For more than 15 years, Denver’s comprehensive plan, “Blueprint Denver,” has taken a binary view of neighborhood change—either a neighborhood should expect to change, or it shouldn’t—but it’s looking as though that practice might soon end.  The current system, under which every City lot lies within an “area of stability” or an “area of change,” now seems likely to disappear in favor of a four-tiered categorization developing as part of the “Denveright” long-range planning process.

A bit of background: under Blueprint Denver, the City aims to funnel development into “areas of change” that comprise roughly one fifth of Denver’s land area.  The plan’s complementary goal is in turn to limit growth in “areas of stability” that cover the balance.  Denver development pressure has to some extent followed that vision crafted in 2002, especially as new projects have advanced along Continue Reading Denver to Take More Nuanced Approach to Growth Planning

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?

The Colorado Supreme Court (the “Court”) has now weighted-in on the requirements for foreign courts to create enforceable charging orders against Colorado LLCs.  In JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. v. McClure (2017 CO 22. No. 15SC816 (Colo. 2017)), the Court ruled that to be enforceable, foreign charging orders against a Colorado LLC must be either (i) procedurally domesticated in Colorado, or (ii) issued by a court with proper jurisdiction over the LLC or the membership interest in question. Continue Reading Enforcing Foreign Charging Orders against Colorado LLCs

 

Last week the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that seeks to delineate what causes a commercial real estate loan to be classified as a “high volatility commercial real estate loan,” or, as it’s more commonly referred to, as a “HVCRE loan.”  Since the rule regarding HVCRE loans was promulgated, there’s been much debate and confusion around that fundamental question.  A synopsis of HVCRE loans and the implications of HVCRE classification can be found here. Continue Reading House Passes Bill to Clarify HVCRE Rule

On Thursday, the Denver Election Division released the final unofficial vote totals for the 2017 municipal election, and it appears that Initiative 300 will pass with 54% of the vote.  We discussed the Green Roof Initiative in a post on October 24, but now that the measure has passed, we need to take another look at how its requirements will affect real estate development in Denver moving forward:

  • The Ordinance only applies to buildings of 25,000 square feet or more of Gross Floor Area, a term defined in the Denver Zoning Code.
  • “Industrial buildings” have a lesser coverage requirement than other buildings.
  • “Residential buildings” less than four stories are exempt.
  • The ordinance only applies to “building permit application[s]” and “site plan[s]” submitted on or after January 1, 2018. Because neither of these terms is defined in the Zoning Code, we expect the Community Planning and Development Department to provide some guidance as to which applications and site plans qualify.  When the City passed the Affordable Housing Fee in 2016, the City did not impose the fee for projects that had Concept Plans officially logged with the City by December 29.
  • The ordinance applies to all “roof replacements” for buildings with 25,000 square feet or more of Gross Floor Area. The ordinance does not define “roof replacement,” so again we will be looking to Community Planning and Development for guidance on this provision.

We will closely follow the implementation of this ordinance and provide updated information as it becomes available.