “are you a member of the zoo?” The alternate responses were “yes” and “not yet.”
At none of these RNO meetings did the zoo ask the RNO to take a position in regard to the plan.
The Council only discovered that they were required to hold a public hearing in regard to the plan after they had awarded the plan with their unanimous approval on first reading. So they postponed the second (and final) reading for a week to allow the department to inform local RNOs.
Seventeen speakers appeared to testify to their deep affection for the zoo. Two speakers representing themselves spoke against the plan, citing a lack of notice in accordance with the Municipal Code and a lack of meaningful opportunity to discuss the plan.
All these shortcomings were admitted by Lauri Dannemiller, the executive director of the Department of Parks and Recreation. In sympathy for the neighbors, three Councilmembers asked for a postponement but when it was defeated on a vote of 10-3, two of them voted in favor of the plan.
There was no discussion of how many additional zoo visitors would be attracted by the $100 million expenditure nor how many additional parking places they might require, nor what effect the visitors and 20 years of construction might have on the park and its neighbors. These are serious questions. Council decided not to be serious.
When it approved the new 2010 Denver Zoning Code, City Council ceded its Charter described responsibilities for land use in our parks. By not designating any land use difference between publicly accessible green space and the Museum of Nature and Science or the zoo or a parking lot, all parkland is available for development without public notification, participation or opportunity to testify. The department has repeatedly demonstrated its opposition to public participation.
Recent park disputes have illustrated the failure of this means of controlling land use in our parks. A large piece of Hentzell Park was traded for an asbestos-filled, dilapidated downtown office building so Denver Public Schools could build a new school on the flood plane of Cherry Creek. When the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board voted to oppose the trade in a vote of 11-6, they were ignored and miscreant appointees were purged from the board.
The Hancock Administration has demonstrated its disdain for the public on numerous occasions. It refuses to listen to anyone who does not approve. It does not allow the public to participate in the future of our parks.
The reason that City Park has been preserved is that its neighbors have rejected eight, count ‘em, eight different lamebrain proposals. These included a fire station, the city’s aquarium, placing the department’s offices in the Pavilion, a concert which would have blocked half the park from public use for half the summer, a series of outdoors movies, poop bags advertising private enterprises and a regional playground.
The Hancock Administration has approved, over local objections, an obscene rock and roll concert at 90 decibels, events on every weekend day and a lack of weekend access to a usable park. They have adopted a policy of private use of the parks to the exclusion of the traditional use, which has been in effect for over 100 years.
And with continuous failures to include the public in any practical way, they have destabilized City Park, the Crown Jewel of Denver’s parks.
Tom Morris is a native Denver architect who has been involved in neighborhood issues since 1975.