Attendees at the Office & Industrial Market Update and 2013 Forecast Summit presented by The Colorado Real Estate Journal and Otten, Johnson, Robinson, Neff & Ragonetti on September 6 heard from a panel of general contractors who reported that developers of industrial properties frequently choose to meet LEED standards without seeking the official LEED certification, because the certification process adds $50,000 to $100,000 to the cost of the building.

Along those same lines, a September 5 Wall Street Journal article focused on a new apartment building to be built in Manhattan by a developer who was one of the first to build a LEED-certified skyscraper a decade ago. For its new building, the developer, the Durst Organization, plans to incorporate “green” features, but will not seek LEED certification. The developer says it wants the chance to be more innovative and not be bound by LEED’s checklist of features.

LEED has been criticized by others for being too lax in its standards, and for certifying buildings before they are actually in operation.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Green Building Council, which oversees LEED standards and certification, has said it is working on updated standards (LEED v4). Members of the Council are currently scheduled to vote on the updated standards in June 2013. According to the Council, “LEED v4 focuses on increasing technical stringency from past versions and developing new requirements for project types such as data centers, warehouse & distribution centers, hotels/motels, existing schools, existing retail, and mid-rise residential.”

It remains to be seen whether changes to the LEED standards will bring developers back into the LEED fold.

The City and County of Denver recently announced several improvements to the website for Denver’s Development Services department.  The goals of the enhanced website are to provide residents and developers with more efficient online access to the City’s review, permitting and inspection processes and newly assembled guides about the permitting and approval requirements for commercial projects.  For example, owners, contractors an developers can quickly browse all of the City requirements for new construction, tenant finish/remodel, renovation, demolition and signage components of their projects.  Read the press release announcing the website improvements here and visit the updated Development Services website here.

To update our previous post, Governor Hickenlooper has reinstated five of the ten public trustees who resigned or retired last month after reports by The Denver Post revealed apparent abuses of public funds by certain trustees.  The five reappointed trustees include those in El Paso, Jefferson, Larimer, Weld and Douglas Counties.  In addition, the Governor appointed new trustees in Adams, Boulder and Pueblo Counties and indicated that he was still searching for new appointees for Arapahoe and Mesa Counties.  The public trustees who were not reappointed were the focus of the Denver Post reports.  The Governor also indicated that he looked forward to working with the legislature in January on a number of changes to Colorado’s foreclosure laws, including the laws governing Colorado’s public trustees.

This weekend, the Denver Post included a story regarding certain legal issues related to the rebuilding of the Colorado Springs homes destroyed by wildfires, many of which were located in covenant controlled communities. As noted in the article, many of those communities have architectural review committees, but given the amount of destruction it is not clear how effective the processes that are in place will be to maintain a cohesive neighborhood architecture. While we watch this situation unfold, communities in areas that are prone to wildfires should take this opportunity to revisit their covenants and ask some important questions about their architectural guidelines and covenants in the context of wildfire danger.

— Are the architectural guidelines comprehensive enough?

— If the covenants allow owners to repair and/or rebuild without approval from the architectural review committee so long as it is done in a manner consistent with what was originally built, how does the architectural review committee determine what was there prior to the casualty? The answer is pretty clear when homeowners are simply repainting their house. But, if the house was completely destroyed, making that determination is much more difficult, especially if the architectural review committee does not have a historical file for the property (which would most likely be the case if no major work has been done on the home since the developer originally built it).

— Even if the covenants as drafted adequately address a complete rebuild, is the architectural review committee strong enough – both organizationally and financially – to enforce the covenants? Is a new committee with additional assessments and/or additional powers – or a new entity with the authority to tax, such as a special district, as mentioned in the article – the answer when the entire neighborhood will need an overhaul?

— Do the covenants and/or architectural guidelines include fire suppression measures, such as brush and debris removal and distance between structures and tree plantings?

We will continue to watch as this situation develops in Colorado Springs.

 

As we noted in a previous post, critics of Colorado’s foreclosure process have been pursuing various avenues to reform parts of that process.  They have been particularly focused on the “qualified holder” provision of Colorado statutes, which allows the foreclosing lender to state that it is the owner of the deed of trust being foreclosed, without producing the original documents to prove ownership.  A bill that would have amended the statute to require documentation died in the Colorado legislature earlier this year.  Proponents of the bill then started working on a ballot initiative that, if passed by voters in November’s general election, would have amended the Colorado Constitution to address this issue.

Those proponents recently announced they are not going to continue to pursue the ballot initiative, and will instead return to their original approach of pushing for legislative changes to the foreclosure statute.  According to The Denver Post, the campaign director for the Colorado Progressive Coalition, which had been leading the charge, said she believes the group has built the support it needs to pass the change legislatively.  A new bill is expected to be introduced in the next legislative session, which will begin in January.