At issue: Does detention area betray site’s park purpose?

A lot of hot-button issues surround a legal challenge of Denver’s plan to reconfigure City Park Golf Course and install a stormwater detention area, including the project’s connection to the controversial Interstate 70 project.

But a trial that started Monday in Denver District Court is exploring a core question that’s pretty simple: Does the drainage project violate the Denver city charter’s rule that designed parks can’t be used for nonpark purposes?

Not surprisingly, city officials and opponents of the project come out on different sides.

“This case is about what the Denver charter gives the people — and about what the city is trying to take away from the people in violation of the charter,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Aaron Goldhamer, who is representing several residents, during his opening statement Monday.

The rejoinder from city attorneys: Nothing is being taken away, since the golf course will remain an 18-hole golf course — albeit in a different configuration — once the public works project is done.

Depressed areas for stormwater detention “will seamlessly integrate drainage into the park,” said Reneé Carmody, a senior assistant city attorney, during her opening statement.

The expected four-day bench trial, unfolding with Judge David H. Goldberg as the arbiter instead of a jury, is the biggest threat facing the city’s massive Platte to Park Hill drainage projects. At an estimated price tag of $267 million to $298 million, the projects will install large detention areas, new pipes, a drainage channel along 39th Avenue and a new outfall on the South Platte River at Globeville Landing Park.

Goldhamer called it an “unprecedented project” because the plan requires closing the golf course for up to two years and because the drainage component, while not unheard of for a park site, is much larger than any other. Last week, the City Council by a 10-3 vote approved a $44.9 million design and construction contract that calls for redesigning the entire course and incorporating a stormwater detention area into the landscape of the western third.

When heavy rains occur, the redesigned course would take on water for up to eight hours, slowing the runoff’s flow toward the river and preventing some street flooding that’s common now.

But in the process, contractors would uproot an estimated 263 trees, or nearly one-third of the course’s total. The project calls for planting more than 700 new ones, though opponents say those trees won’t offer the same leafy canopy for decades.

Goldhamer said his case would underline the city’s two-year-old agreement with the Colorado Department of Transportation to complete parts of the Platte to Park Hill system on a certain schedule. The system will provide drainage benefits for a portion of I-70 that will be lowered below grade.

The trial is scheduled to wrap up Thursday, but since no jury was seated, the judge could decide to consider the evidence and testimony for days or weeks before rendering a decision.