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In yesterday’s municipal elections, Denver voters roundly rejected a poll initiative that may have allowed the conversion of a non-public, shuttered golf course into 1000’s of latest properties and a park.
Whereas votes are nonetheless being counted, early returns present that just under 40 percent of voters solid ‘sure’ votes for Referred Query 20. If authorized, the measure would have dissolved a conservation easement requiring the 155-acre Park Hill Golf Course to stay a golf course and allowed developer Westside to proceed with its plans to build 3,200 housing items alongside a park and different public facilities.
“The Park Hill Golf Course will endlessly be a case examine in missed alternatives. With traditionally low turnout, Denver has rejected its single finest alternative to construct new reasonably priced housing and create new public parks,” mentioned Westside in an announcement. “1000’s of Denverites who urgently want extra reasonably priced housing at the moment are at even larger danger of displacement.”
Westside first acquired the Park Hill web site again in 2019 and has been making an attempt to place a mixed-use housing undertaking on it ever since. On the time, creating the location required solely that the town and the location’s proprietor comply with elevate the conservation easement requiring the property to be maintained as a golf course.
The corporate’s plans did not sit with neighborhood activists, who argued the town should not forfeit the open house and may as a substitute search for methods to accumulate the location and convert your complete property right into a park.
In 2021, these activists—organized below the group Save Open Areas (SOS) Denver—efficiently handed a poll initiative requiring that any proposed dissolution of conservation easements be put to the voters. A Westside-sponsored initiative that may have exempted their property from this poll initiative requirement failed.
Nonetheless, Westside and the town continued to hash out a growth settlement for the Park Hill web site. The ultimate plan would have had the corporate supply a whole bunch of its deliberate items at below-market charges for lower-income residents. Westside had additionally agreed to order the vast majority of the 155-acre property for parks and open house, amongst different facilities it promised to supply for the neighborhood.
This did little to mollify opponents, who objected to any lack of open house.
“In a local weather disaster, in a warmth island with a deficit of bushes, you do not lower them down and construct on prime of it. Not when you will have alternate options which might be equal and higher,” Harry Doby, an activist with SOS Denver, informed Purpose earlier this year. He prompt industrial properties adjoining to the location ought to be redeveloped as a substitute.
The Westside undertaking additionally attracted fervent opposition from Denver’s socialists.
Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed Metropolis Councilmember Candi CdeBaca, who’s on monitor to lose her reelection bid, criticized the Westside proposal as insufficiently reasonably priced and mentioned the Park Hill web site lacked the infrastructure essential to assist an inflow of residents.
The town’s DSA chapter, and the nationwide DSA’s Housing Justice Fee, each got here out towards the Park Hill redevelopment as properly. They argued letting a developer flip the golf course into extra housing would only benefit “capital” on the expense of “democratic management and redistribution of land.”
We assist Denver DSA. Reasonably priced housing cannot be offered by the market. Reforms supplied up by the state and builders that do not embrace democratic management and redistribution of land are finally false guarantees that serve solely to learn capital. https://t.co/EWMbFZXIAs
— DSA Housing Justice Fee ???????? (@dsa_housing) March 17, 2023
Countering this eclectic opposition have been the town’s native Sure in My Yard (YIMBY) activists, reasonably priced housing developer Habitat for Humanity, and enterprise teams.
The Denver Metropolis Council authorized a growth settlement and rezoning of the Park Hill web site in January 2023, setting the stage for final evening’s poll initiative.
All through the method, Westside has argued that the location must be a golf course so long as the conservation easement is in place. Opponents will not get the park they have been clamoring for.
After final evening’s vote, the corporate has mentioned the land will likely be returned to a regulation 18-hole golf course and that the location is instantly closed to public use.
Doby, in a February e-mail, predicted that Westside won’t undergo with the price of restoring the golf course to energetic use, and as a substitute lower its losses and promote the property. Due to the ‘no’ vote, he argues that “a developer would not contact this parcel with a 100 foot pole.” That ought to lower the sale value, making it possible for a non-profit to purchase the land and work with the town to change the easement to permit the park.
Time will inform what precisely finally ends up taking place with the location. What is definite is that 1000’s of items that may have in any other case housed individuals will not be constructed.
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