A New Lowry? A New Stapleton?
City Planners Embrace Westside’s Plan For A High-Density Project, Rejecting Public Desire To Preserve The Park Hill Golf Course Land. Denver Voters Will Likely Decide – Again – In April
By Cara DeGette
Editor, GPHN
On Oct. 19 the Denver Planning Board embraced the mired-in-controversy plan for Westside Investment Partners to develop the Park Hill Golf Course property, despite the taxpayer-purchased conservation easement that requires the land remain open space.
Westside wants to build a mixed-use commercial and residential community with a park on the 155-acre parcel — potentially doubling the population of northeast Park Hill.
The campaign to build is far from a done deal, however. The developer’s plan will next be considered by the Denver City Council. Westside hopes the council will refer the measure to city voters in next April’s municipal election.
The former golf course is at Colorado Boulevard stretching northeast at 35th Avenue. In a setback for Westside’s plans, Denver voters last year overwhelmingly supported a measure for further protections to the easement on the property — which advocates envision could be a regional park. Any lifting of the easement now requires a citywide vote.
Despite last year’s vote, city staff from multiple departments — planning, parks and recreation, transportation and infrastructure, housing and economic development — have since logged hundreds of hours working in tandem with Westside to create a development plan for the city’s last large hunk of open space.
That collaboration paid off. Addressing the Planning Board on Oct. 19, senior city planner Courtney Levingston described Westside’s proposal as “reflect[ing] the community’s vision.”
The plan includes high-density commercial and residential buildings from three to 12 stories high on approximately 55 acres along Colorado Boulevard from 35th Avenue north to Smith Road. As many as 4,300 homes and apartments would be built. The developer says 25 percent of the housing units would be designated as affordable — twice the percentage that Denver currently requires for new developments.
The developer also says up to 100 acres of the property will remain open space. However, critics note that total includes 25 acres that is a detention pond next to I-70, as well as grassy areas along the sidewalks and walkways within the development. The total actual amount of park land, they say, would be closer to 55 areas.
A warm reception
In all, 150 people signed up to speak at the Planning Board’s meeting, which lasted nearly eight hours. Numerous people supporting the project emphasized their desire for a brand name grocery store in a section of the city that has been a food desert — though Westside Principal Kenneth Ho says no major grocery chain has committed to the plan.
Ho, who is heading up Westside’s development efforts for the property, was met with a warm reception from the planning board. The 11-member board, appointed by the mayor, is largely comprised of development industry professionals. Two planning commissioners recused themselves from voting on the plan due to their business relationships with Westside. Ho himself is a former chair of the Planning Board.
Board member Mary Beth Susman characterized the proposed development as “a smart plan,” similar, she said, to what Lowry and the former Stapleton airport (now called the Central Park neighborhood) sites have achieved. At one time both Lowry and Stapleton were considered as possible parks, she said.
The Lowry neighborhood now has nearly 3,000 single-family homes, duplexes, condos and apartments, according to its community association. Central Park, east of Park Hill, had 7,272 housing units as of 2017, according to the Piton Foundation.
“We’re lucky to have this [golf course] space to think about what we can do,” said Susman, a past member of the Denver City Council. “This gives us an opportunity to grow up and not sprawl.”
77 percent prefer open space
While they agree that Denver has a critical need for additional affordable housing stock, critics note that several other nearby properties are currently being developed as affordable housing. Once the open space is gone, they say, it is gone forever.
Earlier in October, the board of Greater Park Hill Community, Inc., whose geographic boundaries include the golf course, voted unanimously to oppose Westside’s rezoning and development plan. GPHC is one of Denver’s largest and oldest registered neighborhood organizations, and it has consistently opposed development of the golf course land.
GPHC’s position also reflects an overwhelming opposition to development from Park Hill residents, as determined in a neighborhood‐wide survey conducted in late 2019 by National Research Center. The survey found 77 percent of respondents preferred the land remain entirely green space/park or golf course.
GPHC’s resolution opposing Westside’s plan also cites a Colorado statute, which requires a court order to terminate protective conservation easements.
The city and developer say that the terms of the easement require the property to remain a golf course. However, open space advocates maintain that the easement allows for the land to be adapted to other open space and recreational possibilities. The golf course has been closed since 2018.
In 2020 the mayor and council-appointed Parks and Recreation Advisory Board unanimously recommended the city purchase the protected land from Westside for a park, using voter-approved bond money designed for that purpose. However, neither city planners nor the planning board considered that recommendation during the October deliberations.
Activists from Yes for Parks and Open Space — the group that sponsored last year’s effort to protect the conservation easement — also envision the defunct golf course as a regional park, which would be about the size of Washington Park.
‘We have enough parks’
On Oct. 19, many of the speakers voiced support of development, citing the city’s drastic affordable housing shortage. “We don’t have an open space problem in Denver, we have an affordable housing problem,” said one.
Another concurred: “We have enough parks.”
Veronica Valenzuela, who grew up in Denver and lives near Park Hill, countered that argument, saying “I understand the fight for affordable housing but we need to protect this land and keep this open space. The Park Hill Golf Course is the last piece of open space — green space — in the Denver area.”
Westside’s plan will next head to the city council. The question over whether to lift the protective easement and pave the way for development is likely headed to a citywide vote in April. The developer has already unveiled its new campaign theme: “Yes for Parks and Homes.”
The issue is likely to remain front and center in the hotly-contested campaigns to elect a new mayor and numerous city council positions. Mayor Michael B. Hancock, who has received thousands in direct contributions from Westside executives, is term-limited next year, as are several members of the city council.
Check out past coverage of the Park Hill Golf Course land controversy at
greaterparkhill.org/news-and-opinion/going-for-green/.
Sisters Of Color Sues Westside
Breach Over Park Hill Golf Course Clubhouse Lease Alleged
The day Westside principals were making their pitch to city planners to build out the Park Hill Golf Course property, Westword broke a news story highlighting a lawsuit against the developer alleging a breach of a lease at the golf course clubhouse.
The Sisters of Color United For Education, which describes itself as Colorado’s oldest promotora (community health worker) program, filed the lawsuit against Westside and its development partner, the Holleran Group. The lawsuit, filed in May, alleges that Sisters of Color signed a three-year lease in February, 2021 to rent most of the clubhouse “to provide community engagement and leadership development in the surrounding Park Hill neighborhood.”
According to the suit, Westside and the Holleran Group asked Sisters of Color to provide advance payment to pay for improvements to the clubhouse. In all, the sisters allege, they paid nearly $150,000 for improvements, plus another $46,000 to outside vendors and contractors. The suit alleges that Holleran and Westside charged for work that was not done, and overcharged for work that was done.
In addition, the developer demanded changes to the terms of the lease. One highlighted example was that the developer “wanted to take some of the leased area away from Sisters of Color and turn it into a community space.”
“We weren’t able to use the space in the way we needed to, wanted to or paid for,” the organization’s Executive Director Adrienna Corrales Lujan told Westword.
According to the lawsuit, Westside and Holleran offered a settlement of $173,000, which the Sisters of Color ultimately rejected since the settlement stipulated that amount would be paid over three years, and would be claimed by Westside as a charitable contribution.
“We just didn’t think it was right to say that it was a charitable donation, and we also didn’t think it was right that we would have to wait three years to receive the resources that we put in,” Corrales Lujan was quoted saying, along with a warning that the developers could also renege on other agreements related to the Park Hill Golf Course.
“We just want to make sure that people know that sometimes actions speak louder than words,” she told Westword. “Even as a people-of-color-run organization, we were still not treated very well.”
Representatives from Westside and Holleran declined to comment for the Westword story.
— Cara DeGette