The Denver City Council on Monday ended years of talking and planning with a simple answer: Yes.
With strong majorities, the council approved two key elements of the “Denveright” vision for how Denver will handle the projected addition of 200,000 more residents over the next 20 years.
The plans don’t make many immediate changes, but they will guide the city’s decisions in the years to come. They envision a city with better transit connections and more options for mid-density housing. They also describe a new approach to social equity, aiming to “remove barriers for people of color to live in Denver.”
The decision came before a contentious May 7 election. Political challengers had called for a delay, along with the citywide neighbors’ group Inter-Neighborhood Cooperation. At the final meeting, though public comments favored the overarching new strategies.
“Government doesn’t stop for elections,” Councilman Albus Brooks said.
Council members Rafael Espinoza and Kevin Flynn voted against Denveright’s “Blueprint” development plan. Flynn also voted against the “comprehensive plan” that looks at higher-level goals and strategies. Councilwoman at-large Debbie Ortega was absent.
What they’re talking about
The long-range plans include these ideas:
- Encourage duplexes, town homes and other “missing middle” housing across the city, potentially including the edges of single-family neighborhoods.
- Encourage the reuse of historic structures.
- Make public processes more accessible.
- Consider new rules or review boards to improve the quality of new buildings’ design.
- Consider making it easier to build accessory dwelling units.
- Continue to focus development and affordable housing in centers near transit.
- Build a transportation network for bikes, pedestrians and automobiles. The separate Denver Moves plan lays out potential transit upgrades for major corridors.
The plans also set density and design expectations for various neighborhoods, including through a growth-strategy map in the Blueprint document.
This won’t happen all at once: The approved documents set high-level goals that will filter down through other decisions, including the “area” plans that Denver will create for neighborhoods across the city over the next decade. The new strategies also may affect rezoning decisions about individual properties.
“We live in a great city, but we live in a city with a lot of challenges and a lot of inequity. And until we face that head on, we’re going to perpetuate the inequity that exists. … There’s a way that we can grow that’s welcoming and safe and comfortable,” said Kimball Crangle, who co-chaired the citizen group that shaped the plan.
Crangle is regional president for the housing developer Gorman and Co. The steering group also included dozens of representatives of other industries and interest groups, from bicyclists to areas of Denver.
The long-term planning process formally launched in 2016. Since then, city staff members say they engaged about 20,000 people through online and paper surveys and roughly 5,000 more through in-person events. The process also resulted in plans for transit and parks, which are available at Denveright.com.
Former planning director Brad Buchanan said the plans set a model. “While our plans don’t control the pace of change, our plans can direct how and where it happens,” he said.
This is the first full update to Denver’s long-term land plans since 2002.
Political challenge
Monday’s meeting wasn’t as intense as some recent development arguments — but it still drew debates over big ideas from council members and candidates.
In earlier comments, Mayor Michael Hancock’s challengers warned of out-of-control development and improper plans. Candidate Jamie Giellis said at a forum that it’s “opening up the city for development all over.”
It still allows “one-off” rezonings, a common approach that developers can use to get rules changed on particular properties, she said.
The new Blueprint also replaces the old plan’s concept of “areas of stability” and “areas of change,” which city planners said was too simplistic. The new plan still focuses development in the same general areas, according to city staff.
According to candidate Penfield Tate, the push to approve Denveright before the election “just illustrates the fact that people are saying this administration simply isn’t accessible and isn’t transparent.”
Mayoral challenger Lisa Calderón said the city already has “plenty of plans” but really suffers from a lack of coordination and proper execution.
Council’s responses
Flynn shared the density concerns: He said the new vision could be used to justify denser development in his single-family suburban neighborhoods.
“My constituents don’t want single-family houses scraped up to build multi-family structures in their midst,” Flynn said, warning that neighborhoods could be “homogenized.”
But Councilwoman at-large Robin Kniech praised the plan for its focus on displacement, gentrification and other social equity issues.
“This plan says, ‘You now have the legal authority to (include) that in the zoning process,'” she said. The calls for delay, she said, were mostly about timing — not substance.
Espinoza said the plan was “remarkable,” but it fell short in places on “the how.” The new overarching plans could encourage density in neighborhoods that don’t yet have detailed local plans, he argued.
“Density without the tools to address the totality of the plan vision elements … will transform Denver’s vulnerable but desirable low-income neighborhoods,” Espinoza said.
Councilman Chris Herndon, a strong supporter, pointed out the process had taken so long that his baby had grown up into a rambunctious 4-year-old.
“To see this final product is truly remarkable, and we know the work’s not done,” he said.
But if the election does deliver a new set of legislators, they will get a chance to do it over: The next council will be free to amend the plans.
