Update: The council Monday night approved the proposal on first reading 9-2 but referred it to a committee for more discussion before a public hearing in late August.
Developers say modern “garden court” townhomes — often shoehorned sideways into residential blocks in redeveloping Denver neighborhoods, with nary a garden between the buildings — offer young families desirable places to buy.
But a city councilman says some resemble a prison, and he wants the city to hit the pause button on issuing building permits for more of them.
Councilman Wayne New and colleague Rafael Espinoza on Monday introduced a proposed one-year moratorium on some of the townhouse development that finds eager buyers in neighborhoods such as Jefferson Park and Cherry Creek North but rankles some neighbors who consider the blocky, modern buildings ugly.
They say developers are taking advantage of the “garden court form” allowed for rowhomes in the 2010 zoning code, essentially building rowhomes perpendicular to the street.
“It’s just (about) unintended consequences,” New said last week near the end of a Neighborhoods and Planning committee meeting. “What we propose is to take 12 months and go through re-evaluation and have a good discussion about what should it look like. Let’s be concerned about the quality of construction as well as the number of units we want.
“We’re not against density, but we need to make sure we have something that’s attractive and meets the character of our neighborhoods as well.”
Said Espinoza: “We get these townhouse products where the garden court is anything but a garden,” often with just a sidewalk down the middle, faced by most of the units’ front doors, and a row of garages in the back along the alley.
The committee didn’t review the proposal. Its members were told by the councilmen during an informal briefing, which wasn’t on the agenda, that they planned to file it directly at Monday’s full council meeting.
But Monday evening, some of their colleagues said they wanted to study the issue further, resulting in a referral to the committee for more discussion on Aug. 3, before an Aug. 22 public hearing at the full council.
Stacie Gilmore and Kevin Flynn were among those uncomfortable with potentially holding up permit approval for projects in the pipeline, despite an amendment offered by New that would allow those meeting certain garden court standards to proceed. The council approved the proposal on first reading 9-2, with Flynn and Gilmore voting no.
The moratorium would not affect popular new townhomes that look similar to the modern garden courts, but with garage doors facing a center drive aisle instead of front doors facing a sidewalk. Those are considered a different building form, the planning department says.
Because the moratorium would affect the zoning code, the upcoming public hearing is required.
That is set the same night as an expected hearing on another proposed moratorium aimed at pulling back developers. That one would pause, for seven months, a rule that allows development of housing or commercial uses without providing any off-street parking on existing lots in mixed-use zoning districts that are 6,250 square feet or less; some developers have been making plans to build more than 50 micro-apartments on a single lot.
For the garden court form moratorium, a packet prepared by New and Espinoza says the intent was that the structures resemble traditional garden courts:
But developers, after purchasing lots from property owners at escalating prices, have been filling in the lots even more with units:
The council could hear an earful from developers at the Aug. 22 hearing.
“We’re only tearing down homes that are in disrepair,” said Don Gooden, owner of Urban Vision LLC, who said he already had sent council members a letter about the proposed moratorium. “I told (Espinoza), ‘We’re in the 21st century.’ ”
Gooden, whose projects include townhomes with drive aisles down the center, said those forms are “what people want.”
“We sell 80 percent to people between 30 and 35 (years old), and 20 percent to people in their early 50s,” he said. “I think the appeal is to live in a townhome, because a townhome doesn’t have condo dues. It’s what the younger generation wants.”
