This post follows up on a post from August about a citizen initiative to limit residential growth in Lakewood, Colorado.

In Lakewood, Colorado’s fifth largest city, citizens associated with Lakewood Neighborhood Partnership submitted a petition for a “strategic growth” initiative last July. The initiative aims to limit the growth of residential housing units to 1% annually, and would require that the Lakewood City Council approve all projects with forty or more housing units. The unelected planning commission currently has final decision authority over multifamily site plans and subdivisions in Lakewood.
Continue Reading What happened to “strategic growth” in Lakewood?

California Investor Buys former StorageTek/ConocoPhillips Campus in Bid for Amazon

In a bid to have Amazon select Boulder County as its much-ballyhooed second headquarters, California’s Bancroft Capital recently went under contract to purchase the 432-acre property (depicted below) in Louisville that is the former home of StorageTek.  The property is currently owned by ConocoPhillips. Bancroft also developed the Peloton project in Boulder.
Continue Reading Updates from Boulder County: A Bid for Amazon, Google Buys Property, and Senior Housing

On Monday night, the Denver City Council approved an ordinance creating Denver’s fifty-third historic district: Packard’s Hill Historic District. Located in the West Highlands neighborhood, the District spans north to south from 35th to 32nd Avenue, and east to west from Lowell Boulevard to Perry Street.  The new district encompasses eight city blocks, and includes thirty-nine Queen Anne-style houses, twenty-nine bungalows, and twenty-six classic cottage houses dating from the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Continue Reading Denver City Council Designates Packard’s Hill Historic District in West Highlands

David Brewster, a summer law clerk with Otten Johnson, authored this post. David is a rising third-year law student at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.

Rapid population growth and lagging infrastructure development in the Denver Metro Area are re-energizing a debate between advocates of long term growth strategies and “slow-growth” advocates. Recently, a Lakewood-based grassroots group known as Strategic Growth for Lakewood submitted more than 7,500 signatures supporting a growth management initiative for the upcoming general election. The initiative’s proposed ordinance would limit new residential unit developments to 1% of exiting units in a given year. Additionally, the ordinance would require City Council approval and public hearings for projects of 40 or more residential units.
Continue Reading Revitalizing a Rocky Mountain Debate: “Slow-Growth” Strategies v. Long-Term Planning