“You’re stranding low-income households”: Cherry Hills mayor items to Denver rezone

The ritzy municipality of Cherry Hills Village has objected to a rezoning that might put income-restricted residences at its doorstep.

“We’ve very critical issues that you just’re stranding low-income households on an island between I-25, a four-lane arterial, and not using a get right of entry to to hospital treatment, no get right of entry to to grocery retail outlets and no get right of entry to to transit,” Cherry Hills Mayor Katy Brown stated at a Denver Making plans Board assembly this month.

Brown additionally despatched a six-page letter to Denver officers dated June 12 opposing the rezoning of 4340-4350 S. Monaco St., which is in Denver however around the boulevard from Cherry Hills Village.

The valuables has two workplace constructions on it. Denver-based Shea Homes is underneath contract to buy the vacant four-story workplace construction to the north, with plans to refashion the construction into 143 residences that will be reserved for the ones making a mean of 60 % of the realm median revenue, with some citizens making 30 %. The latter determine corresponds to a max of $27,400 a 12 months for a person in accordance with present figures.

The mayor of town of 6,400 other people stated Shea’s proposal must be extra suburban in nature, like row houses as an alternative of an rental advanced. In her letter, Brown famous that the closest bus forestall is ready three-quarters of a mile away and runs as soon as each half-hour, and that the realm meets USDA’s definition of a “meals desolate tract.”

“The entire eating places, stores, and services and products are within the Belleview Station house, one mile away, and cater to a high-end marketplace with companies equivalent to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and clothes boutiques that promote dressmaker clothes,” Brown wrote.

The median family revenue in Cherry Hills Village tops $250,000, and just about each home is owner-occupied, consistent with U.S. Census knowledge.

Brown famous that the rezoning would observe to the entire parcel, even supposing Shea Homes isn’t purchasing the workplace construction to the south. Brown stated she used to be involved that extra dense housing may just ultimately be constructed there.

“Rezoning this whole 12-acre assets … would in truth permit the addition of masses of devices – actually a wall of high-density housing immediately around the boulevard from very low-density single-family housing,” Brown stated on the July 3 Making plans Board assembly.

The Denver Town Council will vote on whether or not to approve the rezoning on Aug. 12.

The council were scheduled to vote June 17. However that plan used to be upended after Brown’s letter, and some other from the mayor of close by Greenwood Village famous that Cherry Hills had now not been notified of the rezoning. She additionally identified different mistakes, like a document written by means of Denver town personnel regarding the realm the place Cherry Hills sits as “unincorporated Arapahoe County.”

Denver’s zoning code calls for that each one houses inside of 200 toes of a proposed rezoning be notified by means of town, although the parcel falls outdoor Denver’s borders. On this example, 3 houses in Cherry Hills must have won notices.

In consequence, the June 17 council assembly noticed its participants kick the article again to Denver’s Making plans Board to restart the rezoning procedure to permit for right kind notification.

“There used to be some minor technical error in how it (the rezoning) used to be spotted, and so town stated they wish to return via all of this procedure — which we’re doing — and Shea’s very supportive of that,” stated Peter Culshaw, government vice chairman of Shea Homes.

The properly-notified rezoning has since been mentioned and forwarded by means of Denver’s Making plans Board and a Town Council committee. A lot of the dialog in the ones conferences targeted across the notification error, and no more so on Cherry Hills Village’s objections to the advantage of the rezoning.