1 week Ago
By Preston Padden In March, I attended a community meeting hosted by Boulder Creek Neighborhoods regarding their proposal to annex and develop 20 acres at 9850 and 9776 Arapahoe Road. Mike Cooper, the Director of Entitlements at Boulder Creek Neighborhoods, did a fine job at the meeting. I will send a copy of this message to Mr.
Cooper and to city Administrator Kady Doelling and Planning Director Steven Williams. The mayor of Westminster recently described the pressure to approve more and more developments in our region as “insanity,” according to CPR . I could not agree more.
That is why multiple cities have elected to not comply with State mandates for more and more dense housing. Presently, Lafayette enjoys the reputation as the most livable city in Colorado. This reputation is in no small part due to the consistent effort by this Council and prior Councils to intelligently manage growth to meet the needs and character of current .
.. and future Lafayette residents.
However, if Lafayette were to annex the land for the incredibly dense Boulder Creek project and the even more dense Kensington project half a mile up Arapahoe, Lafayette would lose that reputation. These developments are not building on the strengths of Lafayette , but instead are proposing a wholly different kind of living and lifestyle for our future residents that lacks much of what gives Lafayette the reputation it has earned. At the meeting I attended, Mr.
Cooper stated that a city official had said that Lafayette would approve 10 dwelling units per acre on that 20-acre site. However, when asked, Mr. Cooper declined to identify the city official who had made that statement.
In addition, this is significantly more dense and incompatible with the neighboring residential zoning that is appropriate for this land. Mr. Cooper made absolutely no commitment to affordable housing.
Instead, he referred to “market attainable pricing,” whatever that is. Recently, I pulled out onto Arapahoe from Forest Park Circle at 8:30 a.m.
heading east. I observed that the westbound lane of Arapahoe was bumper-to-bumper cars, not moving, all the way up to 287. To borrow the words of the mayor of Westminster, it is “insanity” to approve additional dense housing projects on this stretch of Arapahoe until CDOT finally does something about Arapahoe.
Mr. Cooper acknowledged that meaningful improvements to Arapahoe are at least a decade away. So too should be any annexation for further development.
Although Mr. Cooper said that Boulder Creek will “be bringing their own water,” he acknowledged that they will not be contributing to the very substantial infrastructure costs (water treatment, transfer infrastructure, storage facilities, etc.) required to provide water to their residents.
He further candidly acknowledged that if his project, and the Kensington project, are approved, the water bills for current residents could go up beyond the 21% increases per year we have suffered for the last three years. In addition, it is widely acknowledged that the West is running out of water. Any annexation decision must be made with this simple accounting in mind: What benefit does this annexation bring to residents in Lafayette in exchange for these increased costs? As the Council knows, more than 2,000 people have signed a petition against the annexation of the land for the Kensington Project — 750+ voting citizens of Lafayette and a majority of the balance from neighboring communities like Erie, Louisville and Boulder.
Councilors have been provided with a complete list of the names and street addresses of those signing the petition. Securing all of those signatures was an enormous amount of work and I hope that we don’t have to duplicate that effort for the Boulder Creek proposal. These citizens speaking out against annexation should not be viewed as a criticism of Lafayette’s Council and Staff , but rather it is a statement of appreciation for the city you are creating and managing with intelligence, insight and integrity.
Repeatedly, I have spoken up at community meetings to assure those in attendance that the Lafayette City Council cares deeply about the views and concerns of Lafayette citizens and that, in the end , the Council would side with its citizens over developers. I continue to believe that is true. Preston Padden lives in Lafayette.
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