Mayor Michael Hancock and his administration have secured a decent deal with the new owner of Park Hill Golf Club. Now the city should stick to its guns and demand that 155 acres just south of Interstate 70 and east of Colorado Boulevard not be developed.
Allowing development on land protected by both a conservation easement and recreational zoning is too dangerous a precedent to set, regardless of how amiable the developer is, how direly we need affordable housing, or how many “stakeholder” meetings are held.
Sometimes no means no, and that should be the case every time there is a request to develop land encumbered by a conservation easement. In this case, the city had the foresight in 1997 to pay the owner of a golf course in north Denver $2 million (about $3.2 million in today’s dollars) for a perpetual conservation easement requiring the land be used as a golf course. At the time, it was a win, win. The owner, Clayton Trust, received needed money to continue its charitable mission of providing educational opportunities for a community that has historically been underserved. And the city received assurances that a 155-acre property would remain open space for the benefit of the public — taxpayer dollars, after all, were used to acquire that protection. The goal now should be to demand that the land either be a golf course or that it be sold to the city to become a regional park.
In the past 20 years the relationship between the city and Clayton has become a muddled mess only complicated by two facts: Clayton leased the golf course to a third-party operator, which had substantial rights written into its lease; and early this year the city used its powers of eminent domain to temporarily take 35 acres to build a portion of the Platte to Park Hill flood prevention system. That closed down the golf course and exposed the operator leasing the golf course to financial damages. A lawsuit was filed.
Because of the way the easement was written, the city faced a multi-million dollar financial liability. That liability included paying for lost revenue during construction, paying for the golf course to be restored to working order and, here’s the kicker, potentially losing the easement on the land completely.
Hancock and his team settled that liability with the new owner of the land — Westside Developers Inc. — for $6 million, according to a story in The Denver Post last week, and the easement remains in place.
So now the question is, should the city allow Westside Developers to build on a portion of the open space? It’s tempting to seek a compromise — give Westside 55 acres in the northeast quadrant for whatever it is they have planned and acquire the remaining 100 acres for a park. And there’s a risk in shooting down such a compromise: an area full of mature trees and maintained grasses could be left to die and run wild while the developer “waits out” the political will of elected officials.
But the developer has acquired this land at an incredible bargain, paying $24 million and receiving an almost immediate $6 million settlement from the city. For comparison, consider that in July, a quarter-acre parking lot sold for $1 million a block north of the northwest corner of the golf course.
Once the city rejects the development of this parcel, the smart move would be for Westside to sell the land back to the city for the initial investment and call it a $6 million victory, rather than engage in a protracted battle with unknowable returns.
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