Denver City Council OKs $19.3M purchase deal for CDOT properties
Denver city officials received the official green light Monday to carry out a complex $19.3 million purchase deal that will result in the transfer of two Colorado Department of Transportation administration properties to a private developer.
But plans for 200 or more apartments reserved for qualifying lower-income families and the elderly in southeast Denver aren’t yet assured, despite pledges made by the developer and approval granted by the City Council on Monday night for the purchase agreements.
The Kentro Group, which is footing the full cost to buy the properties, still must return to the council in coming months to request new zoning for one site, at 4201 E. Arkansas Ave., that now is home to CDOT’s headquarters. It lacks zoning that would support Kentro’s housing and retail plans.
On the other property, which contains a CDOT regional office at 2000 S. Holly St., the developer’s plan to include assisted-living housing as part of a larger market-rate development is dependent upon obtaining an adjoining gas station, a representative told a council committee last month.
All told, Kentro’s most recent estimate to the council was that it could build 360 to 410 homes across the two sites. A city finance spokeswoman has said most units are expected to have two or three bedrooms.
CDOT plans to abandon both properties this year when it moves its headquarters and Region 1 office into a new $70 million building southeast of the West Colfax Avenue and Federal Boulevard interchange.
Councilman Paul Kashmann, whose District 6 includes the properties, says a compressed timeline to iron out those unresolved issues — the city, Kentro and CDOT plan to execute the property transfers by mid-2018 — will require heightened coordination within city government as well as robust community outreach to address concerns such as traffic.
“We need city agencies front and center,” he told Mayor Michael Hancock during a mayor-council meeting last month. Hancock assured him that would happen.
On Monday, after the council approved the purchase deal’s components in a block vote, Kashmann said he saw the potential for redevelopment that benefits his district.
That might be easier, he said, for the 11-acre site of CDOT’s Region 1 office, which is on Holly near Evans Avenue. Kentro’s recent plans call for 160 to 180 market-rate townhouses, and it also wants to build 50 to 80 assisted-living units — depending upon whether it can buy the gas station, too.
But Kashmann said plans for the 12-acre CDOT headquarters site on Arkansas, east of Colorado Boulevard, faced more challenges. That includes the need to rezone the property from a campus designation to mixed-use zoning, a process that includes public hearings before an ultimate council vote.
Kentro has said its plans there call for 150 apartments, plus commercial development on the western portion of the site.
“The potential density that the developer is going to feel he needs to make his costs (for the property) could lead to a situation that, if not managed correctly, creates substantial impacts,” Kashmann said, referring to the $14 million purchase price for that site as part of the $19.25 million deal.
To help guide redevelopment of the sites, the city took advantage of a state law that gives government entities the first crack at buying available CDOT properties. City officials selected Kentro in a competitive process last year after Kentro proposed redevelopment plans that incorporated affordable housing.