Thornton City Council sees a hole lot of good
8-1 vote comes despite concerns by teed-o≠ residents
thornton » Avid pleas by a crowd not to let Topgolf, a chain of large golf entertainment complexes, open its second metro location at a site near the Rolling Hills neighborhood weren’t enough to persuade Thornton city leaders to quash the idea.
City Council early Wednesday voted 8-1 to let the Dallasbased company build its facility on 14.4 acres bordered by Interstate 25, East 136th Avenue and Thorncreek Golf Course. The vote came after 1 a.m. after hours of public testimony in a packed City Council chambers.
Adam Matkowsky was the sole council member to vote against the project, which will include $3.75 million in incentives from the city to Topgolf.
Dozens of residents, many from Rolling Hills, have voiced concerns in the past few weeks about noise and light spilling over from Topgolf. They showed up at the meeting, which began Tuesday evening, in an attempt to dissuade the council from issuing a specificuse permit to the company — a permit that would allow it to erect 170-foot-high safety nets for its proposed three-story, 102bay facility.
Resident Susan Kessler said neighborhoods have existed around the site for 20 to 30 years and urged Topgolf to look for a new location in Thornton. The closest home to the proposed facility is 800 feet away across Thorncreek Golf Course in Rolling Hills.
“It’s not like these residents just showed up,” she said. “There are so many other parcels available that don’t back up to a residential area.”
The neighbors were particularly concerned about Topgolf ’s plans to stay open until 2 a.m., with one resident describing the entertainment complex as the equivalent of an “outdoor bar.” Several others took photos of the Topgolf that opened in Centennial last year — the first in Colorado — to show how the company’s bright lighting could be seen from far away. They also took sound meter readings to gauge the noise impacts of the business.
“You can imagine how this sound would travel in the winter, right to our doorsteps, waking us up,” said Mickel Domin-
ique, who has lived in the Rolling Hills neighborhood for years.
Several neighbors complained that the city was failing to follow its own code by allowing a commercial entertainment use in an area that is zoned as business park. But Topgolf, which has 25 locations in the U.S. and three in the U.K., countered the largely negative public testimony with a team of experts who addressed sound, lighting and traffic issues.
They testified that sound readings showed that Topgolf would be in compliance with city noise thresholds. They showed off a sample light fixture equipped with an enlarged visor that they claimed would block more glare than normal.
“The requirement isn’t that the lights be invisible,” said Carolynne White, an attorney representing Topgolf.
White said a business like Topgolf was in perfect keeping with the zoning the city had put in place at the site. Mark Foster, senior real estate development associate for Topgolf, told council the business would bring 475 jobs to Thornton.
That helped persuade Councilman Sam Nizam to vote in favor of the project, saying that if the city didn’t, Westminster would snatch it away. He noted that Thornton had turned down a hospital and a Walmart at that location in years past.
Kim Nicholson, a resident of Hunter’s Glen, said she was tired of having to leave the city to entertain visiting friends. Topgolf would be an entertainment destination for her and others in Thornton, she said.
“I’m often looking at other cities to spend my money,” she said. “Let’s have fun here in Thornton.”