The race to fill dwindling space
There’s no sense crying over felled trees – more than 27,000 trees a day are cut down just to make the world’s toilet paper, after all.
The roughly 200 trees that were chopped at Loretto Heights last week made way for much-needed housing in a city that is starved for inventory, including some affordable housing that is already under construction.
So why does it feel so bad?
Well, no one wants to live in a concrete jungle, and that’s OK too.
Poll anyone living in the heart of downtown Denver about whether they’d rather have their walking-distance-to-everything loft or an acre in Cherry Hills Village, and most people, especially those with kids and dogs, would make the trade for the country.
And that’s the beauty of public lands — especially urban park space. No one has to be a millionaire to take a walk under towering oak trees, picnic with the grass between their toes, or simply spike a volleyball over a net pitched by friends. We can live in density and have our greenspace too.
What particularly hurts about losing much of the open space at Loretto Heights is that it was a prime parcel for the city to acquire. Loretto Heights is an old school campus that had various owners over the years but was originally run by the Catholic Sisters of Loretto. The 72-acre sparsely developed campus had considerable green space, historic buildings, and lots of potential for community spaces. A private developer, Westside Investment Partners, purchased it in the summer of 2018 for $15.75 million. A quarter-acre vacant lot nearby at Yale and Yates sold for $320,000 last year, just for comparison purposes.
No one is saying that Westside Investment Partners is a bad company, or that their finished product won’t be very nice indeed. In fact, many folks in adjacent southwest Denver neighborhoods of College View and Harvey Park are thrilled with the plan. Denver City Councilman Kevin Flynn has been fighting to protect Loretto Heights for years, and while his preference was to keep the land open as a bustling college campus, he believes the mixed-use plan Westside has put in place will be wonderful.
He noted that when the land was a college, it was technically private. Recently, Westside allowed a neighborhood association to hold an event on the lawn.
“We sat on that quadrangle, and I’ve been on that campus a lot in the last 10 years … that was the first time this place
came alive, and it was inspiring. We were there until the sun went down. That’s the goal: to bring that place back to life,” Flynn said.
Westside’s plans include at least 20% open space that is truly open to the public, preserved historic buildings, commercial areas that could include restaurants and a grocery store, and some housing that is affordable. That’s nothing to shake your fist at.
But with the announcement of the fate of another college campus in Denver, I can’t help but wonder what might have been.
A non-profit, the Denverbased Urban Land Conservancy, is attempting to purchase the Denver campus of Johnson & Wales University, and the Denver Housing Authority has agreed to help, pitching in $9.5 million for a portion of the campus. This is what Denver must start aggressively doing — preserving open space and preserving affordable housing. The campus has 15 buildings and the potential for construction of more housing, while also creating park space.
Flynn points out that a mix of incomes in these types of developments to create diverse neighborhoods and avoid pockets of poverty is a good thing.
I would counter that with a few exceptions, the cost of housing in Denver has risen so dramatically, that even if the Land Conservancy and the Housing Authority add nothing but housing for the homeless, single-stay-at-home moms, and the working poor, the area would still have a median home value exceeding what a family making the median income could afford.
It’s often been said we cannot build our way out of this housing crisis, and I agree. Throwing money at developers to entice them to provide a bit more affordable housing, is never going to solve the problem in a meaningful way, especially when the development is one that removes existing affordable housing.
Federal, state, and local governments need to switch their mindset to preserving existing affordable housing, and letting developers do what they do best: build units for the top of the market without any government subsidy (including using future property tax revenue to build their infrastructure either through tax increment financing or metropolitan districts). Instead pour those tax dollars into existing housing authorities or proven non-profits like the Habitat for Humanity and the Land Conservancy so they can prevent the loss of existing affordable housing or acquire vacant land to build new.
Oh, and be certain to fund parks departments too, so they can chip in on these purchases and prevent us all from living in an urban jungle.
Denver has precious few opportunities left for parks and affordable housing. One of the largest is the 155-acre Park Hill property, which is also owned by Westside. Fortunately, that land is under a conservation easement, purchased by the city years ago, which demands it remain a golf course and not be developed.
Westside is going through a process right now to try and convince City Council that its development plan is so altruistic and so wanted by the community that it should lift that conservation easement.
Denver must demand a lot more than 20% open space and 10% or 15% affordable housing units if it’s going to let the land be developed. But ideally, it could be the city, the housing authority, the parks department and habitat for humanity lifting that easement for a project that would truly make a dent in this city’s need for affordable housing and greenspace.
Someday this housing crisis may end, but I wouldn’t bet on Denver’s population declining anytime soon. That warrants a city to be incredibly aggressive in pursuing the limited opportunities remaining to acquire parkland and housing opportunities.
We don’t need to save every tree in our urban canopies, but we can still ask that our government fight to save some of them.